The Main Reasons Products Fail
Nearly 4 out of 5 new services or products started in any given year will fail within three years of the start date. Lack of good Marketing is a main reason why these failures occur. Marketing’s goal is to connect a company’s services and products to customers. The point of a Marketing plan is to:
- Research to discover if a profitable market exists.
- Develop a pricing model that includes the lowest possible cost and sell at the highest price to generate a profit.
- Identify the ideal customers and the best way to approach them.
- Develop ways a company can use its current resources to promote its products and services.
Marketing is a complex process because it starts with the service or product and ends with a unique message to the customer that causes them to respond.
In order for a Marketing Strategy to succeed in achieving its goals, it coordinates a product, place, promotion and price.
- Product or service includes features such as quality.
- Place indicates distribution channels and access.
- Promotion includes advertising, web site, direct mail, special events and lead generation.
- Price is established based on competitive research, profit and volume goals.
Before a company can solidify its product, place, promotion and price it must understand the market itself. The research strategy to accomplish this includes:
- Surveying customer unmet needs and segmentation.
- Uncovering the company’s required skills and production capabilities.
- Understanding the competitors’ strengths, pricing and marketing strategy.
- Finding collaborations, wholesalers, retailers, suppliers and any sources to obtain referrals in joint sales opportunities.
- Documenting the right context or positioning to establish a perception of values.
The main purpose of an effective Marketing strategy is to create a schedule of tactics that bring the seller and buyer together over many years of sustainable growth.
In order to accomplish its goal, Marketing must create sustainable value. This is accomplished by innovative ways of developing and selling unique combinations of products and services managed in such a way that the company gains loyal customers. Sometimes this is simply presenting its prospects with newer versions of product and service combinations that keep customers interested. This means responding to ever increasing changes in technology and the environment. This is achieved by understanding purchase patterns, demographics and perceptions. This also requires beating the competition in every aspect of value.
Key tactics include creating blogs, white papers, direct mail, segmenting industry type markets, messages and information that raises awareness and keep your company at the top of mind until they are ready to buy.
Come back for our next blog as we delve into those key tactics in more detail.
