Question

Dear Mr. Leo Lingham,

I hope you are in good health.

Today I want to discuss with you regarding market plan. Actually i am in working in a Ceramics
Company in Pakistan as Assistant Manager Marketing and our major product is decorative
ceramic wall and floor tile.
Company is selling our product through dealers all over in India. Now our company is expand its
production capacity because we are not full filling the demand of our dealers with current
production capacity.

Please guide me from your expertise regarding marketing tips that how I make my marketing plan
for our new plant?

Please have a glance at our past marketing activities which would be helpful for you to guide me
in right direction.

We organize a dealers and architect function in 2007 (Dinner program)

Provide tile stands to the dealers
Provide Shop signs
Leaflets
Giveaways (Pen)
Participate in industrial event (Build Asia 2007)

The Marketing Mix and 4 Ps

Understanding how to position your market offering

What is marketing? The definition that many marketers learn as they start out in the
industry is:

Putting the right product in the right place, at the right price, at the right time.

It's simple! You just need to create a product that a particularly group of people want, put
it on sale some place that those same people visit regularly, and price it at a level which
matches the value they feel they get out of it; and do all that at a time they want to buy.
Then you've got it made!

There's a lot of truth in this idea. However, a lot of hard work needs to go into finding out
what customers want, and identifying where they do their shopping. Then you need to
figure out how to produce the item at a price that represents value to them, and get it all
to come together at the critical time.

But if you get just one element wrong, it can spell disaster. You could be left promoting a
car with amazing fuel-economy in a country where fuel is very cheap; or publishing a
textbook after the start of the new school year, or selling an item at a price that's too high
– or too low – to attract the people you're targeting.

The marketing mix is a good place to start when you are thinking through your plans for
a product or service, and it helps you avoid these kinds of mistake.

Understanding the Tool

The marketing mix and the 4 Ps of marketing are often used as synonyms for each other.
In fact, they are not necessarily the same thing.

"Marketing mix" is a general phrase used to describe the different kinds of choices
organizations have to make in the whole process of bringing a product or service to
market. The 4 Ps is one way - probably the best-known way - of defining the marketing
mix, and was first expressed in 1960 by E J McCarthy.

The 4Ps are:

 Product (or Service)

 Place
 Price
 Promotion

A good way to understand the 4 Ps is by the questions that you need to ask to define you
marketing mix. Here are some questions that will help you understand and define each of
the four elements:

Product/Service

 What does the customer want from the product/service? What needs does it
satisfy?
 What features does it have to meet these needs?
 Are there any features you've missed out?
 Are you including costly features that the customer won't actually use?
 How and where will the customer use it?
 What does it look like? How will customers experience it?
 What size(s), color(s), and so on, should it be?
 What is it to be called?
 How is it branded?
 How is it differentiated versus your competitors?
 What is the most it can cost to provide, and still be sold sufficiently profitably?
(See also Price, below).

Place

 Where do buyers look for your product or service?

  If they look in a store, what kind? A specialist boutique or in a supermarket, or
both? Or online? Or direct, via a catalogue?
 How can you access the right distribution channels?
 Do you need to use a sales force? Or attend trade fairs? Or make online
submissions? Or send samples to catalogue companies?
 What do you competitors do, and how can you learn from that and/or
differentiate?

Price

 What is the value of the product or service to the buyer?

 Are there established price points for products or services in this area?
 Is the customer price sensitive? Will a small decrease in price gain you extra
market share? Or will a small increase be indiscernible, and so gain you extra
profit margin?
 What discounts should be offered to trade customers, or to other specific segments
of your market?
 How will your price compare with your competitors?

Promotion

 Where and when can you get across your marketing messages to your target
market?
 Will you reach your audience by advertising in the press, or on TV, or radio, or on
billboards? By using direct marketing mailshot? Through PR? On the Internet?
 When is the best time to promote? Is there seasonality in the market? Are there
any wider environmental issues that suggest or dictate the timing of your market
launch, or the timing of subsequent promotions?
 How do your competitors do their promotions? And how does that influence your
choice of promotional activity?

