How Low Can You Go? How High Can You Get?

Continually rising prices at the gas pump since the mid-1970s has had us all asking, “How high can these get?!” As 2015 slipped into 2016, with oil by the barrel in free fall, we found ourselves asking, “How low can this go?”

The roller coaster of oil pricing per barrel and sticker surprise at the gas pump has a lot of people wondering, “How in the world do they set those prices?”

Companies set their prices according to their own pricing strategy, which “properly prices products or services so that the company can sustain profitability while maintaining or growing its market share,” according to SMstudy’s Marketing Strategy, book one in the SMstudy® Guide series. Even though it sometimes seems as though companies are grabbing for quick profits and letting the future take care of itself, sustained profitability and growth in market share are part of every sane strategy.

Coming up with that sane strategy isn’t as easy as a few fat cats sitting around in a smoky room saying, “Well, what do we want to charge for this?” That question is likely to be followed with another, “What CAN we get for this?” And now our fat cats are talking strategy. The SMstudy® Guide says, “In order to develop a comprehensive Pricing Strategy, a company must specifically evaluate and understand the trends and dynamics in many areas such as the following:

• the features and pricing of competitive products in the market
• the company’s desired positioning, mapped against that of the competition to identify pricing of similarly positioned products
• the consumer mindset to understand the demand and spending capability for each product
• the cost, projected unit sales, and targeted profitability levels of each product
• the innovativeness of each product
• the capability of the production and operations teams to create high-quality products at reasonable costs
• the knowledge of the current and desired market shares for each product.”

 The SMstudy® Guide details nine inputs and fourteen tools companies can use to understand these trends and dynamics to design a successful pricing strategy. One input is the company’s own positioning statement. This statement is important because “how a company markets a product impacts who buys it and how much consumers are willing to pay to purchase it.” The positioning statement identifies who the company wants to sell to and how much it would like those customers to pay. “A company that caters to a wealthier market segment with relatively high disposable incomes, aims to create a premier positioning for the product focusing on the quality of the goods or services, brand messaging, and packaging.” This market position allows for premium pricing, too.  It is no wonder that there are at least three grades of gasoline at every pump.

Another input is “opportunities and threats.” As the SMstudy® Guide points out, “Identifying and analyzing opportunities and threats help the company consider the external factors that may influence the costs involved in manufacturing a product or service and subsequently impact its pricing.” This is why refinery fires, hostile take overs of oil fields, and sudden growth from emerging markets all over the world affect the price of gasoline at the station on the corner.

So, how in the world do they set those prices? By following a rather elaborate pricing strategy.

For more help understanding pricing and marketing strategies, visit SMstudy.com

The information in this article comes from chapter four of SMstudy’s Marketing Strategy, book one in the SMstudy® Guideseries of six books that also include Marketing Research, Digital Marketing, Corporate Sales, Retail Sales and Branding and Advertising.

SMstudy and the Post-Advertising World

We recently read that “We are living in a post-advertising world.” The claim was made by John Horsley, director of Digital Doughnut, a global digital marketing community. Horsley should know, so we took notice.

Horsley explained his claim in a LinkedIn group forum: “Conversations have replaced campaigns, engagement trumps reach, and brands are no longer built by above-the-line agencies, but at every touchpoint the business has with its customers. And the thread that links all these elements is social media.” This resonates with us at SMstudy. We have included a lot about touchpoints, engagement and social media marketing in A Guide to the Sales and Marketing Body of Knowledge, also referred to as the SMstudy® Guide.

Horsley was using his claim to incite and invite members of the group to take part in a survey being conducted to explore the current status of companies and social media and contribute to his work “New Report: Social Media’s Impact on Customer Experience.” He says “businesses have been slow to respond, often hampered by outdated structures, siloed thinking and a lack of strategic understanding.” Now, that really resonates with us because we wrote an entire book on Marketing Strategy as one of the six aspects covered in the SMstudy® Guide and we offer certifications in marketing strategy.

