Posts

Product Support Marketing: A Guide…#MarketingMonday

/in , , , /by

Let me introduce you to#MarketingMonday.  With the arrival of Learning Without Scars and our embedding the blog in the www.learningwithoutscars.org web site we are kicking off a fresh series of activities. You are by now quite familiar with my Friday Filosophy. Well this is the first of our #MarketingMondays. We will post a new blog each Monday on Marketing.

How many people understand marketing in the Product Support world?

Let me start with a definition of marketing. Marketing is “the selling of products or services – the business activity of presenting products and services in such a way as to make them the primary choice of the customer.” Marketing is basically the selling of products or services.

We should start with the basics of marketing – the 4 Ps:

 

  • Product
  • Place
  • Price
  • Promotion

These are the ABC’s, the fundamentals, the foundation of most of the marketing class work done today. As with most everything in our world the 4 Ps have evolved. Today there is a new approach called SIVA:

 

  • Solution
  • Information
  • Value
  • Access

SIVA is much more customer focused. More recently, there has been an addition to the 4 Ps and now there are 7 Ps as  process, physical environment and people have been included. We will discuss these in more detail over the coming weeks and months.

I want to also address market share. This is the ultimate measure of success in the parts and service world. I will provide you with methods to be able to calculate the market share for parts and service. Not with the precision of capital goods market share, i.e. Boeing plane share, or Freightliner Class 8 share or Chrysler 300 market share, but very accurately.

We will discuss the significance of customer retention, and how we can influence that in our operating world. What influences customer defections, recovery methods, and the strong influence that retention has on the profitability of your business.

We will also cover market coverage methods. The “how to” manuals for setting up personal and telephonic territories. This will also cover compensation methods and options to consider.

In other words, this blog is intended to be able to cover everything and anything about marketing parts and service. I hope you will join me on this voyage.

The time is now.