St Edmunds Students

Notes arising from Ken Mitchell's Lecture to St Edmunds boys - 9.50am on 29 August 2003.

Advice to the 2003 class that Ken Spoke to at StEdmunds in August 2003 is as follows:-

In general - be matter of fact and practical - this is not rocket science.

Be customer focused not product focused

Understand the difference between product features and consumer benefits.

The marketing concept comprises of 3 things -

• Customer satisfaction
• Profit as an objective
• Total Company effort - marketing starts with your own team

Evolution of Marketing

• Production orientation - make things cheaper
• Product orientation - improve quality and features
• Selling orientation - make your customers buy your product
• Marketing orientation - research and make what customers want
• Societal marketing orientation - stay environmentaly friendly

External Environments

• Demographic
• Economic
• Political
• Legal
• Technological
• Natural
• Social
• Cultural

SWOT

• Strengths - internal
• Weaknesses - internal
• Opportunities - external
• Threats - external

The Marketing Mix

• Price - break even analysis, price structure, discounts, incentives.
• Product - features, benefits, etc.
• Place - The distribution channel, how to get it to the market
• Promotion - advertising (50% of all advertising in Australia is wasted), public relations, sales force, direct marketing, etc

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Also

1. Look up an outline of a marketing plan from at least one but preferably 2 text books such as Kotler.
2. Bear in mind that there is no such thing as the one way to do a marketing plan.
3. When in doubt make you best guess and assumptions (ballpark) of what you want to know - remember a good rough estimate now is far better than very accurate information when it is far too late.
   
4. Be bold but measure it with common sense - if any aspect sounds like a bad idea then it probably is.
5. Mix promotion with advertising, public relations, direct marketing, sales promotion etc but integrate them in a single major strategic campaign.

cheers
Ken Mitchell