10.5 Step 3: Marketing Program (Marketing Mix, Marketing Strategies, 4 P’s)
After completing Step 2, your next step is developing and implementing a marketing program designed to reach your identified target audience. As the graphic below shows, this program involves a combination of tools called the marketing mix, often referred to as the “four P’s” of marketing:
- Developing a product/service that meets the needs of the target market
- Setting a price for the product/service
- Distributing the product/service—getting it to a place where customers can buy it
- Promoting the product/service—informing potential buyers about it
Product/Service
The development of Robosapien was a bit unusual for a company that was already active in its market.[12] Generally, product ideas come from people within the company who understands its customers’ needs. Internal engineers are then challenged to design the product. In the case of Robosapien, the creator, Mark Tilden, had conceived and designed the product before joining Wow Wee Toys. The company gave him the opportunity to develop the product for commercial purposes, and Tilden was brought on board to oversee the development of Robosapien into a product that satisfied Wow Wee’s commercial needs.
Robosapien is not a “kid’s toy,” though kids certainly love its playful personality. It’s a home-entertainment product that appeals to a broad audience—children, young adults, older adults, and even the elderly. It’s a big gift item, and it has developed a following of techies and hackers who take it apart, tinker with it, and even retrofit it with such features as cameras and ice skates.
Conducting Marketing Research
Before settling on a strategy for Robosapien, the marketers at Wow Wee did some homework. First, to zero in on their target market, they had to find out what various people thought of the product. More precisely, they needed answers to questions like the following:
- Who are our potential customers?
- What do they like about Robosapien? What would they change?
- How much are they willing to pay for it?
- Where will they expect to buy it?
- How can we distinguish it from competing products?
- Will enough people buy Robosapien to return a reasonable profit for the company?
The last question would be left up to Wow Wee management, but, given the size of the investment needed to bring Robosapien to market, Wow Wee couldn’t afford to make the wrong decision. Ultimately, the company was able to make an informed decision because its marketing team provided answers to key questions through marketing research—the process of collecting and analyzing the data that are relevant to a specific marketing situation. This data had to be collected in a systematic way. Market research seeks two types of data:
- Marketers generally begin by looking at secondary data—information already collected, whether by the company or by others, that pertains to the target market.
- With secondary data in hand, they’re prepared to colle