Give a New Angle to Your SME Marketing Mix This Financial Year
With the advent of the new financial year, it’s time to analyze your marketing design and bring in some fresh thinking to reframe your marketing mix. For decades together, the traditional 4Ps have ruled the marketing space, with a bit of modification in the nineties, when the 7Ps concept was conceived by business schools. At that time, Physical Presence, People and Process started accompanying the original Place, Promotion, Product and Price.
However, as time passed and digital technology made its entry into the marketing scene with the customer gaining more and more focus, the 4Ps have become almost next to obsolete. At present, a new marketing model is doing the rounds. It is called S.A.V.E, the letters denoting Solution, Access, Value and Education respectively. Contrary to the 4Ps, it considers the modern scenario along with the manner in which customers want to experience brands and communicate.
Application of the S.A.V.E Concept to Your Business
Bring in the S.A.V.E marketing mix to your business and witness your business as well as your consumers develop a new mindset. Here’s how to go about it.
Solution
A number of organizations are replacing the product-centric approach with the solution-centric one. This implies that the organization is focusing more on catering to the consumers’ needs and solving their problems.
For instance, if your business deals with letterbox distribution in Sydney, you should focus on the benefits that your clients will get in availing your service rather than concentrating on the features of your service.
Access
Smartphones have made people capable of conveniently accessing product or service data along with comparison details, without any time or place constraints. Given this, the concept of Place as in the original 4Ps, is no longer applicable.
Access as become the talk of the day. This means that your business should have the power to offer the customers what they need and when they need it. Your physical store might close at night, but if you possess an ecommerce store, your customers might go on a midnight shopping spree.
Value
The new focus is not on price but on value. In the present scenario, customers are bombarded with a lot of information, so being priced-focused does not have much of an advantage. It is the business value which creates more interest.
You may promote cheap printing in Sydney but it must be accompanied by a value proposition. Remember that for consumers value comes first and then comes the price.
Education
Television, radio and press were the only communication channels when the initial 4Ps were introduced. Moreover, the promotion push was solely directed towards the consumers. But currently, there are a number of communication channels, out of which several are two-way.
Customers read, hear and see lots of information in line with their needs. They can also have real-time interaction with companies, more so with the proliferation of social media platforms. This enables companies to educate the consumers and obtain their trust much prior to the actual product or service is availed.
