BASIC PRINCIPLES OF MARKETING
Every business needs a marketing strategy. It introduces the company’s goods and services to potential customers, and informs existing ones of additional opportunities to buy.
Forming the foundation of that strategy are four core marketing principles that enable the effective execution of a marketing strategy. Understanding each of these marketing terms is the key to building a strong strategy.
It’s no secret that marketing through advertising has gotten more complicated over the past two decades. With new mediums such as online, social, mobile and email, there’s no shortage of ways to get your message across. Add this to traditional mediums like print, radio, direct mail and television, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed by just the prospect of advertising.
The good news is that the fundamental rules of good advertising haven’t changed. Here are several of them so you can put the basics to work for your next ad campaign.
Remember AIDA
Every ad should strive to satisfy the AIDA principal, an acronym that stands for:
Attention - Be compelling enough to grab the prospect’s attention. Use interesting headlines and eye-catching design.
Interest - Frame content in a way that makes the reader want to keep reading. Avoid clichés, jargon and meaningless buzzwords.
Desire - Outline benefits of your product or service that make people want to buy. Don’t just use a laundry list of features. Tell them "what's in it for them."
Action - Include a call to action, whether it’s asking prospects to call, click or come in. Don’t leave any doubt about how you want them to act—now.
Keep It Simple
Make sure the design of your ad is clean and uncomplicated. Use short, powerful headlines and minimal copy. Don’t make the mistake of trying to put too much in your ad – it will only overwhelm readers and cause them to pass you by.
If you’re using photography, especially stock, choose images that look genuine and not cliché or cheesy. If you can swing it, pay more for exclusive rights and stay away from royalty free. This will reduce the chances that your image might appear in some other business’ ad that features the same photo.
Differentiate Your Business and Product
The last thing you want your ad to do is blend in with all the others. Use every means at your disposal to stand out – from typography to color and imagery – so that your ad doesn’t get overlooked.
Many businesses are afraid to take risks with their ads, which leads to ones that are bland or invisible. Since you’re paying a fair amount to run your ad in the first place, be sure your ad stands out by being unique.
Know Your Target
Place your ads where your audience will see them, and run them as long as you can afford to make an impression. This is referred to “reach” and “frequency.” The more you have of each, the more likely your ad will get noticed. If you need help deciding where to advertise, a media planner can assist you by suggesting tactics that match your audience.
If you’re using several tactics, make sure that your ads are integrated around a similar theme or creative concept. Each should reinforce the other so that the total impression is strong.
While the advertising landscape is complicated, the basics of good advertising haven’t changed. Follow them and you’ll be successful no matter how and where you advertise.
The four principles of marketing
Because the labels in the marketing mix are so broad, it’s helpful to examine each in detail to understand these four principles and how they work together.
Principle 1: Product
The marketing mix starts with the goods or services offered by the business. Anything sold to generate revenue can be classified as the product part of the marketing mix, from manufacturing razor blades to providing legal advice.
The product should solve a problem or need for the customer. The benefits of the product should be communicated through the lens of the customer.
You might think your product is fantastic, but a skeptical customer wants to know what makes it different from that of your competitors, and how it will meet their needs.
This means you’ve got to understand the customer as well as, or even better than, the product.
Ways you can understand your customer:
The buyer persona: To that end, a tool like the buyer persona, a profile of the customer characteristics that are a fit for your offerings, can help articulate the types of customers you’re targeting for the product. This ensures an alignment between product benefits and customer needs.
Product branding: Think about how you want customers to perceive the product’s brand. Is your product a premium good or service? Is it utilitarian, efficient, or inexpensive? This affects how customers perceive your offering, as well as how you may want to name and package the product.
Product life cycle: Understand where your product is in its product life cycle. Is it a new product, or perhaps it’s been around awhile? This affects how customers react to the product. If it’s new, consumers need to be educated about it. If it’s been around, perhaps they’ve already tried it.
A real world example is the Happy Meal product sold at McDonald’s. The Happy Meal combines food and a beverage with a toy, and is designed for customers who are children, down to its name and packaging.
