Module 9: Identifying Your Marketing Mix

Product

• What kind of product does your customer want?
• What features do your customers want?
• How will your customer use your product?
• How big is your product?
• What color and what shape is your product?
• What are its functions and features?
• What is the name of your product?
• How is your product different from the offerings of your competitors?
• How will you brand your product?

Price

• What is the customer’s perceived value of your product? (Remember that cost is not an issue in your marketing plan)
• What are other companies selling similar products for?
• How do your customers feel about the price you’re offering?
• How do your customers feel about spending their money?
• How will a small increase or decrease affect sales?
• What discounts can you offer?
• Can you undercut your competition without hurting your bottom line?
• Can you offer extra value that would allow you to charge more for the product?

Place

• Where do people look for products such as yours?
• What kind of store sells products such as yours?
• What distribution channels do you need and how can you access them?
• Do you need a sales force or intermediaries to help you sell?
• Can you sell at trade fairs or other offline events?
• Where are your competitors selling their products?

Promotion

• Can you reach your customers through traditional advertising channels such as TV, radio, or billboards?
• Are there certain times of year when your customers are more likely to buy?
• How do your competitors promote their products?
• What ideas of your competitors’ can you use?
• How can you promote your products differently than your competitors?

You can use the above questions to help you define your 4 P’s. These will then help you determine what direction you want to take in terms of a specific marketing strategy and tactics.

To help you think of ideas, the following sections contain some popular tactics for each one of the 4 P’s.

Some companies continually put out new products their customers can use. Kellogg’s, which is known for its cereal and snacks, makes a wide range of products. It has branded itself as a company that always has new products available for its customers.

Products can be repositioned to meet new customer demands or to attract new customers. They can also be extended to offer more benefits for customers or new segments of the market. New product lines can augment old ones.

One product tactic is to offer special features for your products that other companies don’t offer. An extremely simple added feature can make a huge difference to your customers. An example is a fan or heater with a safety feature that shuts it off immediately if it senses someone nearby.

Bundling is another good product strategy. Bundling means putting the product together with other useful products in a ‘bundle’ to give it added value. An example would be offering free batteries along with an electronic product or a free anti-virus software program for a web-design product.

A product tactic that has been gaining popularity in recent years is gamification. Gamification takes some aspect of using the product and turns it into a game for the user. Apps often do this. They offer a reward system or levels that a user passes through.

Language learning app Duolingo takes learning a new language, something that’s hard to do, and makes it fun and entertaining with its game-like level system. Zynga’s Farmville grew to great popularity in part because of its gifting feature, which allowed players to give each other gifts and grow their farms together collaboratively.

Offering a reward program is a good product tactic. You can reward your product’s users when they refer others. Probably one of the most famous and successful referral programs is that of Dropbox. Dropbox rewards the user for referring a friend as well as rewarding the friend for being referred.

1. Complete the questions in the Product Tactics worksheet
2. Draft the tactics you will use to approach the Product portion of your marketing mix

You can use competitive pricing or strategic pricing for your goods. Competitive pricing means undercutting your competitors, like U.K. supermarket chain Aldi. The supermarket industry is extremely competitive, so Aldi made itself known for its low prices.

Strategic pricing means charging more than your competitors, but convincing consumers through your marketing that you offer a higher quality product. A great example of strategic pricing is Starbucks, which got Americans hooked on gourmet coffee. Most people would’ve never imagined paying $3 or more for a cup of coffee, but Starbucks worked the gourmet angle, offering something much higher quality than a typical gas station cup of Joe.

There are many more tactics you can use in the domain of pricing, such as tiered pricing that offers customers a variety of options at different prices. This is what Apple does with many of its products, like the iPad, which comes at various prices, each with different features and capabilities.

Market penetration is another tactic in which you offer reduced prices for new products to help them spread in the market. The goal is usually to steal customers away from a competitor who already offers similar products. An example of this is the release of Lay’s Stacks. Similar to Pringles, Stacks were sold at $0.69 at first in order to attract Pringles buyers. Once it had penetrated the market, the product price was raised to its regular price.

The opposite tactic is called price skimming. This is where you launch a product at a relatively high price and then gradually lower this price. This tactic is used often in tech markets. Serious tech and gadget enthusiasts will buy the product at the high price because they want to be the first to own it. Once buyers who will pay the high price purchase the item, the price is lowered so that others will buy it as well. This is a tactic used by Sony and other major tech product makers.

1. Complete the questions in the Price Tactics worksheet
2. Draft the tactics you will use for the pricing part of your marketing mix

For place, you can have locations with high volumes of traffic, online or offline, or try for fewer locations but in areas where consumers in your demographic are concentrated. Your place tactics should revolve around making it easy and convenient for your customers to find and visit you.

You should take into consideration the locations of your competitors and other factors such as your distribution network. Accessibility of your location to highways and public transit can be a factor for some offline businesses, as well as ease of access, which includes store layout (again, online or offline) and parking spaces.

Your place tactics may help you expand to new areas. If this is part of your strategy, you’ll need to consider each of these new locations and whether or not you’ll get the same results there. What works well in one location may not necessarily work well in other locations, even if they seem similar. On the other hand, it may make more sense for your goals if, rather than adding new locations, you instead work to build a stronger distribution network or stronger presence in your single location.

Many retail outlets such as Sony aggressively build locations all over the world where anyone can see and try out their products. Sony’s website helps customers find the location nearest them, no matter where they are in the world. While many companies like Sony try to be ubiquitous, others sell their goods only through specialty shops. One example of this is luxury car maker Infiniti, which tailors to a very specific market of high-end buyers.

