
Once you've done some work on understanding who your customers are, you can then think about how you are going to tailor your service or product to meet the needs of your customers. In other words, you can develop your marketing mix - a unique blend of:
Product
Price
Promotion &
Place
These are often called the 4 P's of Marketing.
Basically, the 4 P's represent the things that you are in control of, and can vary, in order to best meet the needs of your customers. In our Monkey Business workshop, we take the example of car insurance company Sheilas' Wheels to demonstrate how you can develop a strong marketing mix. Here's a brief outline of what we think Sheilas Wheels' marketing mix is:
Product (or service): Their product (car insurance) is aimed specifically at women. They have tailored their product supposedly to meet the needs of women drivers. For example, their policy includes handbag cover - in place of the standard contents insurance. The rationale is that women carry more valuables in their handbags (which may be left on the back seat) than a man does in his wallet.
Price: They reckon that because they only insure women, (who are safer drivers than men) that their insurance is cheaper than that provided by other companies. It's an interesting proposal, which is backed up to a certain extent by evidence. They offer a 10% discount if you buy online. Other things to think about when considering your price include how people can pay you - eg in instalments/up front/with 30 days credit.
Promotion: Sheilas' Wheels has a very strong brand backed up by a vigorous promotional campaign, with lots of TV, radio and magazine advertising - obviously targeted at publications and programmes which women are likely to watch. They've also cleverly aligned themselves with women through PR exercises around the dangers of identity theft from handbags and sponsorship of a women's stand-up comedy event on International Women's Day.
Place: this is about where you choose to sell. Sheilas' Wheels promote their product as being primarily available online - and offer a discount for online sales. Clearly, their target market - car-owning women of working age - will be regular internet users. If they were targetting a customer group who were not heavy internet users (for example the over-75s), they may need to find another way to sell their product, for example through high-street brokers.
So, it's worth thinking about how to tailor your marketing mix to meet the needs of your customers. You won't have the resources that the owners of Sheilas' Wheels, HBOS, have, but the principles are the same. To help you, we've come up with a monkey-nutshell marketing plan, which we'll look at next.
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