The Marketing Mindset: How to Engage Yours

FREE MARKETING RESOURCES

The Marketing Mindset: How to Engage Yours

By M. Michelle Poskaitis, CEO, Originations Marketing LLC

Strategic marketing is at once a business philosophy and a practical discipline of management pervading every function of the organization with a focus on the customer and the world in which they live. It requires clear understanding and articulation of the past and present as well as a forecast of what might happen in the future.

Strategic marketing is characteristically “outside-in,” meaning that your attention originates with the customer, not the organization, ultimately helping you to create products, services, and experiences to ensure an ongoing, satisfying relationship between the two.

For decades, the four Ps—product, price, place, and promotion—have served as the framework for effective marketing management. The blend of these four variables resulted in a marketing mix to form the basis of an organization’s marketing initiatives. The four Ps are:

Product: products and services an organization produces and sells (because it can);

Price: the amount charged (to cover costs and make profit);

Place: where the organization distributes products or services (because they are the easiest and cheapest places to do so); and

Promotion: what the organization says about the product or service (to the masses whenever, wherever, and however they want).

This framework evolved some 40 years ago, in an age of consumerism characterized by caveat emptor—let the buyer beware.

Today, organizations need to adopt the four Cs—customer, cost, convenience, and communication—in framing strategic marketing initiatives to achieve organizational objectives. Coined by Robert F. Lauterborn, co-author of The New Marketing Paradigm: Integrated Marketing Communications (NTC Business Books, 1997), the four Cs encourage us to operate our organizations from the customer’s perspective. Lauterborn advises the following:

"Forget product. Study consumer wants and needs. You can no longer sell whatever you can make. You can only sell what someone specifically wants to buy.

Forget price. Understand consumers’ costs to satisfy their wants or needs.

Forget place. Think convenience to buy. Finally,

Forget promotion. The word is communication.”

Lauterborn’s approach isn’t a marketing fad. It’s a fundamental shift in management philosophy and practice, primarily in response to dramatic changes in how people decide to purchase. So, while the product or service is an essential ingredient, it’s pointless without a customer. Pricing affects profits, but only to the extent that the customer will buy at your price points. Therefore, your pricing needs to consider cost recovery as well as the customer’s intellectual, emotional, and sensate response to paying the sales price.

With the Internet and increased competition, availability of comparable products and services is infinite. How convenient do you make it for customers to acquire your products or services? Are your publications available on your Web site, at your annual meeting, and from other sources?

Fifty years ago, mass marketing worked. Promotion focused on mass distribution of the same message. Since then, consumers have grown up in a culture pervaded with media. Today, old and young alike are inundated with advertising messages. Like any long-term relationship, two-way communication is essential. In today’s economy, it’s too easy for customers to take their dollars elsewhere.

Successful marketing is not a random phenomenon. People who consistently win aren’t lucky; they make it happen. In addition to being creative, strategic marketing requires you to be:

Analytical. You must find, face, and act on the facts and logical assumptions of the market environment; target audience; available budget; and other opportunities, limitations, and resources that converge to form your organization’s present reality. You’ll also need to experiment and embrace the lessons learned from each success and failure.

Collaborative. Marketing is an integrated business discipline that affects and requires input from every area of your organization. You cannot do effective marketing alone. Whether your organization operates a centralized or decentralized marketing department, those responsible for the marketing function need the wisdom, resources, and cooperation of all stakeholders—especially co-workers, service providers, strategic partners, and customers—to accomplish the organization’s goals. Collaboration and open communication ensure credibility and buy-in from your colleagues.

Curious. Effective marketing requires a wholesome, eager desire to learn and be informed by customers, competitors, market opportunities, new strategies, successes, and failures. It asks you to consistently strive for a 360-degree view of a moving target, to observe as an enthusiast in the bleachers, a coach along the sidelines, a player on the bench, a reporter in the media box, a fan tuning in for the play-by-play, and a team player who scores the winning goal.

Flexible. As markets evolve, you need to meet your customers where they live, work, and play. As products and services age, you need to redesign, repackage, or retire. When operations break down, you need to adjust people and priorities. You need to bend—and even contort—without breaking. Sometimes that means going with the flow. Sometimes that means interrupting and redirecting the flow. Other times that means turning a program upside down for a new perspective. However you and your organization choose to achieve it, flexibility is essential.

Committed. It takes time and constancy to nurture and sustain profitable relationships with prospects and customers. Big goals require sustained, collaborative action, and most strategic marketing initiatives demand more than 12 months to mature and become fully productive. You must think and act in the long term while reaching short-term milestones that consistently move the organization toward a desired future.