The 4Ps model is just one of many marketing mix lists that have been developed over the
years. And, whilst the questions we have listed above are key, they are just a subset of the
detailed probing that may be required to optimize your marketing mix.

Amongst the other marketing mix models have been developed over the years is Boom
and Bitner's 7Ps, sometimes called the extended marketing mix, which include the first 4
Ps, plus people, processes and physical layout decisions.

Another marketing mix approach is Lauterborn's 4Cs, which presents the elements of the
marketing mix from the buyer's, rather than the seller's, perspective. It is made up of
Customer needs and wants (the equivalent of product), Cost (price), Convenience (place)
and Communication (promotion). In this article, we focus on the 4Ps model as it is the
most well-recognized, and contains the core elements of a good marketing mix.

Using the 4Ps Marketing Mix Model

The marketing mix model can be used to help you decide how to take a new offer to
market. It can also be used to test your existing marketing strategy. Whether you are
considering a new or existing offer, follow the steps below help you define and improve
your marketing mix.

1. Start by identifying the product or service that you want to analyze.

2. Now go through and answers the 4Ps questions - as defined in detail above.
3. Try asking "why" and "what if" questions too, to challenge your offer. For
example, ask why your target audience needs a particular feature. What if you
drop your price by 5%? What if you offer more colors? Why sell through
wholesalers rather than direct channels? What if you improve PR rather than rely
on TV advertising?

Tip:
Check through your answers to make sure they are based on sound
knowledge and facts. If there are doubts about your assumptions,
identify any market research, or facts and figures that you may need
to gather.
4. Once you have a well-defined marketing mix, try "testing" the overall offer from
the customer's perspective, by asking customer focused questions:
1. Does it meet their needs? (product)
2. Will they find it where they shop? (place)
3. Will they consider it's priced favorably? (price)
4. And will the marketing communications reach them? (promotion)
5. Keep on asking questions and making changes to your mix until you are satisfied
that you have optimized your marketing mix, given the information and facts and
figures you have available.
6. Review you marketing mix regularly, as some elements will need to change as the
product or service, and its market, grow, mature and adapt in an ever-changing
competitive environment.

Key points:
The marketing mix helps you define the marketing elements for successfully positioning
your market offer.

One of the best known models is the Four Ps, which helps you define your marketing
options in terms of product, place, price and promotion. Use the model when you are
planning a new venture, or evaluating an existing offer, to optimize the impact with your
target market.
Rajkot, April 02 The The revenue collection from the Morbi-Wanaker ceramic unit has witnessed an
increase of a whopping 400 per cent. collection from the Morbi-Wanaker ceramic unit has witnessed an
increase of a whopping 400 per cent.

Transfer of dozens of excise officers with alleged nexus with evaders, a series of awareness seminars for
the units and a couple of arrests of unit owners on charges of duty evasion, are being attributed as the
reasons for the hike in revenue collection.

“As per our estimate, revenue from this cluster of Morbi-Wanaker ceramic units is touching the mark of Rs
250-crore annually. It is indicating 400 per cent rise in revenue,” said Binoy Kumar, Joint Commissioner,
Central Excise, Rajkot.

Collection figures for March is expected to be Rs 18 crore, which is three times of the revenue collected in
the same month of previous year.

The ceramic belt hit the headlines last year following a clash between unit workers and the Central Excise
department, which had been trying hard to prevent the duty evasion by the Rs 3,000-crore industry with over
200 tiles and sanitary wares manufacturing units.

Four officials of the Directorate General of Central Excise Intelligence Anti-evasion Branch, including Joint
Director Shravan Kumar, were injured when a mob attacked the team that arrived in Morbi from Ahmedabad
to conduct raids on January 28,2007.

The department vehicles were also damaged and some files were burnt.

Two days after the incident, several senior Central Excise officials, including the Commissioner of the
Central Excise of Rajkot, Deputy Commissioners and other officers, were transferred reportedly on charges
of alleged corruption and nexus with the excise evading ceramic tile manufacturing units situated in Morbi.
But since then, things seemed to have changed on the ground.

The department claimed that it started the core work of educating the industry members by arranging
seminars in small groups. All doubts and queries were answered in six such seminars conducted by the
excise officials.