His claim did not resonate so well with others, however. One group member commented, “Social media channels are simply another way to touch someone, as is and remains advertising. Effective communications usually consist of multichannel or cross channel strategies.” We had to agree with several points here. Our Digital Marketing book says, “Given the nature of the online world, which is constantly evolving and expanding—new channels are developing with greater frequency, and audiences are continuously exploring new sources of online content—digital marketers must regularly assess and reassess digital marketing channels for their effectiveness and applicability in helping achieve the company’s overall organizational goals and objectives.”

Social media provide many opportunities for delivering messages that advertise. Within Marketing Strategy whole sections have been dedicated to planning and developing social media as well as other digital channels.

The term “posting” (as it is used in advertising) comes not from posting mail but from a time when fences, street lamp poles, telephone posts and any available urban wall space were festooned with advertisements for products, shows, soon-to-arrive circuses and political candidates. When the rampant postings got out-of-hand, a new posting appeared saying, “Post No Bills.” Now, many marketing and advertising messages are being posted online and in social media. Perhaps we should say we’re living in a post-post-advertising world? Well … maybe not.

Another commenter added, “effective marketing communication is always a delicious idea (whatever it might be) served on many different (multichannel) dishes.” And that’s an idea we can relish.

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Levels of Sales and Marketing Strategy

A company enjoying a good reign must possess an assortment of umbrellas.

Beneath the wide umbrella of Corporate Strategy exists a smaller umbrella known as Corporate Marketing Strategy, which covers Business Unit and Geographic Strategies. Those, in turn, are further divided into particular Product or Brand Strategies for each product or brand.

This figure illustrates the relationship between the various strategies:

The Corporate Marketing Strategy is defined at a corporate level and outlines the overall marketing goals for the company. These general marketing goals drive more specific marketing strategies for each of the company’s business units or geographies. Each business unit or geography defines its own goals, which become relevant inputs for each area’s particular product or brand marketing strategies. Each product or brand marketing strategy defines sales and marketing objectives for each product or brand, which drive specific tactics that align with and often rely on other Marketing Aspects identified in theSMstudy® Guide (Marketing Research, Digital Marketing, Corporate Sales, Branding and Advertising and Retail Marketing).

Here is an example of Levels of Sales and Marketing Strategy:

Land Development Company

• Corporate Level—A land development company wants to grow to be among the top three land development companies in its state.
• Business Unit/Geographic Level—The land development company operates two business units: residential and retail. A goal of the residential business unit is to grow that unit by 12 percent within one year; a goal of the retail business unit is to grow that unit by 10 percent within the same time period.
• Product/Brand Level—Within the residential business unit, the company sells three products: condominiums, town homes and singles. The singles Product Marketing Strategy identifies an objective to grow the sale of single units by 15 percent. To achieve this objective, the teams responsible for building strategy within the various Aspects of Marketing establish specific objectives that are designed to support the overall product objectives and to align with one another.
• Marketing Aspect Level­—The company’s greatest strength is the fact that it is an award-winning leader in green sustainable development. Therefore, the branding and advertising team builds specific tactics that incorporate an increase in reach of its messaging around sustainable development. One specific tactic is to leverage billboard and newspaper advertising with the objective of increasing reach of green messaging by 30 percent. The digital marketing team incorporates tactics to support the objective of increasing the green sustainable development messaging, stressing the importance of this trend and positioning the company as a leader in the industry through the use of various social media channels. One specific tactic is to leverage blogs and online public relations with the objective of increasing the company's rankings in online searches related to keywords such as “sustainable development.” The tactics of each Marketing Aspect are aimed at achieving their own specific objectives; however, both support the overall singles Product Strategy objective of achieving a 15 percent growth in sales for this product line.

When seeking sustained success, a company should equip and adhere to a comprehensive Corporate Marketing Strategy. That umbrella has you covered.