WHAT’S MARKETING ANYWAY?

In every alien-encounter movie you have ever seen, what’s the first thing the humans do when arriving at first contact? They market themselves; we market us. We try to sell the idea that we are a peaceful and welcoming species. We do not approach them with science, math, finance, love or any other strategy. We do marketing.

So, most of what you need to know about marketing, in your life, will be described below.

The best brands, companies and products outlive us humans; most of them were here before you were born and will probably keep on going after you have died.

According to brandirectory.com the most valuable brands of 2022 are Apple, Amazon and Google. These brands will be here long after you and I are gone. Brands are stronger than people. They outlive us.

There are three things, three business things we all do, every day. Knowingly or not. We do administrative work, we do marketing, and we sell. Thing is, you don’t need to go to Harvard to know you are doing these things. You don’t even have to go to school. You do them since you are little kid. The caveman did them.

The executive summary for administrative work can explained in four steps: You plan, you execute, you look at your results, and you learn from them. Every day you do this, for every task. ?

Then there’s marketing. You’re always doing marketing, mostly because of our nature of always being in the want, we are always selling something.

So, what’s Marketing Anyway?

In the lamest terms possible:

Marketing is the art (yes, like any great skill, it must become an art) of using tools to win and maintain customers.

Marketing is all about a 360-degree strategy. Always think of it as a whole, not only as part of an equation. The greatest marketeers use their campaigns as a game of chess.

Think of marketing as using weapons, intelligence and a strategy to achieve a goal, as in war. A marketing strategy can have many goals. The most common is to sell something. But you may also want to strengthen the position of your brand in the mind of the consumer, you may want to start a conversation, you may want to educate or inform about a specific issue. You can have many goals, but I believe, no matter the specifics, the main objective will always be to sell. Everything you do in marketing has to help you sell.

Using your administrative knowledge, the first step is to set a goal. Then, move backward to plan how you will achieve it, so you can finally move forward in the execution. After you’re done, compare the results to the ones you set as objectives and determine if what you did was a success or not. Write down what you learned and what you could have done better.

The old school marketing mix consists of six key elements. They all work together, and one cannot live without considering the other. It should be an ecosystem.

1.????THE PRODUCT:

Business cannot happen if you don’t have a product or service. So, the first key element to do marketing is to have something to sell. There are millions of products and services out there, and marketing should help differentiate one from the others.

For the best results you need to know all of the features of your product; sometimes the most important ones aren’t even obvious. When developing your product, strive to give it features that are unique to it. Features that are going to be hard for others to copy or imitate.

In most of Latin America they have this drink called Michelada. What can make a beer be even greater? What can be a cure for a hangover? What is a great drink on a social occasion? What goes great with any food? You guessed it. Michelada.

A Michelada is a cocktail that mixes perfectly with most beers. The purist would say it should not have tomato juice, but this is an ongoing debate, it will be for centuries.

You’re on your summer vacay in a pristine beach in Mexico and have this heavenly cocktail. Suddenly the light bulb turns on: How come I had never tried this before? I need to tell all my friends about it. Why are Micheladas not mainstream? I could package and sell the cocktail mix easily, it’s just some herbs and spices.

So, you create a product. You balance your cocktail mix just perfectly, not too sour, not too salty. You test it at the family BBQ, at the office party, at your local bar. ?Guess what? it turns out that you find out you can also use it with vodka, pour it on to popcorn or in a salad.

You also have to learn how much to use of your mix when pouring it into a 12-ounce beer.

Know the ingredients by heart. Know the formula by heart. Know every specific detail about the cocktail mix you created.

This part also includes the packaging. Device a packaging strategy that will work in perfect symphony with what the client wants or is willing to pay for your product, review what options the packaging providers can give you and the image or personality you are going to give to your product.

Say you want your Michelada Mix to be the Red Bull of cocktail mixes. You must give it a cool look, maybe a sleek can or a weird-shaped ecological bottle.

Start compiling the pipeline of clients, imagine where you are going to be selling it. For starters the beer isle. Thinks of all the products of that aisle, the different bottles and cans. Are there other cocktail mixes in that aisle? Or are they in the liquor aisle? What do they look like? What prices do they have? What sizes are they?

Packaging is also important when you consider the distribution of your product. Consider how you are going to get your product to your clients and consumers.

Review the info you have to display on your packaging: ingredients, warnings, certificates, registration numbers, contact information. Consider this for your primary and secondary packs. Depending on your product, industry and country, there will be information that is mandatory according to regulations and laws.

