Marketing article 1 – Is your product market-ready? (page 3 of 3)
The promotion campaign
It is often tempting to dive straight into the tactics of your campaign and brainstorm for new ideas to generate awareness and preference. Some ideas get selected simply because they are “cool.” But it is the net effect that should drive your tactics. Think through your ideas, and ask: “Then what? What are we trying to achieve?” A customer’s purchase cycle is a series of events. Individually brainstormed ideas are individual tactics. Building customer loyalty is a continuous series of activities. That means you need to select the elements of your program carefully to follow the customer’s purchase cycle. And that means your tactics become a series of investments that logically and precisely work together towards one final goal.
Why would you spend hundreds of thousands generating awareness and preference, and then leave the customer in the “fulfilled” pile after you have mailed them the brochure? Being market-ready means not stopping where the traditional awareness function stops. Building preference just doesn’t mean continued mailings and newsletters. Building preference requires programs that will consistently give the customer a reason to prefer your company and products in every single transaction and contact point that he or she will have with your company.
And promoting your company and products doesn’t stop after the sale! If you intend to stay in the business, over time you will need to direct a greater portion of your funds towards customer loyalty programs. Generating sales from customers you already know will provide even greater levels of profit.
Speed-to-market
Speed of execution in product development and in product launch planning is critical to avoid being beaten by the competition. Being market-ready means that by the time you are ready to ship products, you have orders lined up – you cannot afford delays as launch programs are designed and rolled out. So when do you start getting market-ready? Right at the time you commit your product to development. If you start consulting your marketing communications experts as you begin product development, you will have a much better chance of getting a product launch campaign that will really work. And you may even find your product will change to fit better with those individual customers your marketing folks have found.
Getting it all done
Becoming market-ready involves a lot of effort. Faced with tight marketing communications budgets, the need to execute multiple projects in parallel, and the specialized skills marketing demands, many companies are starting to outsource. Some companies outsource project management instead of managing multiple vendors themselves. Others contract individual programs within their campaign, while still others go the whole hog and outsource strategy and execution. As your product portfolio increases, you may find it beneficial to outsource marketing for a new product line, or supplement an existing in-house team with consultants and contractors hand-picked for your program.
Outsourcing brings additional benefits. You may have lived with the product for so long that you can no longer see its features and benefits as unique. Outsourcing is a great way to bring fresh eyes and creativity into your company.
Conclusion
The route to product success is ingenious marketing. Build a campaign using the seven P’s and give your product the success it deserves.
The final “P”
The author, Pauline Hale, spent fourteen years managing marketing at Hewlett-Packard. 100% of the products she marketed achieved de facto industry standard. Pauline started Hale! Marketing in 1998 to help other technology companies market their products and grow revenue.
© COPYRIGHT 2005-2008 Hale! Marketing Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.
