The 'Marketing Strategy' is the way we have come up with for achieving
our marketing goals and it should include two mandatory elements:
- Which target consumers whom we can reach, hold a viable potential to buy whatever we intend to sell?
- What is the offer (the entire marketing mix) we will be presenting
to these consumers in order to appeal to them and thus realize the said
potential, given their alternatives?
You must not think of these as two separate questions but rather as
two parts of the same idea. Let me clarify. What are "target consumers
with a potential to buy"? These are consumers (a sizeable enough group
with buying power) likely to desire what you are offering. Why would
they want it? That is the potential that you are supposed to identify.
There may be several reasons. For example, maybe they are not consumers
of your kind of product yet, however, they might be if something
happens, or if they are exposed to a certain message. It could be that
they have special needs or preferences, which up until today were not
catered to by any of your competitors' offers (and don't forget that
psychological, social, aesthetic needs are real needs). Maybe they are
bored with what they routinely buy. When you identify such a situation,
you know that the potential is there.
Identifying potential is only the initial stage of your mission, of
course. Your strategy would also have to include something that you are
going to offer these consumers that might improve their situation in a
certain way, solve a problem, give them more than what they already get
for the same price, or open new opportunities for them. In short,
something that will motivate them to buy from you and thus materialize
the potential.
The 'Marketing Scenario' is a synopsis of the logic of your
marketing strategy. In the same breath, it also enables you to make sure
that that logic really works. The 'Marketing Scenario' translates the
'Marketing Strategy' to simple everyday language. How will it happen in
reality? How will the materialization of marketing goals occur? I don't
know whether or not you have already sunk in this fact, but marketing
goals are achieved through customer acts. So, let's assume that we
install a webcam with enhanced psychological insight capabilities inside
the market and that it captures the materialization of our marketing
plan, one purchase after another.
What is the 'Marketing Scenario'?
The 'Marketing Scenario' is an amazingly simple tool to use: Only four questions. Are you jotting this down?
1. Who are the people who we believe have the potential of buying
what we intend to sell? Yes, these are the same people we so often refer
to as the 'Target Consumers'. First, we must define our targets. What
do these people have in common that makes them probable prospects (in
the sense that they are likely to be particularly interested in our
offer)? We could use demographic, socioeconomic, psychographic, as well
as lifestyle descriptions. Note that at times, we target not a specific
group but a wide almost indefinable group of people in a specific mood, a
specific situation, or a specific need or state.
Make room for another possibility. You can target not a defined
group of consumers but rather a state of need/desire or a consumption
context shared by many diverse consumers at one time or another.
2. What precisely should they be doing (that they are not doing already
and will probably not do if we will not intervene), that would direct
them to eventually choose our brand specifically? It is, by the way, the
first and only objective of branding. What do they have to do so that
your marketing plan will materialize (even before the actual purchase)?
Do they have to go somewhere? To call? To agree to meet your
salesperson? To stop and pick out your product from the shelf? Which
activity, which does not occur today, would lead them in the correct
path on the way to buying?
3. What is the sound reason that should motivate them to change
their behavioral inertia? How will they benefit from that change? Why
would you, in their place, buy what you are offering? You can think of
it as your differentiating factor (what makes you differentially
better?), or as your competitive advantage (what makes you comparatively
better?), according to your preference. What could make their situation
better compared to their current standing and to the other options
available to them in the market?
4. How exactly will they extract the benefit (that which answers
question 3) according to your marketing plan? That is not a repeat
question. Notice that the third question dealt with the 'why' of the
target consumer's planned motivation, and now, we are trying to
understand the 'how' of your marketing plan. How are you planning to
provide the benefit defined in the answer to question 3? If, for
instance, you said before that you are making something more accessible,
easy or comfortable for them, now explain how it will become more
accessible, easy or comfortable, due to you product.
Let us look at an example: The introduction of Palm Pilot to the market. O.K.? Just the main points:
1. "Residents" of the business community, gadgets fans, who manage a
dynamic, constantly changing schedule, and have not yet embraced the
electronic organizers, or were disappointed by them because of their
being laborious to update and generally unreliable.
2. ... will step into the nearest office equipment store and ask about the Palm Pilot.
3. ... because at last there is an organizer which is not only
sophisticated, small and wonderfully shaped, but is also easily kept up
to date and preserves the stored data when damaged or when upgrading to
a new model
4. ... because the Palm Pilot can 'converse' with the PC, making the
updating process a simple task to perform, as well as enabling creation
of backups which could be easily transferred on to the next generations
of organizers.
That is what the 'Marketing Scenario' is all about. All you have to
do is answer the questions. Be precise. Be thorough. Be honest. Do it in
writing. Even if you're absolutely sure that the answers are positively
clear to you and there's nothing to be gained. Only when your
'Marketing Scenario' is totally translated to a written text, should you
go on and proceed with the brand development process. Otherwise, you
will get trapped along the way, and don't say I didn't warn you.
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