Situational Marketing (1)

Without any doubt, the business of marketing forms the bed-rock of any budding establishment. You will agree with me that every business rises and falls on its position and reputation in the marketplace. I have closely observed how a number of companies (and individuals) make frantic efforts to sell their product-services in the marketplace, and they use several procedures to achieve this purpose. While some succeed, some others don’t. And I’d wonder how we can better approach this marketing business and make it a little bit easier, and also create a win-win proposition for all the parties involved in the matter.

We wouldn’t neglect the fact that there shouldn’t be one way of marketing a given product-service. It’s perceived that the more of them you have and, the better for you and your product-service, and the better you might possibly edge-out the competition. After all, different buyers have peculiar things that motivate them to buy, and you may not know the one that would work.

However, there should be a company’s primary channel of marketing its offerings to its target market for maximum returns. It’s not every enterprise that may have the resources to integrate all the known marketing mix (wherever it’s necessary). It’s on this ground that I am compelled to put down this piece of work, and it’s based on some of my market and marketing experiences.

Let me begin by asking us this question: what do you consider as the best form of marketing? I’m sure that there would be several answers as there are diverse marketing situations. The hyper-competition in the market arena is not helping issues either; every business outfit wants to dominate the market. This has made countless companies and individuals to be under pressure, spending so much money to get their product-services across to the presumed-buyers. Sadly as it may appear, many of these wonderful product-services barely reach the ultimate end-users quite effectively.

It also gives me much concern whenever I see establishments spend millions in marketing campaigns – in advert, radio jingles, TV commercials, bill-boards, and what have you. And I’d question if they do recover from some of these crazy ,and somewhat extravagant expenses. Well some of them could be justifiable but my reservation is, how much do they get in return after all, since some of them don’t rationalise the investment made. In business, it’s not how much you spend but how much you make.

Research has it that more money is practically wasted in marketing than in any other human activity (outside government). That’s crazily amazing! If companies have discovered better ways of reaching their target market, they’d spend pretty less, rather than do what look more like trial and error.

Obviously, some of what certain organisations do is more or less counter-productive, and occasionally may fail to appeal to those at the receiving end. For instance, some companies spend millions of naira to interrupt people with ads they don’t want and with product-services that they don’t need. Or another that mounts bill-boards across the streets that passers-by are blind to. Quite a number of these things rarely work nowadays. Remember, you are not the only one bombarding the buyers’ brains, in the name of marketing!

Nevertheless, writing off all marketing expenditures because most of the time they don’t work isn’t the right answer, either. There must be a way out of this marketing-maze. I sampled the opinions of buyers of some of the things being marketed through several means before coming up with this article. So, I’d be taking it from the consumers’ point of view, and I think every good business or marketing executive should take this very seriously in developing their subsequent marketing plans. In the market place, it’s not what you think that matters but what the people think and do about what you are giving to them. That is why someone warned, ‘Marketing is so basic that it cannot be considered a separate function. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from customer’s point of view.’
In my own opinion, unless organisations find a more cost-effective way to get their product-services to their primary consumers, their businesses are certainly endangered. Marketing must be contextual for it to deliver the desired result. I see it as a whole work of art and science, (except that one wants to trail behind in the marketplace).

The buyers of these product-services are getting busier each passing day. They barely have time for any product-service, especially new ones, and so give small room in their over-crowded-media-hyped brains for few (known product-services). Therefore, anyone who must grab an appreciable market-shared must adopt a strategic means to register their presence in the business arena. (It’s difficult to sell to a man who isn’t interested to either look or listen).

Marketing, indeed, is abroad discipline, and its environment is so dynamic that anything can happen. And each day provides us with what works, and what does not work. It now makes sense to me when Dina El Tabey, a marketing guru remarked that, ‘Marketing is about continually trying new ideas and refining ideas’.

You can’t do today what created marketing buzz yesterday, because there’s no way that’s going to create more buzz today. Peter F. Drucker suggested that, ‘Crises in organisations occur because the assumptions on which the organisation has been built and is being run no longer fit reality; an organisation’s survival lies in its ability to learn and adapt quickly. Plans must be altered at the very time they are implemented’. I think this is mostly true in our present marketing circumstance.

On a more practical note, my team developed a marketing strategy for certain business establishment some time ago. Initially, they were scares at our approach, which was unconventional (but it’s the approach that suit the occasion). Nonetheless, at the end the outfit were so amazed at the result. Interestingly, they saved good money! What’s my point? The game of marketing must fit the present realities for it to deliver what you want. People might doubt the process but not the result.

A man said, ‘Marketing changes its focus from equilibrium management (why and how markets settle own) to disequilibrium management (why and how markets are constantly changing through the development of competitive products and production processes)’. Every business day opens us up to other sides of marketing or the market that we possibly may not have thought of before now. I am sure you will agree with that. So, let you action show your conviction.

There are several marketing approaches. And each marketing communication has got its advantages as well as slight disadvantage, or better still limitations. Not every product-service would, or rather should be marketed by advert or radio/ TV commercials. Neither is it wisdom to market some others solely by word-of-mouth, bill-boards or even online. What is most important is whether your method is suitable for the current market situation, and also if it is actually reaching your intended market. How do we determine the one that works? That is, the one reaches our target buyers. We would try to look at that in the next issue.


Tony Ajah is a highly consulted business growth strategist, and the Principal Strategist, TA Strategic Solutions, a Lagos-based firm that is into business growth and development. tony@ta-strategies.com ajahxt@yahoo.co.uk 01 958 7802