Under the place category also comes distribution. Will you distribute your products directly to consumers, thus giving you total control over the sale of your goods, or sell indirectly through wholesalers and retailers? The advantage of the latter is that you can extend the reach of your product with minimal cost because you don’t have to set up your own sales operations.

1. Complete the questions in the Place Tactics worksheet
2. Identify where you will ‘place’ your product/service and distribute it so your customers have easy access.

Inbound vs. Outbound Tactics

There are two types of promotion tactics – outbound and inbound. As the name suggests, outbound tactics are tactics where you send out your message to get it in front of people. Outbound includes many of the traditional advertising and marketing methods, like television ads, direct mail and special promotional events. These are tactics where you seek out your market.

Inbound marketing is more subtle. It draws the audience’s interest rather than sending out a message to them. Many types of online tactics are inbound, such as content marketing, SEO, opt-in newsletters, and sharing content on social media.

Outbound tactics can still be highly successful depending on your market, your industry and how you carry them out. But in general, there has been a shift to inbound marketing for several reasons.

One reason is that it’s cheaper and easier to do. Another reason is that people are inundated with so many marketing messages on a daily basis, many outbound marketing messages get ignored. Finally, it simply fits with today’s market, where people consume content and base their buying decisions at least in part on this content.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you should forget about outbound tactics and focus only on inbound. Here’s a breakdown of the pros and cons of each:

Inbound marketing is successful because it isn’t pushy. People don’t feel like they’re being marketed to. Instead, they feel that they’re simply consuming useful information. The downside of inbound marketing is that inbound alone is usually not enough to attract customers.

For example, after posting content, you’ll often see a spike in traffic but the longer the content is online, the less the traffic will trickle in. It’s a passive approach. Marketers often get more dramatic results using outbound tactics.

Outbound marketing takes a great deal more work and resources. But by reaching out directly to your market, you have an opportunity to build stronger relationships with them through this direct communication. It’s something of an extrovert’s approach. It’s more hands-on than inbound marketing. However, it takes a considerable amount of work and is usually costly.

Most marketers choose to use both types of tactics. Using inbound only is like setting up a shop and expecting customers to simply show up. It usually requires some outbound efforts to get the traffic started.

On the other hand, even if you focus on only outbound, you’ll still need the inbound tactics of good content that customers value so that you’ll keep those customers coming back for more.

Offline Promotional Tactics

The most common offline promotional tactic is the advertising campaign. The purpose of an ad campaign is to make you and your product known to the general public. Decide on the specific aim of the ads – whether to sell, inform, brand, or improve your business – and on what media your ads will be seen by your target market. Advertising is usually costly, but it’s a great way to get your message directly in front of your market quickly.

There are many ways to promote your products offline through events. You can hold product demonstrations, attend trade shows, give seminars that are both educational and promotional, join and participate in your local Chamber of Commerce, etc. These require a serious time investment but they’re great opportunities to communicate face-to-face with your customers.

Another good offline promotional tactic is the free sample campaign. You offer a free sample of your product or service to your target market. This gives them a direct taste of the value you have to offer. If your product is truly helpful and valuable to them, they’ll become buyers.

Other traditional offline promotion tactics include direct mail campaigns, selling door to door, telemarketing, and so on.

Since many marketers consider these traditional methods passé in the days of Internet promotions and customers who are more resistant to marketing, many have turned to what are called ‘guerrilla marketing’ tactics. This includes creative, outside-the-box ideas like leaving sticky notes in public places, writing on the sidewalk in chalk, leaving branded items like pens in public places, and other ways to get people’s attention. These are the kinds of things that pique people’s curiosity, leading them to ask, ‘What is this?’

Online Promotional Tactics

There are many online promotional tactics that take a great deal less effort and cost less than offline tactics. With virtually everyone spending a great deal of time online these days, online promotion tactics that are done well can bring you great results.

Content marketing is a popular promotional tactic. It involves creating content, which can be text-based, visual, video, interactive, or any other kind of content, and using it to build a relationship with your audience. Content can help, inform, or entertain, but it’s non-promotional in nature. Rather, it brands your company in the minds of your market, who will then come to you to buy your products and services when they need them.

Email marketing is another good way to promote online. It’s often part of a content marketing strategy. It involves obtaining names and email addresses and building a list. You then send informational content along with deals and promotions directly to your subscribers’ email inboxes. The advantage of email marketing is that it’s the most personal approach, since you are marketing directly to your subscribers’ email.

Social media is another type of online promotion in which you create a profile on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn, and then make connections with your market there. Again, your activities here should promote in a subtle way. Offer help and information, with a little promotion thrown in. In addition to profiles, you can also create pages, groups, communities, interactive content, and other opportunities for engagement through social media.

Publishing online for Amazon’s Kindle or other platforms is also a great promotion tactic. Through publishing informational content that’s of interest to your market, you establish your authority in your field. You make a name for yourself and brand your company.

You can also hold online events such as webinars. A webinar is the online version of a seminar where you teach people about something related to your business. Like publishing, this establishes your authority and builds relationships.

Integrating Strategies

It’s best to use a wide variety of promotional tactics. Identify the tactics that you think will work best with your target market and choose several of them through several different marketing channels. It’s best to diversify because some promotions will fail or lose their efficacy over time, so it’s important not to have all of your eggs in one basket.

1. Complete the questions in the Promotion Tactics worksheet.
2. Identify the types of promotion tactics you will use in your marketing mix. Be sure to include both inbound and outbound methods, such as content marketing and advertising. The worksheet lists some different methods, so just edit them to suit your needs.