What's the game plan

  Considering trends in gift giving It’s important to consider rituals within a family structure. Consider, for example, gift giving. Gift giving occurs through family traditions, rituals, and celebrations. When you’re familiar with the gift-giving seasons, you can gear up and market your products heavily during that time to increase sales. Take, for example, Christmas. Many people purchase gifts around this time. If your product isn’t out there or you aren’t mar- keting during that time, you could lose out on a great deal of market share. Gift giving and the celebration of holidays within families are increasing in importance. You can tell this by the number of holiday employees that stores hire to accommodate consumers as well as the increased rate of travel during the holidays. In fact, traditional holiday spending and promotions have shifted to other holidays throughout the year, and more retailers are marketing on other holidays throughout the year rather tha...

 Choosing the Best Media Outlets for You In today’s world of marketing, you have many media outlets to choose from. I always suggest choosing two forms of marketing: one traditional method and one interactive (or online) method. (You can read all about the many methods in the earlier section “Perusing Your Options for Marketing Message Placement.”) Mix it up and find what works for you in reaching your target market. If you drafted your message and know where to find your target market, you’ll see success. Benefit from trial and error, and then stick with what works for you. Before you try an outlet, you need to determine which of your options meet your objectives. To know which outlets meet your objectives, you obviously have to know what your objectives are. For example, do you want to create awareness, gain new customers, or promote an event? You first need to determine your objective and then make a decision as to whether the market- ing option you’re considering can...

  Reviews by a third party Reviews can be very useful in proving your claims, because third parties are the ones evaluating and reviewing your product or service. If your product or service stands up to the review process with raving results, you can show consumers that you have an outside party recommending it. A positive prod- uct review can increase sales and build consumer trust. Reviews are often published on the Internet or TV or in newspapers or magazines.  Here’s the downside of reviews: If the product doesn’t stand up to your claims, you’ll have to activate immediate damage control in order to minimize negative publicity. Negative product reviews can diminish sales and create mistrust. Reviews work well for products or services that provide immediate results that are visible to the consumer eye, because that’s what reviewers are look- ing for.

 Getting Consumers’ Attention with Compelling Stimuli Consumers can be motivated by marketing stimuli, such as product, price, place, or promotion. However, sometimes your stimuli may need to go a little deeper to gain a response, such as psychological, personal, social, or cultural stimuli.  Just because a consumer is exposed to any old stimulus doesn’t guarantee that she’ll pay attention — after all, a consumer can’t pay attention to all the stimuli she’s exposed to! For this reason, positioning (see Chapter 16) is key when it comes to consumer perception. You have to use the stimuli that con- sumers in your target market will notice and respond to. The stimuli that will work depend on what your consumers need and what they want. (Chapter 5 talks all about perception and stimuli you can use.) To determine which stimuli to use and how to get your desired response, you really have to dig into the makeup of your targeted consumer and her indi- vidual behavior. The cons...

  Addressing the need your product fulfills After you’ve differentiated yourself, you must use the information you gained in the differentiation process to address the concerns and needs of the con- sumer. Determine what problems your product or service addresses: Are you saving consumers money, time, or energy, for example? They don’t care if you have the best packaging or if they can find you in every discount store. They want to know what you can do for them personally.  This step is truly all about the consumer. It’s about first positioning your prod- uct by addressing a problem and then being the solution to that problem. You can focus on one of the following factors as a positioning strategy in this step:  ✓ Product attributes: Attributes often include price, quality, features, style, and design of your product. The attributes are specific to consumers and are often the basis for making a purchase decision. Many times a product can be positioned in terms of ...

  The factors you can differentiate with Differentiate yourself by identifying what your product does that others can’t or don’t. You’re looking for the most persuasive, meaningful, and unique dif- ference that your competitors can’t claim. You can differentiate yourself by using these four factors:  ✓ Price: You want to evaluate what your price is compared to your com- petitors. Is it higher or lower? One risk you take when differentiating due to price is that price isn’t difficult to change. Plus, while some con- sumers will purchase based on price, most spend more time evaluating other differentiating factors such as benefits or service.  ✓ Focus: You can differentiate yourself by using your focus. For example, are you specialized in a particular area? Are you viewed as one of the experts in an industry? Consumers often purchase from companies that they feel are experts or specialized in an industry rather than companies that are more generalized.  ✓ Produ...