Finally, packaging will also be very important when you move out of your kitchen or your garage into a more sophisticated in-line production facility, where your mix will be filled into the primary packaging, then into a case, then into a pallet, then into the distribution truck (boat, train, bicycle and/or drone).

All of these aspects apply if you have a service. Think about a bank or a lawyer. They package their services.

The more you know about your product, the more weapons you have to sell it.

?

2.????THE PRICE:

Tip#4: For every business idea you have to run a quick profit-and-loss in Excel (or on a napkin, what do I care where). So, you estimate you can sell around 100 cases of your MicheMix, at $100 a case of 12 units. This means each unit price would be around $8.33.

You are looking at about $10,000 in sales, minus all the costs that are probably around 60% to 90%. You will end up making $3,000 to $1,000 from all of your work. Is this enough for the amount of work you are going to be putting into the business, or are you better off looking for a job or focusing on another venture? What are the risk factors to the success of your project? If they’re too high, move along.

Before venturing into any idea, run the numbers. And remember, almost all new ideas have had people telling the creators that they won’t succeed. The more radical the idea, the more critics it will have.

An innovative idea, a good idea, will forever be an idea until you start working on it.

The first thing you need to understand about price is that it’s always better to start high and move to discount prices than to start low, have huge success, and realize you are selling your product too cheap. It will be harder to raise prices than to lower them.

Common sense tells us that the price you give your product should be enough to cover all the operation costs and then some. This then some is called margin.

The higher the price, the more it’s considered a premium price. If you go low, you are a budget or value brand. This will depend on your strategy. Keep in mind that higher price almost always represents higher quality, luxury or exclusivity, but a smaller market, unless you are a necessity like gas or medicines. The lower the price the broader your client base, and in most cases, more competition in this pricing tier. Lower price often translates to mass production and cheaper costs.

One of the most important things about price is for you to believe in it. The price of a product is the value the consumer attributes to it in his mind. It’s all about perception. If you don’t stand behind your price, if you don’t believe in it, you will not be able to sell it at that price. If someone starts to negotiate with you a discount and you give in too fast, you will reflect poor quality in your product. You will reflect disbelief in it. If you have a high price and stand by it, it can become a status symbol and work well for your brand and product. What difference does a $300 Kanye West brand T-shirt have over a $20 Hanes one?

Start with a price that will cover your costs, then look at the market. What prices do your competitors or substitute products have? Is your product so new that you have no competition? Where are you looking to play? What is the price your customer is willing to pay for your product? You need to find answers for these questions.

There are millions, literally millions of pricing strategies, and no one is better for all types of products; it will all depend on your brand and selling strategy. ?

Always consider who your customers are, because this will have high impact on your price. It’s not the same to sell a product to a supermarket than directly to the final consumer. Depending on how many intermediaries you have, your margins will vary. It’s not the same thing to sell lemonade out of your front yard than to sell a yacht out of a dealership. If you have middlemen (or middlewomen), you need to design a pricing strategy that will make the business interesting for them. You need to have attractive margins.

You notice that there are cocktail mixes for Bloody Marys and for Pi?a Coladas on the shelves, but no MicheMixes. You devise a pricing strategy of around $10 suggested retail price per unit. Based on your initial numbers, if you sell them the unit at $8.33, they instantly have around 20% margin, which should be good for that type of distribution.

?

3.????COMMUNICATION OR PROMOTION:

Most people think this is the is the only component of marketing. That marketers just create advertising campaigns after they smoke a huge joint. A shitty marketer probably does.

After you have developed an amazing product, with an adequate price, you need to let people know about it.

The best way to let people know about a product is for it to be so great that they will tell others about it and the gossip will spread like a virus. Internet virus. But since there are millions of products out there, most of them need a communication strategy. Word of mouth, most of the times, is just not enough.

Again, first thing you need to know is who your final consumer is. For kid’s cereals, are the final consumers the kids or the parents? Find out who and why your target decides to purchase your product.

Because by now you know all of the attributes of your product and are always looking for the latest insight on how your consumer uses it, you will be able to devise an amazing campaign.

A traditional campaign has a budget that will be used to create the advertising pieces and purchase different media channels to showcase spots in. This is called a marketing plan.

Digital, print, TV, and billboards are the most common channels.

