Essentially, the marketing objectives of any company is expected to include the following:
- Increase sales: here, we are all out to ensuring that sales increase, so that we can continue in business and make our shareholders to be happy by getting returns on their investment.
- Build brand awareness: for the company to actually increase sales, there is utmost need to create awareness around the brand. The brand must be widely known. So, building brand awareness is very paramount to us at CBC EMEA limited.
- Grow market share: growing our market share is very key. The percentage of our total sales in the industry must increase to become what is respected across the industry year on year. We are set out to achieve this very goal.
- Launch new products or services: another goal our marketing team is saddled with is the importance of launching new products or services, in order to remain competitive and relevant in the industry, at the same time increasing sales with the launch of new product offerings.
- Target new customers: part of launching new products is to target new customers. For us to still be in business and at the same time relevant, there is the utmost need to keep targeting new customers and winning new businesses, thereby increasing our customer base.
- Enter new markets internationally or locally: it is also our intention and goal to enter new markets both locally and internationally.
- Improve stakeholder relations: improving stakeholder relations is very key. This is the reason we work hard to increase sales so that every stakeholder in the business will be happy for their investment.
- Enhance customer relationships: customer relationship is very key. Building a formidable customer relationship enhances business opportunities from existing customers. We also get good referrals from such relationships.
The Ps of marketing include not in a particular order, promotion, price, product, and place. The afore mentioned Ps are the key elements that must be used together in order to effectively ensure that the brand’s unique value is promoted so that it stands out in the midst of competition.
There is the need to understand the uniqueness of these Ps of marketing. We shall endeavor to look briefly at the Ps and highlight the application to our marketing objectives at CBC.
Product: A product is any item that brings about satisfaction when it is introduced or sold to a customer. It can be anything ranging from goods or services such as tangible (what can be felt) or intangible (what we cannot feel but can be accessed). Examples are sales of physical servers and storages (tangible) and sales of internet services (intangible).
Marketers are expected to have a very clear understanding of their products and services, which should stand them out in the midst of competition, so that they can successfully market such products or services. Hence, at CBC, we ensure that the knowledge of our product line is key so as to stand above competition and ensure that our customers are getting value for the product offerings from us.
As marketers of our various products, we need to understand what our customers want from our product or service, and whether our products or services meet their requirement. We must understand what particular is the customer’s need, and if our product can meet such need(s). There is also the need to know whether the customer where the client will need the product or service and how it will be experienced.
Price: this particular P is one of the most important of the Ps of marketing. Price is actually the value placed on our products and services before our customers. Pricing involves both market data, careful calculations, and considerations, as well as balancing between pricing that is too high or too low and understanding how skewing either way might damage the brand. At CBC, having a good understanding of our customer base and the terrain in which business is done, we are very mindful of the way we set the price of our goods and services.
Here at CBC, because of the afore mentioned statement, our marketers consider some key questions and try as much as possible to proffer objective answers to such questions before fixing prices on our goods and services:
- What value does our buyers see in our products or services?
- How are we going to determine our price so that it can compete with competition?
- Do we have an already established price for our products or services in our proposed area?
Place: the next P we are looking at is “place”. Place here refers to the specific place where we provide our customers access to our products or services in a convenient manner. They must be given an easy access to where they can find our products or services. At CBC, our marketers as the following questions in other to ensure we are doing the right thing so as to get the right result:
- Where can we find our target customers frequent shopping activities?
- What devices are they using for their online shopping?
- Are they shopping more in a physical shop or online?
- What particular places do they visit on social media?
In this era of internet explosion, the afore mentioned is taken into serious consideration.
Promotion: how do we make the audience or intended customers aware of our product or services? Going by the way the marketing Ps are structured, promotion actually is all about marketing communications. It talks about the processes by which our goods and services are taking outside there so that it can reach the target audience or customers. It is about the channels used to enlighten the general public; these channels could be advertising, direct marketing, sales promotion, email sensitization, social media marketing, or sales promotion.
Promotion happens to be the area that has seen the greatest growth and change as a result of the digital age.
Some key questions that our marketers need to answer include:
- The way and manner to reach the target customers?
- Where do we visit to share our sales and marketing awareness to our target customers?
- What is the modus operandi of our target competition and how does would this affect our intended promotional plan.
- What time is the best for us to reel out our promotion?
The knowledge of the afore mentioned questions go a long way to actualizing our goals in marketing our products and services at CBC.
Conclusively, the Ps of marketing can be used to decide the best way to promote any new product or services during go-to-market strategy. It helps to test our marketing strategy to a great deal. By ensuring we follow the processes mapped out by the Ps of marketing, and using same in the framework of the digital transformation, marketers can be rest assured that they will be successful no matter the circumstances surrounding the market and competition.
Andrew Omeike
#MEMBA 11