  The process You need to do the following in order to make the development of your differ- entiating strategy go smoothly:  ✓ Define the criteria your consumers use to evaluate products that they buy. This will help you in knowing what criteria are important to your consumers and how you can use those criteria to differentiate your product or service.  ✓ Identify your product’s key benefits in customer terms. Consumers make purchases based on benefits, so it’s important that they can iden- tify what your benefits are and that they have the information necessary to differentiate you from your competitors. Do you offer a better price, better customer service, or a better product? If so, you want to be clear about that with your consumers.  ✓ Identify your competitor’s position. You can’t differentiate from your competitors if you don’t have a clear understanding of their position in the marketplace. Evaluate where they stand on quality of product, price, and...

  Positioning your product or service relative to its competition Positioning with differentiating characteristics of your product will help you to stand out from the crowd of products that are similar to yours. You can differentiate your product or service in three ways:  ✓ You can position directly against a competitor. You do this by claiming that your product is better than your competitor’s. In today’s market an effective positioning strategy focuses on specific competitors. This approach is similar to positioning according to product benefit, but in this case the competition is within the same product category.  ✓ You can position yourself away from the competition. This strategy is useful if you can’t compete with the competition because it’s a strong and well-established player. To position away from the competition, look for consumer needs or market niches that position you elsewhere. Doing so helps position you away from the competing noise.  ✓ Y...

 Explain how your product or service eases the pain If you identified your market’s pain point or problem, but your product or service doesn’t provide a solution to that problem, you may as well find a new business or target market. If your product or service does provide a solu- tion, your task is to present that solution in simple but compelling terms.  You must identify the benefits of your solution, and determine how those benefits will improve your consumers’ lives and situations. Reflect on how the benefits of your product relieve the pain and suffering they’re experiencing. Consumers don’t know your product like you do. So, you must tell them what your product will do for them and why they should buy it. Say, for example, that your target market consists of folks who want to lose weight, and that you’re offering an innovative online weight-loss program they can use in the privacy of their own homes. You even offer a money-back guarantee if consumers aren’t sati...

  Touch the pain point In touching a consumer’s pain point, you’re lending urgency to your market- ing message. Consumers won’t act unless they feel an urgent pain that they need to remedy. So, as bad as it sounds, you have to use your marketing mes- sage to rub salt into the wound before presenting your unique solution. Suppose my target market wants to lose weight. The pain point in this situa- tion is the feeling of frustration with their current state of being and the expe- rience of failing to find a sufficient remedy to fix the problem once and for all. Individuals who have tried weight-loss programs without success feel like they have failed. Additionally, many people are embarrassed about starting a new program in public. In my USP, I address that need, and in my marketing efforts, I’ll find a way to touch the pain point to awaken consumers’ attention. Some of you may be thinking, “I just sell lip balm. I can’t make anything of all this pain talk.” Think about this wa...

  What about social responsibility? As a business owner, practicing social responsi- bility is one way you can attempt to gain respect from your consumers. Your social responsibil- ity is defined as your organization’s activities and status as it relates to societal obligations. In other words, your social responsibility is to make good decisions and do the right thing. You can use social responsibility to increase consumer awareness regarding not only your stance on ethics, but also your commitment to society. This leads to a positive perception on the behalf of consumers. In recent years, businesses have experienced an increased pressure from consumer and media groups to be socially responsible in their activities. A few activities you can engage in to fulfill this obligation include:  ✓ Making donations to causes of interest  ✓ Supporting minority programs  ✓ Ensuring responsible manufacturing pro- cesses to protect the environment  ✓ Taking acti...

  The largest ethical concern regarding the product portion of the marketing mix is whether the products are harmful to the consumer or to society as a whole. Products can often lead to short-term consumer satisfaction, but they also may lead to long-term problems for both the consumer and society.  The failure to disclose that a product won’t function properly without neces- sary components is unethical. Generally, products fall into four categories pertaining to social responsibil- ity; these categories represent how long a consumer expects the benefits of the product to last:  ✓ Deficient products: These products have little to no potential to create value of any type. An example might be a faulty appliance. Obviously you want to avoid offering products that are considered deficient.  ✓ Salutary product: These products are good for both consumers and society in the long run. Salutary products offer practical value, but they don’t provide pleasure value. Fo...

