Marketing: How To

A scenario: Both you and your competitor have the same price, the same swiftness of service and your product/service truly only allows you to focus on the same target market.

When this scenario occurs, businesses are sometimes tempted to lower prices (we here at Sprite Marketing do not condone price-wars). As an alternative, we advise clients to differentiate based on a specialty or niche market.

For example: you are a florist in Portland, Oregon. Your business niche may be better served by specializing in weddings as opposed to spreading all of your marketing dollars and initiatives thinly over several segments. However, it is really only safe to specialty niche when a) the niche market is truly viable (do your research) and 2) you are going to invest the time and money needed to effectively market your business to this particular segment.

But, I am digressing here from my original topic. Let’s say you and your competitor(s) are truly an apples-to-apples comparison. In this situation, companies tend to position their service or product based on quality.

So, how tangible is positioning on quality? As an advocate of any customer centered initiative, we do want to pass on some words of wisdom regarding positioning on quality:

1) As with any positioning statement, all aspects of your business must focus on the positioning statement. Meaning, if you want to sell the idea of quality, your company must truly provide quality.

2) Keep the quality statement customer centered; what do your customers define quality as? Are you administering customer surveys to find out? Are you actively working with your customer representatives and sales team to learn what your customer concerns are? Does your customer base even care about quality?

3) Sell the quality position within your marketing message. OK, this is where we run into some trouble; it’s difficult to prove/describe/illustrate something like quality (if you are not already known for quality; Volvo does not have this problem).

Here are a couple of ways to help solidify your positioning statement within your marketing message:

a) Clearly word your customer centered, quality positioning statement.

b) Offer a guarantee.

c) Provide customer testimonials that reflect your positioning statement

We’d love to hear some more ideas on this topic; please leave a comment.

Cheers,

Sprite Marketing

Are you planning a print buy for a direct mail campaign, business cards or brochures? Before you buy, check out epat.org, the Environmental Paper Assessment Tool. This tool enables you to weigh the social, economic and environmental components and then locate the best paper for your needs.