NoSpin Debunker

The forgotten "P" of Marketing

Nov. 26, 2001

Hope that you folks had a great Thanksgiving and got to enjoy a few days off. Please click on the link to take this week's NoSpin Poll: Does Marketing play an important role in your company’s product offerings themselves? And read on…

 

Last week I talked about messages that are part of the Promotions part of marketing (and we’ll get back to marketing vehicles that deliver messages in a future debunker).  Promotions are an important part of the traditional 4-P marketing mix. But too often, 80% or more of a company’s Marketing effort involves only this one “P.” Many Marketing departments have little to do with the actual products (and services), their pricing, and distribution mechanisms (place) for the products that your business sells.

 

Does your business’ Marketing function have an important say in your products (or services) themselves? Such as--

 

• What features should be included or not included?
• Does the product provide enough “value” for a specific market?
• How should it relate to your other offering(s): should it be completely separate, an add-on,  combined with other new offerings, or something else?
• What level of “customization” are customers going to demand?
• Can it be customized fast enough for customers?
• Is it easy enough to use? To deploy? (especially, if you’re in the high tech world)
• Is it ready to sell and distribute in mass?
• Can it be sold to other markets—if not, what changes will it take?

 

Does Marketing then develop and coordinate the messages, promotional vehicles, pricing, distribution and sales components with the product(s)?

 

Here are a few top myths regarding Products (or services) and Marketing:

 

1) Marketing is about promotions and public relations. We have other people to actually make and sell the product.  Unless you’re a start-up, your company probably has real products (or services) that it is selling now. But if your business tends to disconnect your products themselves from your overall Marketing mix—and hence marketing strategy-- your Marketing investment is only going to generate a fraction of the return that it could.  Marketing can’t and shouldn’t  “build” the product or distribute the product itself, but in concert with others throughout your organization, it needs to be involved in these processes. If Marketing is essentially a promotions/PR function, it’s up to the CEO to change this approach.

 

2) A longer list of product(s) is always better. Companies sometimes feel compelled to show their markets, their boards of directors, their investors, and others that they’ve got more stuff—that they’re the ultimate “one-stop-shop” for their particular “space.”  Unfortunately though, if all some or all of those products deflect from your core offering (that may still have significant market potential still and be highly profitable), your business may get sidetracked. Longer lists of stuff to sell—for the sake of showing that you’ve got more stuff--can often mean misallocated product development dollars and wasted marketing dollars. Marketing is about helping sell to create profits—and not merely trying to sell more types and volumes of products.

 

3) A corollary of #2: we always need something “new” to sell (something new in our “bag of tricks”).  Offering something fresh that solves a real business need--and can sold at a profit--is indeed good idea. But again, what happens too frequently is that selling the new stuff (even though it’s unproven and without a real track record) sucks up more resources to the detriment of your profitable product(s). And often--instead of taking the path of least resistance with “new” products by selling them to existing customers—businesses try for maximum exposure and end up costing the company versus generating new profits.  

 

4) We’ve got a great product—that really sells itself (the “…if I build it, they will come school-of-thought…”).  I still hear this one and cringe. Without the right messages, the right pricing, and the right sales and distribution strategy, a business might get lucky and sell some product, but only a fraction of what it could have sold. 

 

Effective marketers play one of the most important coordinative roles in businesses to link together the increasingly dynamic mix of  4 P’s: product, promotion, price, and place. Product must be central to that mix.

 

Thanks again for your interest in my NoSpin Debunker newsletter—please forward this email on to friends and colleagues who you think would like to subscribe. Talk to you next week, and let me know about topics that you’d like me to address—or if you’d like to be a guest “Debunker.” And remember that you can always read past Debunkers on the NoSpin web site.

 

Tom Ranseen                       NoSpinMarketing                           615.383.7157