  The rate of adoption can differ significantly among products. The rate often depends on five characteristic factors of the product. These factors determine how quickly a product is accepted by consumers:  ✓ Communicability: One characteristic of quickly adopted products is a high rate of communicability. In other words, their benefits are easily communicated and understood by consumers. The best way to create communicability with your product is to make sure that its benefits are well known and easy to see. This communicability helps consumers understand why they need your product and makes them want to pur- chase it.  ✓ Compatibility: In order to get consumers to adopt a product, you first have to find out how well your innovation fits with existing traditions, cultures, values, needs, and past experiences. A product that’s compat- ible with existing values of consumers will be adopted more quickly than one that isn’t. Take Quaker Oats, for example. When the ...

  Encouraging Consumer Adoption throughout a Product’s Life Cycle As a business owner, it’s important for you to understand the adoption process that consumers go through when purchasing new products and ser- vices. The adoption process is the psychological process that a consumer goes through to make a determination on whether to adopt a product. After you understand this process, you can help the consumer work through each phase, moving her closer to the final phase — adoption of your product. There are things you can do in each phase to increase the chances of con- sumers adopting your products. Consumers don’t adopt change at the same rate, so you use the five adopter categories to understand how and why consumers adopt innovations at dif- ferent rates. In the last half of this section, I introduce the five categories as well as help you explore the characteristics of each category.  When a consumer evaluates a product, she’s confronted with an overabun- dance of p...

  The scales are tipped: Loss is heavier than gain Consumers don’t treat comparable size gains and losses the same. Instead, losses seem to loom larger than gains. At times, losses outweigh the gains when it comes to adopting a new product. In other words, when a consumer is forced to give up a specific benefit, the loss creates significantly more pain than the pleasure that’s gained from a new benefit.  Research shows that losses are two to three times more painful than compara- bly sized pleasurable gains. Why the imbalance? The reason boils down to an issue of value: Consumers value items that are in their possession more than they value items that aren’t in their possession. Behavior economist Richard Thaler labeled this theory as the endowment effect. The idea behind Thaler’s theory is that when a person has possession of something (meaning he owns it), he tends to value it more. In fact, he may value it so much that if he were required to sell it, he would want ...

  The human sensitivity to gains and losses When you provide a consumer with a new benefit, it will be perceived as a gain; take away an existing benefit, and it will be viewed as a painful loss. The same is true for cost. If you reduce a current cost, it will be perceived as a gain; and if you impose a higher cost, it will be treated as a loss. Suppose, for example, that a consumer finds a new dry cleaning service near his home. Not only is the service convenient, but it costs less than it did pre- viously, when he had to drive 15 minutes to reach the nearest dry cleaner. He experiences a great deal of happiness, because the costs he’s used to paying for have decreased — therefore, he considers the change as gain. Another man, however, has received notice that his television cable company will be increasing his cable rate and raising his monthly bill. His costs for the very thing he’s been purchasing for years have increased, so he counts the change a loss and experiences...

  What affects a consumer’s acceptance of change Why are consumers hesitant to give up old benefits and often resistant to incur new costs when they’re either retaining the benefits they currently enjoy or gaining new benefits? The answer, like all things related to psychol- ogy, is fluid. However, the influences that lead to resistance generally boil down to the following few fundamental truths:  ✓ Humans are sensitive creatures. Chalk it up to the law of survival — people are poignantly aware of the concept of give-and-take. You can see this sensitivity clearly in almost any toddler; even though adults aren’t so uninhibited, the sensitivity remains — humans don’t like to lose things, and they sure do like to gain things. As a result, the greater the required changes, the greater the potential of resistance.  ✓ What people perceive in the world is a response to individual refer- ence points they hold. These reference points often come from culture influence or ...

  How change affects consumers and their behavior New products — or even just changes to a current product you’re selling — force consumers to change the way they do things, whether the change be an actual external behavior modification or an internal adjustment in attitude, intention, or motivation. (These internal changes are at times more difficult than a simple change of procedure.) Changes on the seller’s part often rep- resent more than just changes in cost; they also include gains and losses for the consumer. If a new product has any chance at success, it must offer gains to the consumers; these gains include new benefits to be obtained or existing costs that can be avoided. However, the problem with most new products is that while they may offer gains to the consumer, they also come with losses, which represent opportu- nity costs of switching. The losses are often viewed by customers as existing benefits that they must give up or new costs that must be incurred. ...

