I was on vacation last week and had the absolute time of my life. Now I know this blog is not about my vacation. The reason I mention it is that while there, I ran into one of the most targeted marketing operations I've ever seen (and I've seen many). This got me thinking about marketing and how it's the fulcrum upon which strategy turns. So, this month, I will talk about marketing.The marketing operation I encountered was genius in its simplicity. The product these folks were hawking was time shares. And while the prevailing school of thought would have you believe that the way to market is to sell something (a dream) as attainable to people (that don't have it yet), these folks were selling vacations to?-yes!-people on vacation! Their logic? The people on vacation are the ones most likely to want to vacation again ergo purchase time shares. Now I'll admit from the outset that I don't really know much about time shares and can not say one way or the other whether they are a good investment. However despite my scepticism these folks got me to sit through a two hour marketing presentation. How do they do that? By offering a free show which would typically go for about $200. So, for a $200 value, they get to book two hours of your time. Which, like that Visa commercial says, is "priceless! A company can have the best strategy in place and execute it to a t. All that is for nought however, if the customers are not getting "marketed" to about the great product on offer. And since advertising of the mass kind is prohibitively expensive for all but the biggest companies out there, it behoves firms to ensure that whatever marketing dollars they are spending hits not the widest audience possible (cost) but the widest "targeted" audience possible (cost effective). Which is where strategy comes into play. When a company works on a strategic plan, it should be cognisant always of the cost it takes to sell the end product and which in turn should influence the strategy. If I have a product that is easily recognisable in the market and decide to change that product in some way, I should recognise that the "new" product, albeit better, will still require more marketing resources to attain comparable sales. Thus, depending on a company's financial health, it may be better to stick with a tried and tested product unless the resources exist for the additional marketing necessary for the new product.
