The Life Cycle of a Mediocre Product

"You marketers," a friend of mine angrily said to me the other day, "need to give those of us that actually produce something a break!"

She was upset, but not really at me.  It turns out that a manager where she worked had made a comment that quality marketing (I'm sure he was referring to promotions) could take the place of quality product.  He indicated that the organization didn't need to put out a high quality (in his mind more expensive) product.  He suggested that they could still get customers with high quality promotions.  Customers, according to the erroneous manager, can't tell a good product from a bad one!

After I quickly explained to her that product WAS a part of marketing, I cautiously told my friend that the object of her scorn was right.  Marketing CAN generate sales with a poor product or service.  But only for one or two business cycles.

Often times, customers have no reasonable way to assess the quality of what they are buying until they buy it.  This is particularly true with services.  Usually, the customer who doesn't have past experience has to rely on word of mouth and the trustworthiness of the marketer.  If I am planning on hiring a neighbor kid to mow my lawn, unless she has mowed it before, or I have seen her work on other lawns, I have only her reputation to guide my decision.  After she has mowed my lawn once, I have a lot more information to inform future buying decisions.

I suggested to my friend that she only needed to wait out the object of her ire for a short while.  Mediocre products, after all, tend to have very short life cycles.  So do managers who eschew quality products.

Related articles

• $32.75 on a Lemonade Stand????

The Many P's of Marketing: Perspective

Marketing has gotten more and more nuanced, as new technologies and strategies have opened up many options for marketers.  It is my contention that today, the marketing mix contains much more than the traditional four or five P's that are taught in school.  In this series I am exploring the Many P's of Marketing.

Perspective:  YOU know how many hours, days, weeks and years you spent designing and crafting the product.  YOU know how you sweat every detail so you could deliver the service just so.  YOU know how hard you have worked to design and deliver a solution to the problems or needs of your customers.

So why aren't THEY (your customers) standing in line to buy what you have to offer like its the latest iteration of the iPhone? 

Perhaps it is because from their perspective, you don't have the product, price, packaging or promotion right.  Perhaps it is because from their perspective, you addressed needs they don't have any more, or at least don't care about any more.  Perhaps you haven't looked at your product, and the rest of your marketing P's, from the perspective of your customer.  

Apple does and they stand in line for the iPhone.

The Many P's of Marketing: Packaging

Marketing has gotten more and more nuanced, as new technologies and strategies have opened up many options for marketers.  It is my contention that today, the marketing mix contains much more than the traditional four or five P's that are taught in school.  In this series I am exploring the Many P's of Marketing.

Packaging:  Packaging performs many duties for a product.  It helps to make delivery of the product safe and cost efficient, as in the case of an egg carton.  It can help promote the product and its benefits, as does packaging for laptops and corn flakes.  Packaging can impart value, such as cases of beer that have 30 cans vs. 24, or packaging can imply value, such as the elaborate and fancy packaging that accompanies many bottles of 15 year-old scotch.

Traditionally, packaging was considered part of the product in the marketing mix.  Marketers have recognized, however, that creative packaging can, in fact, can help create new products.  Take, for instance, the Dean's Milk Chug.  Dean's took a product that is essentially a commodity, milk, and through clever packaging, created a very popular, profitable and unique product.  The easy to use, single serving Milk Chugs has created a whole new way for people to use milk.  It helps to make milk competitive with other single serve beverages and snacks.  It has also helped Dean's stand out in comparison to other dairies.

Similarly, "packaging" of a service into something that is available 24/7 or online (or both) helps package a service into a new product option.  The Post Office has done this by allowing companies like Stamps.com sell official US Postal Service approved postage through their service.  It creates a new, convenient option for the ultimate consumer, new or more frequent customers for the US Postal Service, and a possible profit opportunity for the company repackaging official postage.

Packaging is no longer just a way to deliver a product or service to consumers.  Packaging can have a significant role in the value that a product or service imparts to the customer.  Packaging is one of the many P's of marketing.

The Many P's of Marketing: People

Traditional marketing education teaches that the "marketing mix" is made up of four key themes, also known as the Four P's of Marketing.  In recent years, many marketing writers have proposed that the traditional four P's of marketing, Product, Price, Promotion and Place do not reflect the current marketing reality.  As the focus of marketing has taken on more of a relationship bent, a fifth P, People, has often been added the to the traditional concept of the marketing mix.

People:  People are the key to marketing.  People make decisions.  People make purchases.  A marketing effort is an attempt to influence the behavior of...you guessed it...people.

