Designing and Developing Your Marketing Message (Constructive Marketing)

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a three-part series on integrated marketing. Please view the first and third installments.

Great marketing can sell anything once. As Mike Davids and Kelly Newcomb write in an article titled “Planning for Marketing Success” on Debt3Online.com, “Even the proverbial ‘snake-oil’ salesman can do very well if he plans to leave town at the end of the show.” However, Davids and Newcomb also warn that business longevity is tied to ensuring that every syllable of every marketing promotion is solidified by companies “that can deliver more than any marketing promise can ever explain.”

As we discussed in our last article, a thorough integrated marketing communications (IMC) campaign is integral to sustaining long-term growth in your business. In addition, we captured the focus of the campaign and established a structure using the seven Ps. This month, we’ll discuss the development of the marketing message, even during site construction or renovation.

Beginning your marketing effort during the construction process (or renovation) can ensure that maximum market impact can be reached without disruptions to your current operation or costly delays and mistakes of any kind. It is imperative to set aside time, preferably before or during the building or construction phase of your site, to develop the marketing program. You may even inquire to local, city, or state officials (prior to construction) what market questions might exist so you can professionally address them at the proper time. Thus, it is a good idea to start early in order to have a grasp on how you are going to market.

There are several steps you should consider when developing your IMC campaign. The following will assist your efforts and focus your plan to maximize your return.

Constructing the Plan

The process of building a solid IMC program begins with the construction of a quality marketing plan. You first must develop and coordinate the seven elements of the marketing mix: product, pricing, promotion, placement, people, process and physical evidence (see Avoid Mixed Messages with a Strategic Marketing Plan).

These elements should blend to present a unified message about your organization and answer the question, “How will we provide superior value to our targeted market?” Take your time developing this plan, as it is a road map to marketing success. Quickly cobbled and sparse plans could leave you open to failure and provide a poor return on your invested time and capital. To start you on your way, address in detail the following issues:

• Short-term objectives – less than one year
• Long-term objectives – one year or more
• Target audience
• What does the target want?
• Analyze competition
• Who you are
• Marketing budget
• How to compete
• Plan of execution

There are many facets to each bullet point, and your detailed answers will be pertinent to your plan. Each point has been authored thousands of times in quality, peer-reviewed articles, and there is quite a bit of information about each one to satisfy your curiosity when you choose to dig deeper.

Concept and Research

For our purposes, marketing research is a means for implementing the marketing concept. The marketing concept is the most central idea in marketing thinking. The concept is threefold and calls on owners and operators to be consumer oriented, stress long-run profitability instead of sales volume, and adopt a cross-functional perspective for the integration and coordination of marketing and other corporate functions.

One part of market research is to obtain information that identifies consumers’ problems and needs, thus bridging the information gap between you and your customer. The value of this research lies in discovering and evaluating opportunities, analyzing and selecting your targeted markets, planning and implementing a marketing mix for the carwash or c-store, and analyzing marketing performance.

Four variables exist when conducting research. They are time, availability of data, benefit versus cost, and the nature of the decision. Because research takes time, decisions are sometimes made without adequate