 The product life cycle consists of the following four stages; however, remem- ber that not all products go through each stage: 1. Introduction: During this stage of the product life cycle, a business seeks to build product awareness and develop a market for the product by using promotion. The need for immediate profit isn’t of concern in this stage. 2. Growth: The focus in this stage is on building a brand preference and increasing and stabilizing the market share. Competitors are attracted to the market, and they begin to offer similar products. At this point, prod- ucts become more profitable because of the growth in sales and because companies form alliances and strategic partnerships to take each other over. Advertising and marketing spending is high during this stage. 3. Maturity: The growth in sales begins to diminish during this stage. A product that survived the first stages tends to spend the longest time in this stage. Sales are still growing, but at a much slow...

 Moving from psychology to relationship (in effect, loyalty) A consumer’s initial purchase is his first interaction with you. This interaction determines whether he’ll return. Even though he may not become a commit- ted loyal customer on the first visit, it definitely sets the stage for whether he’ll ever become a committed loyal customer of yours in the future. A com- mitted relationship with consumers is based on the following building blocks:  ✓ Communication: You and the consumers “speak the same language” and are able to understand one another. Communication is key; if consumers feel that you don’t understand them or that you aren’t listening to them, it could detour them from ever coming back.  ✓ Competence: Consumers view your company as knowledgeable and capable. They want to be able to trust your expertise and know that what you’re telling them is true.  ✓ Customer orientation: The strong relationships with your customers have filtered down to other ...

 Why loyalty is important for business When a relationship between a business and a consumer is of high quality, the chance for ongoing business is increased, because both see value and mutual benefits in the exchanges. In other words, a high-quality relation- ship benefits both your business and the customer. Customers, for instance, have an easier time making decisions and their perception of practical value is enhanced. Your company benefits by not having to resell the customer. The pleasant nature of the exchanges between you and the customer are agreeable to both parties. You’ll know when the relationship between you and your customer is strong, because you’ll act as partners. Additionally, relationship building and staying in touch with your customers serves as a reminder of why they should buy from you and not your competitor. Before you spend your time and money going after new customers that you aren’t currently in a relationship with, consider the following stat...

  Complexity of the Buying Process With a business-to-consumer market, you’re typically dealing with a single- step buying process. You’re trying to convince an individual — the same individual who considers the options, makes the decision, and pays the bill. The same isn’t true with most business-to-business transactions. You’re often dealing with multiple individuals and sometimes even large commit- tees, which could mean that you have to deal with different personalities. B2B sales organizations are characterized by well-paid field sales people, dis- tributors, and business partners or independent representatives who aren’t engaged only in the selling but in the fulfillment of the product or service. As a result, B2B companies use marketing to educate various players in the target audience because the decision to purchase is usually a multistep pro- cess involving more than one person. Marketing activities are usually the first step in a longer, integrated touch campaign ...

 Establishing a relationship: The basics Building relationships with your customers isn’t as difficult as you may think. You simply have to treat your customers as if they truly are your strategic partners. You also need to show them that you truly care about them. You can do both of these things by focusing your efforts on developing and exem- plifying the following qualities:  ✓ Expertise: Be able to answer the questions that your customers have. Consumers don’t want to buy from just anyone — they want to know that they can count on you to give them good solid advice and feedback.  ✓ Attention: Pay attention to your customers; listen to what they want and what they have to say. By listening to what they say, you can identify their needs and hopefully provide a solution for those needs.  ✓ Friendliness: Reflect a great attitude. Customers are attracted to busi- nesses that contain happy and helpful people. Be sure to hire those staff members who can exude fr...

 Adding loyalty programs to the repertoire (but not as a solo act!) Many businesses have experimented with loyalty cards and programs as a way of increasing customer loyalty. A loyalty card or program keeps track of the purchases that a customer has made with your business. These programs differ somewhat, depending on the business that offers them. Most of the time, however, these programs offer on-the-spot discounts on selected items. The business also may offer the customer with the loyalty card a lesser price than the customer who doesn’t have a loyalty card. Here are a few of the pros of loyalty programs:  ✓ They keep your name in front of the customer.  ✓ They encourage increased sales and return business.  ✓ They can provide you with valuable customer demographic information if you collect the data on purchases.  But, of course, there are cons as well. Here they are:  ✓ Unless the reward is significant, your program may not stand out among ot...