Strike the right chord with your products, by Ola Emmanuel

When Coca-Cola wanted to celebrate 100 years of a popular product with the introduction of New Coke, it hardly occurred to the company that it was trying to play with a century old formula that had kept it with the general public  as a top brand, notwithstanding giving ground in market shares to other soft drink manufacturers. The introduction of New Coke was like stepping down the formula great multitudes had grown to love; and substituting it with an untested formula. It came out a bad marketing idea; but the executives of the company quickly learned from the mistake, recover in good time to bring back the original time-tested formula.

Dilly-dallying for a longer period might perhaps have thrown the company into a very serious and messier state of affairs.

In defining your market very clearly, you are not only concern about the initial 4-Ps of marketing, the extended 3-Ps are also very fundamental in your marketing plan. Your marketing plan is your strategy on how you want to market your products or services. Embedded in this concept is the quality and other features of your product or service, the appropriate price that a unit of the product or service will be sold (which customers are willing to pay), your product placement or distribution strategy, and the promotion of the product. However, modern marketing has recognized the influence of some other elements that are critical to your business’ market penetration. These are the people (i.e. the human resource working in the business), the process, as well as the physical evidence (what you can call the track record or goodwill or testimony the business has to sway customers to its side). Critical analysis of the marketing elements shows that the first 4-Ps is directly customer-focused while the latter 3-Ps are internal to the business but they significantly impact the first 4-Ps.

Your product is the reason why you are in business. It is what you open your shop or office to sell to customers. When you are thinking about the product to sell, you should bear in mind that you have to offer what customers want to buy. As informed by your market research, you have to think about the features of the product: size, colour, quality, after-sale servicing options, spare parts availability, and container packaging choice. Included in your product is the total presentation that you want customers to see.

The packaging should also take into account the value the product or service offers or the needs it is meant to satisfy for customers. If it is beautifully packaged but it fails to satisfy the yearnings of the customers, you may soon run out of business because the customers will not come back after you have managed to deceive them with the appearance of the product. Though the appearance is also very important  It is the first contact with your product; therefore it should be attractive.

Very close to this is the pricing of your Product or Service. The price is how much you want to sell each unit of your product or service to customers. Your market research should help you find out the appropriate price your would-be customers are willing to pay and if you will be selling on credit or not, and what category of customers will be entitled to credit sales if you want to grant credit facility. Also, in fixing your price you have to think about whether you will be giving discount or not, and who qualifies for discount if you want to give any. You should bear in mind that you can only make profit through the price you fix to sell your product or service. It therefore means that you have to capture all your costs so that you can ascertain the exact cost of each unit of product before you fix appropriate selling price.

. Emmanuel is a business planning and cooperative consultant. He works with a team of international consultants to conceptualise and plan agribusiness and housing projects. As a certified trainer authorised to use the International Labour Organisation’s enterprise development modules, he trains entrepreneurs and organises workshops and seminars for potential and practising entrepreneurs as well as business managers and cooperatives. He also speaks and facilitates at leadership and management workshops on invitation. His book, Business Planning Made Easy: Step by Step Guide On How To Turn Your Idea To Profitable Business’ is the latest of the books authored by him. Tel.: +234(0)9068602954 (call and sms), +234(0)8023257707 (whatsApp only).