 PLACE
(i) Finding Your Product/Service It may seem like a simple point, but can your potential customers find your product or service to buy it? Making your product available in the right locations is a key part of marketing your business. Do you want your product to be sold only through your business (E.g.: If you deal with specialist requirements), do you want it to be sold through selected approved retailers, or through every possible outlet? You need to look at where your products/services are currently sold, and whether you need to make it available in more/less locations.
Part of this process involves looking at how your products are sold. Do you sell directly to your customers, or do you use an agent or warehouse for distribution. You should look at how effective your current setup is, and look at ways of maximising sales and availability.
Example Objective: “Within a year, our product should be available in at least 100 more outlets in the UK.”
PRODUCT
(i) Unique Selling Points
Most products have a unique selling point; this is a feature, branding, price, or other attribute that is the most attractive to consumers.
You need to look and try to work out what the USP’s of your products and services are. You can then look at how to maximise the benefit of the USP to your business.
By knowing the key selling points of your product in detail, it will help to make all of your marketing more focused and effective.
Example Objective: “Customers feel our value for money is our USP, we should try to keep providing good value for money at all times over the coming year.”
(ii) Cooperative Sales
Are all your products independent, or do the sales of one affect others? (E.g.: Sales of shavers increase sales of shaver blades, or do sales of your cheap item lower sales of your more expensive item).
You need to look at your products and work out the most effective way of selling each product. This could involve ideas such as; altering the marketing of one or more products, or advertising a product at the point of sale of another.
Example Objective: “Advertise our shaver blades as people buy the shaver, with the aim of making sure one in four customers purchases extra blades at the same time.”
(iii) Choice/Seasonality
Are your products sold on a seasonal basis? (E.g.: Xmas goods, certain fruits and vegetables) If so, are you making the most of your opportunities?
You should look at when sales are lower, and whether there are ways to increase sales, or whether there are alternative products you can market instead. You could even look at altering a product to make it more attractive during low sales times. (E.g.: Taking a Xmas product, and changing the exterior to create a Birthday product which has a more even demand over the year).
Example Objective: “Introduce a new or altered product to market during the months where our current product has little demand, with the aim of gaining 30% of the main products sales each non-peak month.”
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