Marketing - delivering value - CIM chief

“Marketing is about humans and delivering value to them”, said President Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) Professor Malcolm McDonald.

The chief guest at the CIM Sri Lanka conference, Professor McDonald said, “30,000 products are launched globally per annum but 90 percent fail due to companies not understanding the market. Everything works well if you know your customers and the markets. Marketing is value creation and it is infinite.

An excellent marketing strategy targets the needs, segmentised and makes a specific offer to each segment while a weak marketing strategy targets product categories. Strategic marketing defines markets and understand value, determine value proposition as well as monitors and delivers value. Good robust strategy is everything and a good company adds value to shareholders and marketing is all about business to business.

Therefore promotional money is wasted if it is not properly segmentised.

Prof. McDonald said social media marketing and i-marketing are crap, as the customers are still the same practise the fundamentals properly ie segmentise in the proper manner.

Proctor and Gamble bought Gillette for 30m, of which pounds 4m was for tangible assets while the balance was paid for the brand and good will. He said that brand names identify everything and gets everything.

“All strategic plans talk of three things: market risk profile product category existence and segment existence,” Professor McDonald, said.

He said that product development is less risky compared to moving to new markets and most importantly, marketing strategy has a high probability of success if the products are segmentised.

“Measuring marketing performance isn’t like measuring factory output", he said. According to the latest Mackenzie Report 300 companies had outperformed others due to proper segmentisation, said Professor McDonald who has over 40 years experience . SG