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Marketing is the process of planning and executing the development, pricing,
promotion and distribution of products and services to targeted customers.
Using this standard everyone in your organisation is ultimately involved in
marketing in some way, not just some narrowly defined "marketing
department."
Marketing-oriented organisations focus like a laser beam on customer needs
and wants. They anticipate demand. They enlarge demand through promotions
and advertising. Then they satisfy that demand.
Unfortunately, too many companies either do not understand this basic
principle or lack the resolve to see their strategies through to completion.
In fact, many businesses start thinking about marketing campaigns only after
sales have begun to sag.
Other reasons why marketing plans fail:
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No sense of
the future.
Successful marketing is an investment in your organisation's future. Be
creative,focus on new opportunities. Always think of new ways to enhance
exposure for your product/service.
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No
measurement of results.
Like any other initiative, marketing projects must be tested and measured.
To measure results, assign someone to capture sales and customer
information and give them access to all revenue and expense data. Once
results are measured, analyse them and share them throughout the
organisation. Then spend money on what generates the best return.
-
Too much
interference.
Some CEOs approve a marketing plan, then insist on constantly making
adjustments. Sometimes, the best approach is to wait until marketing
efforts can be suitably measured and then fine-tune the plan. Constant
meddling only distorts results and demoralises the people in charge of
driving the campaign. All company employees should think `customer first`
time in every minute of the day. Remember, we are only in business
because our customers allow us to be.
For some organisations, maintaining a full-blown marketing department may be
too costly and impractical to justify itself. One option in these
circumstances is hiring a professional marketing consultant to ensure that
your product meets customer demands the way it should.
We suggest the following to ensure getting the most out of a marketing
consultant:
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Start with
clear goals.
Define what you want from him or her, and do not hold things back. Keep in
mind that no one understands your company's culture or history as
thoroughly as you do. Offer all the details you can so the consultant has
more to work with.
-
Do not leave
the consultant dangling. The marketing consultant you hire is a technical
expert; he or she uses specialised tools to solve the issues you know
intimately from your day-to-day business dealings. If you take the time to
work together, you will see better results than if the consultant is left
trying to figure out everything on his or her own.
Marketing Strategy
Effective marketing do not come naturally to most businesses.
When reaching out to customers, many companies describe what the product is,
explain their product better, and then explain to the customer why they
should buy it. This is also how most salespeople make sales presentations.
All too often, however, they leave out the part about how the
product/service benefits the customer. But the only time the customer is
ever interested is when you tell him how the product/service will improve
his/her life.
Of course, it's impossible to highlight your product's/service`s benefits if
you do not know what your customers want. That's where market research comes
in. Listen to your customer needs at all times.
Step one in market research is determining what you genuinely need to find
out. Are you considering entering a new market? A new market area? A new
product line mix? The kind of information you are after will influence the
type of research you want to do.
Other key questions:
-
What's the
current size of the market?
-
How fast is
it growing?
-
How can we
hope to reach it?
-
Can the
market be segmented into targeted customer groups?
-
What makes
our product distinctive among others in the marketplace?
-
What types
of people buy our product or service?
-
What's most
important to buyers when choosing a product (price, quality, delivery
time, etc.)?
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What do
customers like about our competitor's products that we're not offering?
The Marketing Plan
The best marketing plans always focus on the customer. Therefore, the plan
should be organised to address specific questions:
-
What does
the customer really need?
-
Where do
they want to buy it?
-
How do they
want to buy it?
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How much are
they willing to pay?
A solid marketing communications strategy is also crucial as well. Do you
know what your target customers read and listen to? What are the best ways
to get their attention?" This aspect of the plan should address your
organisation's promotional goals ("promotions" include everything from
advertising to public relations). Other key questions:
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How can you
communicate more about your product's specific benefits?
-
How much
money are you willing to spend to get your message across?
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What media
would work best for your specific product?
-
How will you
evaluate the results of your promotional efforts?
Plan ambitiously but be realistic about your objectives. Consider what you
hope to accomplish in terms of what can be realistically achieved. Ask
yourself:
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How can we
want to set ourselves apart from our competition? By price? Product
benefits? Other attributes?
-
Is our
ultimate goal improving sales of a specific product or service or do we
want to focus on generating more qualified leads?
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Is customer
retention our real objective?
General statements like "We're committed to getting more business" or "We
want to boost sales" are essentially meaningless. Ask questions in order to
clarify your goals. Keep working on your answers until you have identified
your most important objectives.
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Customer Focus
To think like your customers, your company must encourage a
customer-oriented culture. Your decision-making process should include a
mechanism for collecting and understanding customer input. Before you
design, test and sell your product/service, make sure you have gathered,
interpreted and synthesized all the customer information you can find. That
way, you are not making the product in a vacuum, but backed up instead by
solid data.
Where does this information come from?:
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Customer
complaints.
Look at complaints your business has received over the past few weeks and
months. Does your management team seriously examine what's behind these
complaints? Does the team offer solutions to reduce the number of
complaints?
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Customer
surveys.
This is still considered among the most effective methods for collecting
reliable, objective data about your customers.
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Industry
trends.
Study patterns in your industry. Read trade publications. Monitor new
trends and approaches to customer care.
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Face to face
contact.
