The Marketing Mix: From Strategy to Implementation

1. Define the offering

• Create customer value (better before cheaper).
• Design a total offering that delivers from purchase to disposal: the buyer-user value chain (Kim & Mauborgne).
• Identify pain points to address, emotionally powerful strong points to reinforce and business/customer benefits.
• Produce a matrix matching pain points to offering components (problems/solutions).
• List the offering's components.
• Integrate the customer experience, from purchase to end of life.
• Enrich the offering with associated services.

Workshop: map pain points to offering components.

2. Set the price

• Pricing principles: the concept of value creation.
• Price: targeting and differentiation.
• Produce a cost table based on the offering's components.
• The mechanics of pricing calculations.
• The different cost categories to consider.
• Willingness to pay: calculating the psychological price.
• Penetration and skimming: two fundamental approaches.
• Elasticity and the trade-off between skimming and penetration.
• Calculate total cost of ownership (TCO), including consequential costs.
• Additional gains (image, retention, key accounts, etc.).
• Account for cannibalisation.
• A key pricing principle: value-based selling.
• Defend your value creation choices.
• The main elements of a business case.

> Workshop: pricing calculations.

3. Select and activate distribution channels

• Study the target segment's point-of-sale preferences.
• Multichannel, cross-channel and omnichannel concepts.
• Connect marketing and sales and define each role.
• The sales pitch.
• Activate the sales force: design the sales pitch and sales action plan (PAC).

> Workshop: connecting marketing and sales.

4. Design a communication plan

• The four successive waves of a communication campaign: awareness, image, traffic generation and conversion.
• The communication plan: agency brief and copy strategy.
• Plan components: media, below-the-line and digital.
• Enrich communication through social and mobile channels.
• POEM: Paid > Owned > Earned Media.

5. Measure performance

• Monitoring and control.
• Present a business plan: translate the marketing plan into financial terms.
• Practical case: design a marketing plan covering media, below-the-line and digital.

1. Workshop
The final day is entirely devoted to a practical workshop in small groups:

• Develop the marketing mix for launching an offering.

The case is tailored to participants' profiles and the company's challenges.