Everyone on this site will surely know the “4 P’s of marketing”:http://marketing.about.com/od/marketingplanandstrategy/a/marketingmix.htm. I must come clean, I have a favorite P. It’s Price. I’ve always been a secret admirer of the pricing strategies of companies, even before I got into marketing myself. I can’t understand anyone not admiring the genius of the “Buy One, Get the Second Half Price!” offer.
An accountant would say that this is just a marketing trick and that it would be more honest just to say “Get 25% off this item but only if you buy 2 of them”. That’s why there are no accountants in marketing. The strategy is to create extra demand for a product that you already have a qualified customer for at the till. For every customer who you get in the door interested in the sale item, you double the speed of your inventory movement. It’s genius. Then, of course, there is the Walmart approach of constantly rotating in-store price discounts. This strategy encourages frequency and loyalty in shopping behaviour and I would guess also increases the total amount of time spent in store.
Comparing these pricing innovations in the offline world with pricing online demonstrates the maturation process still needed in online marketing.
Let’s take one of the biggest and most successful online retail sales sites as an example, “iTunes”:http://www.apple.com/itunes/. Don’t get me wrong, I love iTunes for its simplicity of use and its vision of creating music “experiences” for customers. Further, at a billion paid downloads and growing, it’s tough to argue that they need a whole lot of coaching from me. That said, I would suggest that their current pricing practices reflect their existing dominance in the music download space (78%, I heard). I would predict that as new entrants increase their own market share, iTunes will naturally have to look at maturing its pricing practices to compete.
So what does iTunes do with pricing that so violates my sacred and favorite “P”?
Category: Michael Garrity
I’ve heard it said that good marketing, like good politics, is made good by getting personal. Good marketing touches people in a personal way, engages them and aligns a brand message with their life.
That’s why as a marketer, I was so impressed that Samuel L Jackson called me personally to invite me to see his new film, “Snakes on a Plane”:http://snakesonaplane.com/. I mean, right out of the blue, Samuel just called me up and then sent me a voice-based email to invite me to get out to see this new film, “Snakes on a Plane”:http://snakesonaplane.com/.
You wouldn’t believe it, but he asked for me by name, told me which of my friends had referred him to me and even, in his endearingly gruff way, told me to “stop marketing things that nobody wants” and to “get out of the gym” so I could see his new film, “Snakes on a Plane”:http://snakesonaplane.com/. It’s incredible that he knew what I did for a living and that I like to exercise.
Sure, the conversation was pretty one-sided and he had to get off the line before I really had a chance to ask him any questions. But the fact that he, Samuel L Jackson, called me personally to get me to see his film, “Snakes on a Plane”:http://snakesonaplane.com/, well, how could I refuse? Sure, the film looks over-hyped, low budget and poorly acted but Samuel took the time to call me personally and that’s what matters, isn’t it?
I really love the transformative and disruptive qualities of the Internet. Again yesterday I was reminded of how significant the impacts of this creation will be when I met “a company”:http://www.icmgroupltd.com/ that is transforming the traditional and downright irritating industry of paper flyers.
Think about it. You come home every day to see your mailbox overflowing with flyers stuffed there haphazardly by the local flyer kid. Easily ninety percent of it is not relevant and even within the ten percent that may be, only half of that has any immediate actionable value. Then what? You cut them out and pin them up somewhere until you can go to the store in question. It all seems very inefficient and wasteful, an industry ripe for disruption.
Enter said new company, “ICM Group”:http://www.icmgroupltd.com/.
They are approaching all of these flyer producers and telling them that “their technology”:http://www.icmgroupltd.com/pages/services/service_con.htm will take the same print file that they would send to the print shop and break it down into data and graphic elements, create a data table, and then dynamically create a flyer website. Presto! With no extra work, the flyer company has the beginnings of an online strategy.
But wait, there’s more. Because said company has now turned the paper flyer into data, the consumer can now actually sort or search through what they want and act on the flyer offer by clicking on an item of interest to find out more or take action. Who knows, some people might even be willing to build a changeable profile of their interests which could be mapped to offers and alerts. Whammo! You have instant e-commerce.
But wait, we are not done yet.