Basic Elements: Marketing 101

Business doesn’t just walk in the door anymore. Make sure prospective customers know what you have to offer.

Marketing. We all think we know what this word means, yet few truly understand the definition and benefits of marketing in a custom molding or moldmaking environment. Marketing isn’t just for the big guys, or for the companies with proprietary products like Procter & Gamble. John W. Elliott, president and founder of Power PR, an industrial marketing communications firm in Torrance, CA, says, “The reality is the industrial sector has all the elements of big business: a staggering pace of development, intense competition to sell products and services, big ticket items, and a need to aggressively promote their product or service in order to cut through the clutter and reach the prospect.”

Marketing involves those activities that create demand for your products or services. You want potential customers to want what you have to offer, e.g., mold design and build, molding, secondary operations, assembly, unique technology, solutions to an OEM’s manufacturing problems, and so forth. So how do you get them to want what you have to offer? That’s where marketing comes into play.

Three Steps Forward

There are three initial steps to take when embarking on a marketing strategy. A thorough evaluation of each of these will lay the foundation for your marketing plan.

• Know your company. Who are you? Define your company. What do you do? What do you do best? Who are your customers? What value do you provide these customers? Knowing your value proposition (what you do best and which customers pay for that) is critical in developing your marketing strategy. If you don’t know the value you provide, how can you expect your customers to pay for it? If you don’t know the value you provide, how do you communicate it to your customers and explain why they should do business with you instead of your competitors?

• Know your customers. Who are your best customers? Typically, a molder or mold manufacturing company has a core group of customers. Most say that 80% of their business comes from 20% of their customer base. Who are these loyal, core customers and why do they do business with you? To find out, ask them. Develop a short questionnaire of five to 10 questions designed to probe what your customers like about doing business with you and what they don’t like. Why do they choose your company to do business with vs. the competitors? What do they value most about the services you offer? And, if you’re not providing it, then maybe your competitors are.

  There are three types of value: actual value, or the value that you are providing current, satisfied customers; strategic value, or the value that you will provide long-term in the relationship; and perceived value, or value that is intangible but invaluable to relationship development and customer perception that you are the best.

• Know your competition. It’s important to know your competitors so that you can uncover ways to differentiate your company from theirs. In a sea of molding and moldmaking companies in the United States, it’s often difficult to stand apart from the crowd. Once you uncover your value proposition, understand what your customers value, and know what your competitors offer, you can begin to promote a niche for yourself based on differentiation.

Mining for Customers

Next, ask yourself who else will value what your current customers value, and is this a particular industry segment (e.g., aerospace, sporting goods, packaging, and so forth) or market niche (e.g., insert, multimaterial, or multicomponent molding), says Mary Scheibel of Scheibel Halaska, a marketing communications firm in Milwaukee, WI. “What markets are being served by weak competitors that I can better serve? How can I position my company to attract the attention of my target industries or markets? How do I cut through the clutter and show how I’m different or better than the competition?”

Scheibel says that marketing value is a critical domain of business, and that being strategic about your company’s value is a necessary component of creating a powerful brand that is meaningful and relevant to the companies you are trying to attract.

Communicating your value proposition to the right customers is next. Power PR’s Elliott stresses that industrial firms today need to take a much more proactive posture when it comes to marketing and promotion. “They must create stronger demand for their product or service and expand upon that demand,” Elliott explains. “They must establish high perceived value for their products so their customers and prospects are willing to pay more.” Billionaire and media mogul Ted Turner once said, “I don’t mind paying more if I know the value is there.”

Being strategic in your marketing allows you to understand your value, develop targeted communications materials that reach those customers you want to reach, gain a higher RFQ-to-sale ratio, and get those customers who will pay for the value you offer. It’s also the foundation on which your sales strategy is built. A good marketing strategy allows you to sell something other than “lowest price.” Someone once said, “Price only becomes an issue in the absence of value.”

Editor’s note: For information on developing your marketing and sales strategy, check out Clare Goldsberry’s three-book series, Marketing and Sales Strategies for Molders and Moldmakers, available through the Canon Book Store (www.cancombookstore.com).