The better you are at identifying your segment, the higher the chance of your marketing investment turning into sales. But it’s not just about the segment; the full equation to utopia would be something like this:

Creativity with the right production = A good piece of advertisement + the right use of a media channel + a product with the right price + a product that delivers on the performance it promises + easy to purchase or find + easy to have a conversation with the brand = SUCCESS!

Innovation can get someone to purchase a product once, but Marketing will get them to purchase it again and again.

Communication is not only advertising. It’s also experiences. Most of the time, the higher the price of something, the more likely you are to have a personalized experience of it before having to purchase. When buying a house, you get to see it first, feel it first. For consumer products, such as your MicheMix, you can always sample. In fact, if you are sure you have a great product invest the marketing budget you have in sampling. Sample, sample, sample. Tell your boss I said so.

Experiences can be made up of samplings, contests, events sponsored by the brand or stories the product shares on its social networks. Costumer service is also a great way to wow your customers.

A question that always pops up when talking about advertising is how much should I spend on it? What is a recommended budget? Even though there are recommendations and formulas there is no concrete answer. Some say it should be around 3% of your sales. Others give a value to each market share point based on the amount the industry is spending on advertising.

The right answer is to invest what is best for your project and goals, but most importantly do it based on what you can afford. The marketing budget is one of the first budgets that gets cut when things get rough; this means it can be changed from month to month, project to project or quarter to quarter.

Like with the price of products, you can always get an idea of how much you could be spending if you look to what your competitors are doing. This can give you a reference. If you are new at creating a marketing budget, be sure to get some help from someone that knows. There are lots of good media planers in freelance sites or in advertising agencies who will gladly give you a hand in recommending a budget for the goals you have and designing a marketing plan adequate to your needs and resources. If all fails, you can always rely on the faithful “can someone recommend a good media planer” on your personal or brand page.

The most important change in the media channels in the past 40 years, of course, is the internet. Brands went from limited talks with customers to full-blown conversations thanks to the easy access to brands via social networks or emails. Most marketers or community managers refer to the people who like your brand as followers, but it’s the brands that should be following what they say very closely. Data-mining the comments on your social pages and customer service emails can open your eyes to what you are doing right or wrong with your brand. It can show you opportunities and weakness.

Finally, public relations are a huge part of communication. Next to sampling, if you have limited budget, invest it in PR. If executed accordingly, this will generate the right buzz for your product. It will become a hot topic and you can take advantage of this adding value to your venture.

Influencers or microinfluencers can benefit your cause by sharing info about your product with their networks. Please, show them how to make it seem organic. One obvious selling post of your product by them and you will immediately lose all you have worked for. You will be a sellout. Most of the time if you send a case of product to the right person with an adequate note attached, it will be enough to get them on board. Forget about the “brand ambassadors” looking for a payout to post something. Research your (or your competitors’) pages and profiles to identify consumers who actually live the lifestyle of your product and make them the real ambassadors. ?

?

4.????THE PLACES:

Where are you going to sell your product? Like pricing, there are millions of distribution models for products.

Of course, you will have different type of customers. For starters you can sell your MicheMIx in supermarkets, but you also identify a huge opportunity in the bars and clubs, restaurants and hotels. There’s also a chance to sell directly to the consumer online.

Where you sell your products will also influence the packaging. The presentation you have for the supermarket will likely be of smaller content than the one you will be looking to place in the restaurants.

Consumer goods have to be everywhere. Luxury items in specific locations.

Always consider the minimum requirements needed for someone to sell your brand. Sometimes you don’t want to sell your brand to stores that are untidy or won’t respect your suggested retail price, as it will hurt your brand image; sometimes you just won’t care. This is why most brands have contracts or written agreements when they work with an intermediary. They also create a brand book, a guide for the management of your product.

Your distribution strategy should live with your communication one. Imagine executing an incredible marketing campaign and getting people talking about your product and then looking for it, but not being able to find it. You might as well burn your money.

On trade communication should also be considered in the place where you decide to sell. Most supermarkets or convenient stores sell advertising spaces for brands inside their stores or on their digital sites or pages. Keep this in mind because whatever you do with communication should have a cascading strategy to the trade.

Like everything in life, success will have its perils. I have seen marketing campaigns so great that drive sales so high that production can’t keep up with demand. I have seen campaigns that suck so much that you never even knew they happened and didn’t contribute to any sales.

?

5.????THE BRAND:

What comes first? A brand (logo and slogan) or a product? I believe it’s better to start off with a great product that you can brand than a brand that has no product, but you can work at it either way.

