3.2 Marketing Strategy

Okay, so, first of all, we looked at, the skill of leadership and management, kind of what it is. And, it is now up to you to take that, and develop that more on your own. The next skill that we’re gonna get into is marketing. And usually I would talk about marketing separate from sales, but in, in this context, sales and marketing I’m gonna bunch them together. Although, ideally, we wouldn’t do that. And, say that sales and marketing prime, is, is, is a, is a primary skill, a primal skill of the entrepreneur. It’s important to know your basics in marketing. It’s incredible how often, when I do marketing consultant, consulting for a client, you walk in, and you, you expect that, maybe, you’re gonna really have to get really deep and delve into, into details. And, you look at basic marketing principles are not being adhered to. So, marketing, consisting of basically three things, market research, market strategy, marketing mix, okay? Market research, marketing strategy, market mix. And, this comes from, Coulter, right? Who, who’s kind of the marketing guru, written all the textbooks on this subject. Let’s make sure that strategically we’re aligned properly. Let me give you my class in market research. Okay, this is my class in market research. Hire a professional. Okay? Do not engage in formal market research on your own. This is best left to the professionals. You ask a question wrong, you’ve just skewed your results. You, you phrase a question wrong, you’ve just skewed your results. Now, am I saying that you always have to hire a professional to do market research? No. You also want to ask yourself, do I need formal market research done? Okay? Sometimes, you have enough experience, knowledge of the market, because you, you come from that market. You’ve been working there for 20 years. You, you know the trends. Could you benefit from market research? Always. Will it be worth what you’re gonna have to pay for it? Maybe not. So, make that decision. Maybe you wanna do your own informal view of the market. Or, simply pull up other market research studies that, that are published online, and that you can read, and you can get information from. But, don’t go out there and try to start formulating, and conducting your own market research. Leave that to the professionals. Otherwise, you just don’t know what kind of slippery slope you might be heading down. Market research for the professionals. But, don’t think you’ve gotta just run out and hire someone. You might be familiar enough with your market to use the data you have. Get published data that you don’t have, and move forward just on that. So, what’s marketing strategy? Marketing strategy is where we’re gonna take our marketing research, or what we know about the market, and create an actual strategy out of it. And, this consists of segmentation, targeting, differentiation, positioning, okay? Segmentation, targeting, differentiation, positioning. Now, I can teach for a week at, on each, and just, just graze the surface of these subjects. How do you segment these days? It’s not like before. We, our segmentation used to be very cut and dry. We used to say male, female, young and old, all this kind of stuff. Now, you’ve got 80 year olds rock climbing, and 20 year olds who never get out of the, the, the, the reclining chair, all right? Now, all of a sudden our segmenting is, is much more complicated than it ever was before. Okay? So, how are you going to segment the market to be able to come up with a target that you want? Segmentation is key, and a lot of people skip it. Don’t skip it and don’t don’t do it flippantly. Okay, here we go, we, we’re gonna choose a target of, in fact, that’s when people do a lot. They, they choose a target, and then they say how it was segmented to choose that target. No, segment the market, choose a target. I like to relate this to to pizza. Right? You get a pizza out there, first thing you gotta do is segment the pizza. You gotta cut it. Right? And, there’s a standard way to cut it, and then people get fancy, and do all sorts of weird stuff. But, you’ve got to cut the pizza. Once it’s cut, you choose the segment that you want. You target, right? And, if somebody else has targeted your piece, you’ve got to get there faster, okay? So, segment, then target, then we differentiate, okay? What is our differentiation? And this is marketing. This is sales. Our true differentiation may not be what we choose to differentiate to the market. Maybe we’re making the best quality out there, but the market doesn’t care so much about quality. And therefore, our true differentiation is that we’ve got this quality that nobody can touch, and we choose to differentiate in a different way. Right? What’s the difference between Coke and Pepsi? Coca Cola uses a cinnamon based product, and Pepsi Cola uses a vanilla based product. Has anyone ever told you that before? Right? And, that’s, that’s their true differentiation, one is based on cinnamon, one is based on vanilla. That’s not how they differentiate to the market, is it? Right. That’s irrelevant to the market. The market doesn’t care. So, they create another differentiation. One that is relevant to the market. This is another area where I see entrepreneurs get off track. They have a true differentiation, and they think that’s what they need to sell to the market. No, give the market a differentiation that makes sense to the market. That the market wants. Now, I’m not saying it’s a true differentiation. Okay it has to be true. You can’t lie to the market. But, maybe on your list of differentiations, right? The things that make your product or service different. The one that matters to the market is number two, or three, or maybe even four on the list. But, that’s the one that matters to the market. That’s why they’re going to go after it. Positioning. Understanding the positioning relative to the chosen target. Where, where are we going to position this product in the mind of the consumers, so that this target is going to want it? Positioning is extremely important. Okay. Is it gonna be high-end? Is it gonna be low-end? Is it not gonna have anything to do with high or low-end? Is it gonna be a place something that you associate with, with the beach, or recreation, or, or, or, or outdoors? Or, is it something associated more with business, and commerce, or, or, or people’s professional lives? Positioning of a product. We need to have these things aligned targeting, I’m sorry, segmentation, targeting, differentiation, positioning. We align these so that we can then fit them into the third step, which is the marketing plan. Okay, the marketing plan, or more commonly referred to as the marketing mix. The marketing mix, the four Ps, in fact, that’s probably the most common, label given to this. The four Ps, product, price, place, promotion, okay? This is your marketing mix. Aligning this to your marketing strategy is another area of incongruence that you’ll find a lot in the market, in professional companies, and in especially new businesses entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur has got to understand the product that they, that they, finally put out, whether it’s a product or a service, it’s got to emulate the positioning that’s been chosen for that product for the target market. The price needs to be what that product market what that target market expects, or wants to pay, or is willing to pay for that price. The place where it’s offered, again, it needs to be congruous with the target. And, this is something that I see go wrong all the time. I, I, I personally have a retail company. I’m in the retail business. And, retail is a funny little animal. And, there is a shop very near mine that just suffers and suffers for sales. And, the problem is, is that they’ve opened in a location where their target market is there. Their target market is there, walks past their shop every single day. But, that’s not where their target market goes to purchase that kind of, of good. So, even though they thought they had their target market right, because their target market’s there, we see them there all the time. When is their target market engaging in their business activity? It’s not in that location, it’s in other locations. Right? So, getting that congruous is trickier than just going where they are. You gotta go where your target market is when you’re doing what you want them to do, that’s not necessarily always the same place. Promotion, how are you going to promote the product? Advertising, what kind of advertising? Print, online, traditional, non-traditional. You wanna do some growth hacking. You’re gonna go social a lot. How are you going to promote your product? Again, this needs to be congruent. You don’t just follow trends, you don’t say oh, everything’s online. So, I’m gonna go online. No, it’s gotta be a congruent part of your strategy. So your marketing mix really needs to play out your marketing strategy, which should be based on what you know about the market, the research you have from the market. Rem-, remember, the strategic equation, context, strategy, structure. And, that’s what we’re doing here, where context is marketing, market research. Strategy is your marketing strategy. And, your structure, what it is you do, is part of your marketing mix. Marketing, sales, an intricate skill of the entrepreneur.