So why am I writing about quality street and marketing? I guess many of us will have the odd chocolate treat around to tempt us and indulge our sweet tooth over the Christmas break.
The quality street tin is synonymous with Christmas in our house. It can also be a real battle to find your favourite sweet first, before they all disappear. My favourite is the purple hazelnut in caramel.
There is a good variety in the tin, some hard, some soft, some gooey, some with different textures. The colour palette is also varied, and some people just choose their favourite colour when offered a sweet. At times with no real knowledge of the content or flavour.
It occurred to me that this is quite similar to the marketing mix.
One thing isn’t enough, and just like the “purple one” I don’t want to eat it all the time. Sometimes I like the caramel cup and the hazelnut triangle too.
On the shelves in the stores, you often see specific boxes with just one sweet in. However, the good old variety mix still beats all the statistics on total sales for Nestle.
Which is why I constantly recommend to my clients to that carrying out a single marketing activity just isn’t enough.
Consumers, people from all walks of life, no matter what they do or where they are from, are all different, and we all like to consume our content in different ways.
Marketing definition
The Marketing mix has been defined by the guru of marketing Philip Kotler as
“The mixture of controllable marketing variables that the business uses to purse the sought level of sales in the target market.”
Knowing what marketing works in your business
However, the biggest challenge is knowing WHICH marketing variables work for YOUR business.
There is no definitive answer or ‘secret formula’ for any business.
Marketing is all about testing, analysing, re-testing and continuous development of the available marketing channels, outputs and collateral.
The four Ps
The marketing mix is made up of the four P’s – Product, Price, Place and Promotion – and was created in the 1960s by the expert E Jerome McCarthy.
The right marketing mix should work well together, and each component of the mix should complement the rest. For example, the right price will be attributed to the right product placed in the desired market.
Conclusion
This isn’t an article aiming to teach you about the four P’s, so if you need more detail, please refer to some good references such as the Chartered Institute of Marketing.
What this article is trying to embrace is that your marketing shouldn’t be about one or two elements. Just like the quality street tin, it is all about variety.
Understanding who your target audience is, what issue your product or solution solves, where your target audience look for their information, how they want to disseminate that information, what price they are willing to pay etc. is key to getting the mix right for your business.
Remember – the ‘purple ones’ are great; but taken alone they become boring and get left on the shelf. The overall mix is tastier, more exciting to look at and achieves a stronger sales result.
Here’s to the mix!
Please do get in touch if you would like to discuss your marketing requirements.
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