The units owners were further directed to adopt ethical business practices and refrain from tax evasion by
clandestine clearance or under-valuation.

“Such meetings have had a drastic effect on the industrialists, and as a result, they have changed the
prevalent culture of evasion. As per available information, no case of clandestine clearance has been
reported since then,” said Kumar.

Meanwhile, the four units owners, who were arrested for alleged duty evasion, were granted conditional bail
by a court in Ahmedabad on Wednesday.

The arrested, which included the president of the Ceramic Unit Association, Girish Pethapara, had been in
judicial custody for 10 days. Over Rs 10-crore duty evasion had come to light from the four units, including
Deco Gold and Comet.
Objective
Meeting marketing objectives should lead to sales. (If not, you need to set different
marketing objectives.) They should:

 be clear
 be measurable, and
 have a stated time frame for achievement.

Examples of marketing objectives follow:

 Increase product awareness among the target audience by 30 percent in one year.
 Inform target audience about features and benefits of our product and its
competitive advantage, leading to a 10 percent increase in sales in one year.
 Decrease or remove potential customers' resistance to buying our product, leading
to a 20 percent increase in sales that are closed in six months or less.

“If you don't know where you're going,

you could wind up somewhere else”
-- Yogi Berra

Objectives set out what we intend to achieve. You set an objective

when you started your program at school and you are part way to
achieving it now. You know where you are heading! With this objective
in mind, your life is simplified -- you don't need to ask what you will do
next year or next month (until you graduate!).

If we are dealing with a strategic marketing plan, we will set

marketing plan objectives in only a few areas. The most likely are
sales, profits, return on investment or market share (for a larger firm).
By having a sales target, we know how much we need to produce, we
have something to compare our actual performance against and we
have a clear picture of where we want to be.

Here are some guidelines on which one to pick:

 Sales makes a lot of sense as a marketing plan

objective when we are dealing with a smaller firm, when
comparative data are not available and when we have a
fairly good idea of our selling price and likely sales volumes.
(If you don't, then what are you going into this market for?)
  Profit is a good choice when that is a key issue for
the company (sometimes you can be more interested in
getting established) and if there are some standards to
achieve as a marketing plan objective.
 Return on Investment is usually associated with a
large capital investment -- if someone shells out $100,000 to
buy equipment to produce things, they would like to know
how much they will earn on that sum. Hence, choose this
marketing plan objective where you can identify a clear
investment -- you will need to justify it.
 Market Share is loved by many, but is only rarely
applicable in marketing plan objectives. If it is your
objective, you need to measure it, which involves a lot of
money! It just doesn't make sense for smaller firms, who
should more rightly focus on sales volume! However, market
share is a key objective for the Procter & Gambles of the
world, so if your industry does measure it, use it!

Objectives must be SMART -- specific, measurable, achievable,

realistic and time-based. Let's examine each of these criteria:

 Specific The more precise you can be, the more

useful your objectives will be. “We want to be leaders”
doesn’t tell us a lot. “To achieve sales of $125,000” does.
 Measurable We need to be able to evaluate these
marketing plan objectives later, so they must have some
quantifiable dimension! The sales objective above does that,
but you can also have comparative objectives -- leading in
market share might be one.
 Achievable The whole point of having marketing
plan objectives is that they tell us where we will be down the
road. Thus, they should be feasible and within our grasp!
Overly-ambitious objectives that are never met are just as
bad as those which are too easy.
  Realistic This means the objective is worthwhile!
For instance, why have an objective like “We will hire two
salespeople”? You could hire them immediately and forget
that objective! Make it meaningful.
 Time-Based Bearing in mind that we will want to
evaluate how well we are meeting our objectives, we need
time frames. These also help us along the way, as we can see
if we are on track.

Put all this together and you can craft some objectives! Consider this:
“We will achieve sales of $125,000 in the first year of operations.”
It is:

 Specific -- it measures sales.

 Measurable -- it has a $125,000 target.
 Achievable -- we presume this is a reasonable goal
for the firm.
 Realistic -- we presume that sales are a very
important thing to check.
 Time-Based -- we are working within a one-year time
frame.