A brand will be all of the visual, auditive and sensorial aspects of a product. Don’t take this lightly: You will never know the success your brand will have. It may live to be 100 years.

Don’t take the creation of your brand just as a task. It’s great investment of time and money.

If you find yourself in charge of an existing brand that already has a customer base, it’s always an option to evaluate a face-lift. A refresh can always attract new customers and make you seem young, dynamic and interesting to your loyal ones. Experience has shown me that a rebranding can be a safe, conservative and not-so-expensive strategy to revamp sales. ?

For something new, there are many ways of creating a brand. The most common is to look for a specialist, a branding agency. There are branding agencies that become the reference for specific industries.

But again, while you can hire the best people in the world, they will never know your idea, project or product as well as you do, so brief them to the last detail.

A good brand creator will ask you the right questions. They can help with all sorts of issues like the name creation, the colors you should use, the type of font and the size of it. They can recommend where to place the legal info, and they can foresee the use of the brand in communication, in campaigns.

The most important thing to remember is whom your brand is going to be for, who your customer is going to be. Knowing this you can develop the best brand to get the attention of your intended market.

Like in communication, don’t be afraid to break the mold and do things differently.

There’s a great case study in Canada for the No Name brand, a line of generic brand grocery and household products created in 1978. No Name launched with 16 generic or unbranded items in black and yellow packaging. It showed no branding only text with a basic product description and name, such as "freshly ground coffee" or "fabric softener," on a solid background.[1]

By the mid-1980s, No Name had become the bestselling brand in the country.

Now, I’m not saying that No Name is the way to go, but it’s a great example of mold-breaking.

Think about what every great brand you love has. Do they have something in common? Why do you like that particular brand so much? Do you think it’s cool? Do you like what it represents status-wise? Do you like how it performs?

Again, you can have a great brand design, but if the product is shit, or if no one can find it or the price is wrong, you will probably have an uphill battle.

I, like millions of others, like the Patagonia clothing brand. When I wear it, it makes me feel good, like I belong to a group of people who care about the environment, people who can pay that little extra premium because you believe that that company, not just the brand, cares about the environment (at one point in my life I worked as brand manager for The North Face). I think the Patagonia logo is cool, but that is not the only reason I consume the brand. I’m an unpaid, non-official brand ambassador. I have investigated the brand, I identify with the fact that it hasn’t sold out to big corporations, and the few stores that exist are still family-owned.

What I’m trying to say is the concept of the brand has won me over, not just one element, but everything as a whole. Doesn’t matter if you have a very small business, a hair salon, a dry cleaner, a huge law firm. Marketing will always give you ways to awe your customers.

?

6.????CUSTOMER:

I talk about segmentation later on but it’s important, as I have pointed out in the five prior elements, that you know who you want to sell your product to. Is your business oriented to selling to other businesses? Do you want to sell to the customer or to intermediaries? What’s the customer looking for in a product like yours? Is your product so new that the customer didn’t even know they needed it, or is it going to be competing in a mature industry?

One can come up with new product or business ideas just by watching people. If you look closely you can identify a need that isn’t being fulfilled. I bet you already have some business ideas in your head.

The more you know your customer, the higher chance of success of designing the right marketing strategy to impact them. I don’t care what you do, I don’t care what position you hold in a company or for how long you have been doing it, always be hitting the street to see how your customers are purchasing your products. There’s no greater knowledge than the one found in the streets. Remember that the market is always changing; millennials don’t have the same purchase motivations as baby boomers. ?

Another great change of the marketing industry in the last decades is data. The amount of data you can gather about your customers is never-ending. You can create the customer journey to know exactly when and where you will have the highest chance of success of selling your product to your target.

Vizio, the TV brand, has had amazing success. One of the key elements of this was when it was starting out, it realized that its consumer would purchase TVs not only in electronic and gadget stores; there was an opportunity to showcase and sell their TVs in the supermarkets and subscription stores such as PriceSmart or Walmart. They understood their customer journey.

There you have it; these are the basics of marketing. Of course, we can dive deeper into any subject as there’s endless information about each of them.

Success will not come if you do one of these elements right. You must do them as a whole, and even then, success will also depend on other areas of your business: the people who work in it, the financial and accounting, the providers. All the stakeholders will have influence in your success. And a little bit of luck always helps.

But if you do these six things right, you’ll be giving yourself a chance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Name_(brand)