A true marketing mission includes non-traditional marketing areas as well.
Some of the areas are philosophical and some have scientific underpinnings to launching a marketing crusade.
- You need to include the attitude toward customers, product and/or service.
- You need to put your mission into the research of new products and services.
- Your marketing mission needs to be included in what kind of profit you want to make and into how you’re going to handle credit, packaging, inventory selection, transportation, advertising, sales force, your image, your prices, your location, and your incentives.
To break these down:
Customers
Customers need to be treated as the most valuable asset they are. One must never forget how difficult or how expensive it was to put someone in contact with that customer or the potential customer, the prospect. Each customer or client contact must be treated as the marketing opportunity that it really represents.
You’ve got to reverse the greed that wants you to make the sale and see everyone with a dollar sign on their forehead, and start thinking of how you can fulfill that customer’s need.
Product or service
How do we weave our marketing mission into our product or service? Rather than offering a sale or a product line or a mix that really reflects your impression of what your business should offer its clients or its potential customers, you need to select the right mix of services and products based on research that you do with your potential prospects and give them specifically what they’ve identified as their needs and wants.
In other words, test marketing to find out what they want.
The easiest way to do this is to ask what them what they want. Then you select your products and services based on your business? ability to sell them and service them to your customer’s or potential client’s satisfaction.
You need to weave your marketing mission into your research. Any time your research and development efforts involve any new products or services, they should be directed toward a customer based study of proven customer needs and wants.
You go out and ask them what they need and want, and then research and put together products and services that will fulfill those needs and wants. No other research is as important as trying to determine what the desires are of your customer, prospect or client.
You need to weave your mission into your innovation in your company. Any changes and improvements are always welcome in business.
Before you make any changes to any of the characteristics of your business, products or services, you really need to first consider how these changes will be viewed and accepted by your customer base. That’s what you’re in business for. You’re not in business for yourself.
If the innovation passes the test of the customer, then it’s logical to pursue it from other points of view. How much will this change cost? Will it save time? Will the reliability improve? Will there be added features?
Profit
You need to weave your marketing mission into profit. As soon as you take the perspective that all profits originate from sales dollars, then it’s much more logical to assign a disproportional amount of time and effort into insuring that the stream of cash flow from sales is maintained or increased over time.
This is a function of marketing. This is where your marketing mission directs our attention as business owners. Your marketing mission and your credit policy originates from sales dollars.
Credit policies can be a critical element in the overall marketing of your product and service. If you offer VISA, MasterCard, and American Express and Paypal, that may get a sale. The less restrictive credit policies that can naturally encourage sales need to be balanced with financial regulations or constraints present in the process of extended credit.
Many profitable small businesses have gone out of business due to lack of cash flow because they?ve implemented incorrect credit policies.
Implement your marketing mission into your package.
Presentation
The manner in which a product actually looks is presented, packaged, or the way a business or service is rendered to the prospect will have a profound effect on the saleability of what you’re offering.
As an owner, you never want to forget how important the packaging role is in encouraging prospects to not only buy, but to refer other business.
If you’re a service business such as a contractor, you don’t want to be sending workers in with ripped up blue jeans, unshaven, dirty shirts. You want them to be packaged presentably.
If you’re selling a product, obviously you want it to be well-made and well put together. You don’t want nuts and bolts falling off or chipped paint, etc.
Inventory
Your inventory selection can be woven into your marketing mission. If your business is inventory based, then the selection of that inventory will, to different degrees, be important to the overall sales success.
One of the more important aspects to inventory is selection. You will want to approach these decisions with marketability in mind. If you don’t, all of a sudden your inventory won’t turn over properly and you’ll wind up with dead stock that will either be difficult to sell and require deep discounts to unload, or you won’t be able to unload it at all, or if it’s perishable it may spoil, etc.
You need to talk with industry and association reps to really determine the number of times inventory should turn over in your line of business on average. If it’s a new venture, you may know this number already.
to be continued…