Principle 2: Price
This part of the marketing mix is about determining the price for your goods or services.
There are many different strategies for pricing that can be employed here, but ultimately, it’s about lining up your business and marketing objectives with an understanding of what price the market will bear.
You'll want to align pricing with the value customers perceive for the product. This means you understand the value of your offering from the customer’s perspective, which also includes their time and effort to acquire the product.
If customers view your offering as unique or high value, you can charge more. If customers view the product as on par with competitors’ products, you may need to discount your price below the competition to earn customers.
Ways you can align your pricing with your customer:
Pricing research: Perform research to understand the competitive landscape, what customers think of your offerings, and what internal stakeholders, like a sales team, have experienced when selling the product.
Company goals: While the pricing strategy you adopt should be in line with customer expectations, it should also support company objectives. For example, if the goal is to grow your customer base, you may need to employ promotional pricing to compel new customers to try your offering.
Test, evaluate, and repeat: Pricing is challenging to nail on the first try, so experiment with different pricing strategies until you find one that resonates with customers and meets business objectives.
In the case of the Happy Meal, McDonald’s uses a pricing technique called bundling. The price of the combined food and beverage is less than the price of buying the items individually, which encourages customers to buy the Happy Meal.
Principle 3: Place
This component of the marketing mix speaks to where and how easily customers can acquire the goods or services.
Is a purchase possible online? For a service, what’s the geographic area being served? If you sell your product to businesses, distribution considerations like the logistics to get shipments to your business clients fall into this area.
Always provide an online destination, even if you offer a service. Customers generally perform research online to help them discover buying options and make a decision. Without an online destination like a website, you’re giving competitors an advantage.
Ways to provide customers a place to find you:
Website alternatives: If your business does not have its own website, even setting up a presence on sites that your customers frequent can do the trick. For example, businesses of all sizes have Facebook pages.
Support mobile devices: Even if you have your own site, is it mobile friendly? This means the site has to look good and function well on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. If not, it can turn customers off.
McDonald’s uses a variety of methods to distribute its Happy Meal product. As part of its restaurant marketing strategy, the company has a mobile app where customers can order a Happy Meal and pick it up in person or have it delivered. Even in the restaurant, customers can choose the cash register as the place to order or skip the line and order at an in-store kiosk.
Principle 4: Promotion
This area encompasses the tactics used by the business to communicate with customers across all of its marketing channels.
Included in this principle are tactics like advertising, direct marketing methods, public relations, email marketing, social media, database marketing, special promotions, communications strategies, and in-person appearances (such as at a trade show).
Given all it includes, the promotion piece of the marketing mix contains perhaps the largest number of elements to juggle. Because the choice of tools is so vast, it’s helpful to peruse reviews like the best email marketing software.
Your choice of marketing tactics and tools should complement your marketing plan, which is driven by your product positioning.
Create a product positioning statement that will serve as the heart of promotion efforts. It encapsulates all the elements in the marketing mix in a sentence or two, so that it can serve as a kind of north star guiding your marketing ship.
Ways to create a promotion:
Positioning across tactics: Every promotional tactic should echo elements of the positioning statement so that its themes thread through all your marketing. This creates a cohesive message to customers.
Measurable goals: When developing promotional tactics, ensure each has a measurable goal. Examples of measurable goals include the number of visits to your website for a direct marketing campaign, brand lift percentages for a television ad, and email open rates for an email marketing campaign.
Going back to our McDonald’s example, the company frequently leverages partnerships with corporations like Disney to tie its Happy Meal toy to a movie that appeals to children.
Its most recent Happy Meal promotions included tie-ins with Disney’s Frozen 2 movie and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. McDonald’s used commercials on television and YouTube to spread the word.
A last thought on the marketing principles
While the four Ps model lives on today, other frameworks have emerged, such as a seven Ps version for businesses selling services.
Personally, I found these other models added unnecessary complexity, and the traditional marketing mix stood the test of time for the products I launched. The key is to remember that the end goal is to have a happy, satisfied customer.
By aligning the marketing principles to the target customer markets, you’ll be able to achieve this goal, and grow your business.
Posts
