Trying to come to grips with marketing is a tough ask. Trying to explain it through a short blog is even tougher.
So I will start by using a simple list of areas which marketing is made up of –
Understanding marketing & brand strategy & positioning
Areas of market research & NPD
Knowledge of ATL & BTL support systems
Having a view on business performance
Understanding sales and channel systems
Well, to start with a few basic definitions. This note will include talk about marketing strategy etc. So what are each of these areas really? Well, it all starts right at the top for any business. Assume a business which already owns a set of brands in a category. A fundamental question for such a business is –
How big do I want to be in 10 years time?
Say, I want my business to be 400 crores by 2010 – This is called the Business Objective.
This giant leap of faith is followed by another critical set of questions –
How are we going to get there? – Defining this is called business strategy. So our categories of business will be X.Y,Z. Our production strategy will be A,B,C. The type of people we hire will be P,Q,R. Our pricing for the products will be M,N,O etc.
Having defined the business objectives and business strategy – we come to another critical set of questions – how much will we sell and to whom? This is called the marketing objective for the company. Again with a 3-5 year horizon.
Now, given that I know what brands I already have, how much can I get from each of my brands over the next 3-5 years. Will I need to extend them into other categories, variants, consumer segments to be able to achieve my marketing objective? Will I need to launch new brands? All of this constitutes your marketing strategy.
And then each brand develops a brand strategy or an annual brand plan to achieve its task defined by the marketing strategy.
So the flow is
Business Objective -> Business Strategy -> Marketing objective -> Marketing strategy -> Brand strategy for each brand in the portfolio.
Understanding marketing & brand strategy & positioning
This area constitutes the following
1. Consumer understanding
2. Segmentation & targeting
3. Brand positioning
4. Equity management
5. Marketing strategy - Annual brand plan
Essentially, all these areas are linked up as well. You start with consumer understanding, you then segment the market along a critical parameter discovered through consumer understanding. You then follow it up by targeting the appropriate segments for your products by positioning yourself in a relevant, unique and compelling manner. You then maintain and manage this brand positioning which is called equity management here. And all of this is called your marketing strategy by the press.
So, lets start with the first area called consumer understanding. There are three different aspects to this itself.
1. Consumer Trends – Broad macro trends which influence consumers
2. Consumer understanding – Identifying and understanding consumer behaviours
3. Consumer insights – Identifying and understanding consumer attitudes
Consumer trends involve understanding the social, cultural, political, economic, technological & demographic developments which could change consumer behaviour and attitudes.
Consumer understanding involves understanding consumer behaviour by answering the what, when, where, & how across two areas
1. Understanding the consumer outside the category
a. What, where, when, how - Identifying behaviours - Consumer trends
i. Trends may be useful in creating new products, new advtg, new packaging, new sales opportunities, new retail experiences etc.
2. Understanding the consumer within the category
a. Consumer understanding – Understanding consumer behaviours
i. Who – Consumer identity, consumer profile
Consumer identity
Who is the consumer, decision maker, buyer
2. Consumer profile
Demographic, psychographic, product usage
What – Consumer needs
Needs again are functional, emotional & obvious, emerging, latent. Needs are then mapped on Importance of needs & Level of satisfaction with needs.This helps us identify need gaps. Understand brand perceptions around needs – helps us map competitors to need gaps – important to understand what consumers mean when they say what they say.
When, where, how – Consumer activity cycle
Consumer insight, on the other hand is about understanding consumer attitudes by asking the why behind consumer understanding. Consumer insights which can come from both within and without the category and within these two broad heads, any of the above areas can be a source of consumer insight.
Right so all of this analysis should provide us with adequate methods to segment and target our market which is the next step.
Segmentation & Targeting
Again, this has various steps
1. Define the market – Alcohol Beverage market
2. Define the market you want to target – Target Market – Beer
3. Define the segments within this target market – Product preference
4. Select the segments you want to target called target segments – Males with strong beer
5. Provide an inspirational description of your target consumer – your most demanding consumer
You then go ahead and understand the consumers in your chosen segments in greater detail. Having identified these consumers and their needs, you move to the next step – brand positioning.
Brand Positioning
A brand positioning is your target consumer’s reason to purchase your brand in preference to others. It depends on two things
1. What position you want to occupy with your target consumer?
2. What positions do your competitors hold with your target consumer?
It involves developing two things
1. A competitor audit
2. A brand positioning statement for the brand.
3. A brand map for the brand.
4. Perceptual shifts
A competitor audit is the activity where we see how others are already positioned in the market. Ideally we would like a positioning which is relevant, unique and compelling.
How would a target consumer describe the brand to a friend describing the reason for purchase is called the brand positioning statement – for example, Only Haywards provides me with a full bodied drink blah blah because it is blah blah.
A brand map is a mandatory brand planning tool. This one single document captures the essence of the brand and should ideally be followed as a guide for any brand activity. All the aspects are explained within the template. As an example the key insight for Haywards could be – “Men are socially competitive animals who like to demonstrate being in control”.
Any change in positioning is based upon changes in current consumers/expected changes in current consumers or very large segments which are not part of current target segments but we would like to target them. These are called perceptual shifts. In this case, we develop a current brand map and a new ideal brand map to see if what we want to do is really possible.
Right, so having understood the consumers, segmented and defined your consumers, developed brand tools for your brand we now go on to the next step. Ensuring that we continue to manage and maintain what we create. This step is called equity management.
Equity Management
Brand Equity is a set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand that add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service, to a firm or to the firm’s customers
This involves strengthening aspects you wish to strengthen and helps make brand extension/portfolio rationalization decisions.
The steps involved here are
1. Building brand equity
a. Building the brand – brand map
2. Understanding brand equity
a. Understanding the key values of the brand - Identifiers, Usage occasions, Benefits, Image
b. Deciding which key values to strengthen
3. Tracking brand equity
a. Tracking key values for the brand such as – brand equity track
i. Turnover
ii. Market share
iii. Distribution
iv. Awareness
v. Penetration
vi. Loyalty
vii. Brand values
4. Leveraging brand equity
a. Decide on brand architecture
i. Corporate brand – when the brand and the company are one thing
ii. Multi brand – different value, different consumer, different or same category
iii. Brand extension – same value, same target consumer, different category
iv. Sub brand – same value, different target consumer, same category
v. Variant – different value, same target consumer, same category
Annual Brand Plan
So finally, having understood the environment (consumer trends), your segments, and your brands and devising a plan for managing your equity, you put it all into one document.
Essentially, you need to develop, enhance or maintain your brand’s positioning to achieve your growth plans. You can do this by manipulating the 8 Ps
1. Positioning
2. Product
3. Price
4. Promotion
5. Place
6. Physical evidence
7. People
8. Processes
You list out what you want to do and what you will do across these 8 drivers to achieve your objectives.
And thats that folks!!!
