What's the game plan

  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...