With the introduction of better information about the customer, better communications technology and more sophisticated practitioners and customers, it is not controversial to say that the focus of marketing has shifted from touting a product or service toward building and nurturing relationships.  Relationships are key to a successful marketing effort.  Most successful marketers now focus significantly on developing and maintaining relationships with customers, prospective customers, opinion-makers and staff.

Affinity programs such as frequent-flyer programs are attempts to develop a relationship with the customer. When Netflix makes recommendations for movies you might like based on movies you've watched and rated, they are trying to build value into your relationship with them.  When Ace Hardware or your local coffee shop gives you a discount card or every tenth cup free, they are trying to do the same.

Relationships have become so important that a whole branch of marketing, called relationship marketing, has emerged.  This is where marketers focus primarily on building and nurturing a relationship with a desired customer.  Relationship marketing often takes a long-term view towards towards the profitability of the customer relationship.  I will explore relationship marketing more in a future blog.

The "people" aspect of marketing refers to more than just the customers and prospects that a company works with.  It also refers to the people who deliver the customer service and communications that makes or breaks that precious customer relationship.  As I discussed in my blog on low cost retailers, that you can read here, the people that work on the front lines serving the needs of the customers make a monumental difference in the success or failure of a business.  How many times have you had a complaint or a problem with a company when the "above and beyond" service of one person totally changes your impression of the company.  How the people you employ treat the people you are trying to sell to may be a more significant factor in long term sales than any other element in the marketing mix!

For example, I used to go to a particular dry cleaner.  There was a clerk who worked at this dry cleaner who always knew my name (and phone number) and often had my dry cleaning ready to go before I ever got to the counter.  She always had something pleasant and often funny to say to me, often referring to a previous discussion.  I was definitely NOT a number to this woman but a person.  Furthermore, if I had my daughter with me, she remembered that her favorite candy was Tootsie Rolls and always had a couple for her.  My daughter wouldn't have let me switch from that dry cleaner if I wanted to!  The day that exceptional woman retired was the last day I went to that dry cleaner.

As someone said to me recently, people are often the forgotten element of the marketing mix.  People are, however, essential to good marketing!

The Many P's of Marketing: The Original Four P's

In the 1950's, American Marketing Association President Neil Borden coined the term "marketing mix."  The traditional four P's of Marketing (Product, Price, Promotion and Place) were considered to be the primary components of the marketing mix.  The Four P's of Marketing have been a staple of marketing education since then, although some have added a fifth P, People, to the marketing mix model.  If you have studied marketing in the last 60 years, most likely you have spent time reading about the 4 or 5 P's of Marketing.

It is my contention that these five categories are very broad.  Too broad for today.  With marketers' ability to mass customize their marketing efforts these days, I think we need to pay attention to many more P's of Marketing.  I plan to explore some of the many P's of Marketing over a series of blogs.  I encourage readers to suggest other P's of Marketing.  In this blog, I will briefly discuss the Original Four P's of Marketing.

Product:  Everything starts with the product (or service) that is being marketed.  The nature of the product, its qualities, its faults, its uniqueness, its available options, the demand for it in the market, all impact on how the product is marketed.  All of the features of the product, including how it is produced, its packaging and its performance (3 more P's) impact the impression potential customers will have of a specific product.  It is also impossible to view a product in a vacuum.  How a specific product compares to its competitors is an essential component of marketing.

Price:  Price, simply put, is what the consumer pays to acquire the product or service being marketed.  In reality though, price really refers to the perceived value of that product or service.  The trick of the marketer is to figure out how to maximize a product's profit potential by setting price so that it is just at the point where it meets perceived value.  Econ 101 revisited!

Promotion:  This is what most people think of when they think of marketing.  Promotion refers to the efforts a company or marketer employ to get customers to make a purchase.  This includes advertising and public relations that marketers employ to let prospective customers know about their product and the features and values they want those prospective customers to focus on.  Promotion also traditionally includes the sales function, including direct sales and sales promotion.

Place:  Place refers to where the product can be purchased.  It seems to me that Place is the Original P that has changed the most in the last 60 years.  Physical location of a store or allotment of shelf space matter much less now than they did in the 50's.  With the advent of online sales, even the smallest producer can have a worldwide market available to them.  No longer does the success of a product depend on whether the sales manager is able to negotiate a deal with Sears and Roebuck.  These days, I would include in the Place category elements such as placement on a Google Search list, placing links to your sales website on sites that are popular with your target audience, getting on Pinterst and Facebook, and the like.  I also suspect that if Mr. Borden were introducing his marketing mix concept today, Place may NOT be one of the four P's.


Next blog I will discuss the 5th P, People, and several other P's I think are worth paying attention to.