Framework 124 Marketing (Focus On Cs)
Introduction
The 'P's can be converted to 'Cs, eg the 4 Ps (product, price, place & promotion) become be 4Cs (customer's needs and wants, cost to the customer, convenience & communication)
(source: Robert F Lauterborn as quoted by Albert Carniel, 2019)
(source: Robert F Lauterborn as quoted by Albert Carniel, 2019)
This is expanded to the 7Cs, ie a collaborative model of marketing where multiple companies work together (co-marketing), ie
"...they unite to market, promote and communicate a shared offer in different channels ( it can be a piece of content, a co-branded product/service or something else)..."
Albert Carniel, 2019
This is different from co-branding, ie when organisations combine their expertise, product and/or service characteristics to make a superior offering. Co-marketing is broader
"...co-marketing is a marketing strategy where two similar brands or businesses combine their marketing efforts to promote the products or services of the other..."
Indeed Editorial Team, 2022
Its benefits are to generate
- more visibility
- more sales by advertising to another brand's audience
- save time, money and resources
- heighten credibility
- reach a broader audience
- provides for more convenience to customers
- develops brand identity
- fosters a loyal customer base
For example, is a food brand partnering with a celebrity. This increases both the celebrity and brand's exposures to each other's audience.
Thus
"... Co-marketing involves two companies that plan to work together to produce marketing content, co-branding is a mutual effort to create a new product to sell..."
Indeed Editorial Team, 2022
Selecting partners
"...With comarketing, it's important to identify brands you want to work with in order to understand your and thier market. It is best to select a company that's not a direct competitor since you want the marketing effort to complement and promote one another. Instead, consider choosing a brand that has a similar marketing strategy and audience but sells a different product or service. Co-branding partners, you need to decide what product you want to create and then search for a partner company...."
Indeed Editorial Team, 2022
Generally co-marketing has a longer life-cycle than co-branding.
How to create a co-marketing strategy
i) set goals (identify what you want to achieve in partnering with another brand, eg increased social media exposure, etc)
ii) locate potential partners (usually best to consider brands that market to a similar audience, share a similar geographical location and have similar goals to yours; make sure they are reputable)
iii) brainstorm promotional strategies (leverage off each other, ie your weaknesses are their strengths and vice versa; ensure strategies are relevant to both partners and the market)
iv) evaluate the results of your co-marketing
Types of co-marketing
i) affiliate marketing (part of a digital marketing strategy that involves collaboration between a brand and a digital influencer on social media)
ii) distribution partnership (combining your product and/or service with somebody else, eg an airline might offer its passengers a discount at a local hotel)
(involves placing a product and/or service in a section of another brand's content, eg a television network might feature a particular car brand in its TV shows)
iv) licensing agreements (allowing other organisations to distribute and sell your product and/or service, eg organic candles for sale in local boutique clothes store)
v) event sponsorship (sponsor events that allow businesses to promote themselves, products and/or services so that they reach audiences they wouldn't otherwise, eg car companies sponsoring major sporting events like football, tennis, car racing, etc)
vi) content marketing partnerships (entails providing or generating content of the other brand in the partnership, eg 2 popular bloggers write for each other).
(source: Koichi Schimizu as quoted by Albert Carniel, 2019)
More details on the Cs (value for the customer)
1. Clients or Customers (need to understand who current and future customers are, especially their needs and wants; start by identifying the target audience)
2. Costs (include all marketing costs like transportation, advertising, promotions, etc plus cost of production; other factors can include
"...Time for accessing the offering (cost of time), effort for changing or implementing new product/service or the choice of selecting competitors' products/services..."
Albert Carniel, 2019
Other interesting costs include conscience and guilt. These are related to social, ethical and broader issues. Some examples:
- low-cost, high-volume businesses that encourage mass consumption, like fast-fashion and fast-furniture, are cheap, convenient, etc but have a negative impact on the environment, ie dis-courage sustainability; fast-furniture encourages mass deforestation, fast-fashions encourages culture of disposability, ie
"...some 87% of total fibre input used for clothing is put into landfill or incineration within a year..."
Tima Bansal et al, 2021
Furthermore, fast-fashion have a large negative impacton the environment, ie
"...the textile industry is responsible for 20% of all industrial water pollution and 10% of carbon emissions......Textile dyeing alone is responsible for 20% of all industrial water pollution......more than 3,600 dyes used in fashion are poisonous, harming human, animal and plant health ......producing one pound of cotton uses, on average, 4,500 litres of water......growing cotton also is responsible for 60% of insecticides used globally......Meanwhile, synthetic materials such as polyester are made largely from petroleum products, so producing these releases carbon and harms the environment......approximately 35% of micro-plastics in the ocean come from people laundering synthetic clothes..."
Tima Bansal et al, 2021
- processed foods which are convenient, cheap, tasty, etc; however, their consumption contributes to health issues like obesity, etc
Conscience and guilt can be used as marketing levers, ie manipulate purchasing or avoidance behaviours.
3. Convenience (related to the needs of finding and buying a product and/or service; including retrieving information about it. The Internet is a good example of this and has almost made 'place' irrelevant in marketing)
4. Communications (communications with different stakeholders like customers, staff, etc; involves a dialogue between the organisation and customers; interactions with the buyer and seller using techniques like media, online and off-line; need to understand market trends, etc)
5. Competition (need to understand what other products and/or services already exist and/or planned, ie their strengths and weaknesses)
6. Consistency (recognised as standout brand, ie brand awareness)
7. Creativity (be creative in all aspects of your marketing mix and business)
8. Collaboration, ie 'co-' = together (this involves co-marketing (see above), co-branding (see above), co-creating, etc; co-creating involves customers in the process, ie getting their feedback; commensal or symbiotic marketing occurs when organisations are able to establish mutually beneficial partnerships with other organisations or consumers. An example is Kellogg and Muller joining forces to launch a new dairy product, ie a yogurt with cereals. Some types of commensal marketing include equity position, licensing, technology exchange, joint venture, consortium, joint project development, joint technology development, marketing arrangements, manufacturing agreements, joint product/service marketing, shared distribution facilities, joint sales organisation, joint service, tie-in advertising and sales promotion, franchising, etc
9. Credibility (being trusted and accepted especially around quality of product and/or service)
10. Channel (channels needed to transfer a product and/or service from the point of production to the point of consumption)
11. Content (what is written and published about the products and/or services)
12. Community (being recognised as a good community citizen, eg Ronald McDonald house providing accommodation for sick children and their parents)
13. Circumstances (external uncontrollable environmental components that can impact an organisation, like political, demographic, legal, sociological, technological, ethical, etc)
NB Clients or customers are the pivotal ones
(for more detail, see marketing elsewhere in the Knowledge Base)
(sources: Philip Kotler, 2019; Albert Carniel, 2019)