Review of Marketing Strategies

This week I try to fit my company’s marketing strategy as per the readings for this week.

To start off, I tried to address the Marketing Mix (The 4 Ps of Marketing) for my business. Here’s how it fared.

Product (Service) / Place:

I differentiate my product (rather service) from others by the unique distribution and marketing plan. The goal is to make my product accessible to the ones who are most remote from centers of human population –> The villages. The Idea is to have vans and trucks loaded with my product, head out to a town center. The town center is like the nerve of activity for rural people. Once a week (Generally Friday), all small scale businessman set up temporary stalls to market their goods. It is at this time that the people from surrounding villages congregate here to buy/sell their goods. I want to use these places to market my lamps. This way, the lamp would be just like any other product, available just as easily as the rest. The first step in the marketing plan would be to target the small scale businessmen. Convince them about the advantages this lamp offers in terms of increasing business time, and then distribute the lamps through their well established chains.

Also getting in touch with NGO is an option I am exploring. NGOs generally have a good feel of villages and are well respected by the rural folk. By tying up with NGOs working towards improvement of health, literacy,etc. in villages, I could use their resources to market my lamp.

Price:

This is where I have some problem. I haven’t firmly decided on the price. There is some competition in my field but not as bad as consumer goods. This gives me some space, but not a lot. As of now, I have decided to set the price to $20. But I am flexible on this price. I would test the market initially and then based on the feedback, be flexible enough to change this to a more optimum price.

Promotion:

I will not use adverts to target my customers. As I said earlier, I will use the pre-existing marketing chains to reach out to the customers. The small scale businessmen themselves are the ambassadors of my product.

 

Using Social Media to Leverage my business

          I was wondering how I might leverage my business by using social media since my customers have no access to electricity and therefore no access to computers or the internet. This is when I realized that I could set up a mission. Something like Light a life campaign. In this campaign (via Facebook and twitter) I could engage the public and educate them about the “good” work my organization is doing. They can see interviews with people whose lives have changed (Youtube), they can view photographs and journals (blogs) and connect to the rural people through our business (facebook and twitter). I could also post updates about events, where we could have mass Solar Lamp distributions to the poor. All this is excellent brand building ideas. The website/blog can also have a donate button and people could donate a lamp to one family. On doing so, they could actually get to see pictures of the lamps being delivered to one family. This builds trust in my organization. An option called participate could also be set up in the web-site, where anybody could volunteer their time (and money?) to take part in mass lamp distribution. These programs not only build my image, but also bolster sales. The funding for these events can be arranges, either from the Govt. and/or private entities.

The path I want to take in “Image building” for my firm is one where my firm appears to be an NGO from the outside. Serving the underprivileged. Social Service. Etc. This is how I would brand my venture. But what it really is, is a Social Enterprise. Its not that I want to hide this fact from people. But the working culture and the positioning of my firm would be like that of an NGO. I think that is very very important to get hard working, committed and inspired people on my team. People, I believe, connect better when they know they are working towards a “good cause” rather than mere profit. This needs to be engendered within the fabric of my organization. That, I believe, will not only go a long way in establishing an enthusiastic working team, but also make work more fun.