Do you know -- really know -- how your customers buy your
products/services and exactly what they do with them? Nothing beats
getting out of the office and meeting with customers directly.
Market research offers crucial information about customers' buying habits,
needs, preferences and opinions. Here are five basic methods used by most
businesses:
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Survey.
With a well-designed questionnaire, you can evaluate a sample group that
represents your target market. (The greater the sample, the more
trustworthy are the results.) One-to-one surveys -- usually conducted in
high-traffic areas like shopping malls -- offer an opportunity to
distribute samples of your product and gather immediate feedback.
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Focus
groups.
In this format, a trained facilitator uses a scripted series of questions
to lead a discussion among a group of selected individuals. These sessions
are held in a "neutral" location (often at a place with videotaping
equipment and an observation room with one-way mirrors).
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Personal
interviews.
This method is more concentrated than surveys, and while the results
aren't statistically reliable, they can yield valuable insights into
customer buying habits. They also unearth unexpected concerns that may
lead to improvements in customer service or product design and
distribution.
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Field
trials.
In this situation, the company places a new product in selected outlets to
test customer response under authentic selling conditions. It's a valuable
opportunity to modify product or packaging before final rollout.
The best customer benefit is worth more than all of your product's/service`s
features combined. Do you know how your product/service benefits your
customers? This should always be the focus for your marketing campaigns.
To keep that goal in sharp focus, we suggest asking these questions:
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How do our
customers profit from using our product/service?
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How much
money does it save for our customers?
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How much
money can it earn for our customers?
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Does our
product/service have built-in intangible benefits? Is there a way to
quantify these intangibles?
"Identify the benefits your customers get from your product/service and then
make those the centrepiece of your company's message."
The CEO and Marketing
A marketing-oriented CEO works hard at intimately understanding the
customer's needs. Broadly speaking, these needs fall into three categories:
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How to
increase productivity
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How to
reduce the cost of doing business
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How to
improve their competitive status
The CEO is -- or should be -- the chief marketing officer. He or
she should avoid getting stuck in a 'product-thing' mentality that asks,
'What are our customers buying from us? Why should they buy from me instead
of my competition?' Instead, the question should be: 'What value or benefits
do my products provide? That's the only question that truly matters."
WE urge CEOs to spend a substantial amount of time out in the field, meeting
with customers and prospects -- "not for the purpose of selling, but to
better understand their needs, wants and demands. CEOs are uniquely equipped
to do this. They know their own business, so they'll likely understand what
their business can do to address customers' issues. Many CEOs think this is
what they've hired salespeople to do, but in the 10 years I've been advising
CEOs, every single one has said it's the best thing they've ever done."
Above all, the CEO has the power and influence to ensure that marketing is
considered a primary function within the organisation. Do not look at
marketing efforts as an expense. Sales is an expense. Marketing is an
`investment` in your company's future. Do everything possible to get the
best people involved in marketing activities and see that this ethic is
incorporated into the culture as a whole.
Direct Marketing
Direct marketing is a system by which a business communicates directly with
targeted groups of customers in order to generate a response and/or conduct
a transaction. Despite changes in technology affecting virtually all aspects
of marketing today, direct marketing remains one of the most measurable and
cost-effective ways to sell products and services.
Should your company include direct marketing in its promotional mix? Here
are the experts' guidelines:
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Your
primary, or significant, method of distributing your product is through
the mail or directly to your customers. The key to doing this effectively is acquiring and
maintaining an accurate database of targeted customers. The most
successful direct marketing businesses make having excellent databases a
number-one priority.
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Your product
offers a variety of benefits. Trying to convey multiple product benefits in a print
or electronic medium can result in confusion for your customers. Instead,
a well-composed direct mail letter can communicate all of these benefits
and announce special promotions like discounts or contests.
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Your product
is expensive.
Again, a direct mail letter offers greater opportunity to expand your
product's appeal (and convince potential customers to spend a little
extra) than the limited space of advertising.
E-mail marketing has become an increasingly valuable form of direct mail.
E-mail ads are a great supplement to traditional methods, primarily for
three reasons:
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They are, in
essence, free.
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They can be
changed quickly.
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They aren't
confined in shape or length.
Our other tips include:
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Know whom
you are talking to. One way to make your e-mail message stand out from the
flood of others is by speaking to your customers in their own language.
Through the use of industry buzzwords, you demonstrate that you know who
they are, what they need and what you can offer them.
-
Include a
meaningful offer. Customers are more likely to respond when they
are offered something free (an industry "white paper," for example, or
free seminar). Other eye-catching offers include coupons for discounts,
free shipping, reward or points programme.
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Do
not overdo it! Because of its ease of use, you could fall prey to sending
"exciting" e-mail messages every day or many times a week. That's
overload. A cogent, well-designed e-mail message sent once (or, at most, a
few times) a month is preferable. And only send it when you have something
worthwhile to share. Also, set up a regular weekly communication theme
that is customer focused and offers advise, a new product/service, hints
and tips that help the customer become more successful in business.
"Direct response" marketing invites the customer to take action by:
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Placing an
offer directly in front of the customer
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Asking the
customer for additional information or to make the decision to buy
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Tracking
customer response in order to measure the return on your marketing
investment
Now go forward and enjoy your year with your customers, employees
and suppliers.
Colin Thompson
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