MSME DIGEST With Kola Owolabi
REVERSE ENTREPRENEURSHIP Series (9)
We had concluded the last post on the need for entrepreneurs to have sharp marketing skills. We had also discussed that marketing in this perspective is the art of possessing mind share of the target market. That is, your target market has your product or service at the top of their minds and so when next they need something in the category of what you produce, they will go for your own rather than the competitors’ options. We had concluded that marketing is a game of going after superior mind share of our target market far beyond that of our competitors.
In this post we shall go ahead to discuss how you can practically and without end continue to acquire superior mind share of your target market. That is in the area of continuous improvement. Continuous improvement talks about making sure that when your customers come back for your product for a repeat purchase, they are going to meet a far remarkably different product. You must have changed position in terms of the attributes of the product. This means you are continuously raising the bar in terms of product or service quality and there is no better way to do so by what is called new product packaging.
New product packaging is not about coming up with entirely new products. For example it is not about somebody manufacturing laptops and then deciding to go into tablets or smart phones. It is about staying with the same product type or category, but by having the customer bombarded with something new each time he comes back for the product or service. Google AI overview puts it this way “New product packaging is the strategic design, material selection, and creation of an outer container for a new item, aiming to protect it, communicate brand identity, and drive sales”. The idea is to give the product or service a new personality that will further go to charm the customer the more than the last time the customer had contact with it. It is like a lady with a better hairdo than the last time you met her, or somebody with a new dress, probably a dress made in line with the most current trend. It is the same person, but seen in a different light because of the new look or outfit. The person will turn more heads this time and will be given a warmer welcome at events. The intention is to make the customer think he has a new product with superior features. That is why forward looking brands change packaging often. This is most common now among digital products. New releases come up as often as quarterly. The intention is to drive sales of the new product as if the customer is buying a new product. Car manufacturers are also skillful in the art of new product packaging. They make buyers keep buying just by coming up with new models, sometimes once in every new year. You may see in a person”s car lot 3 models of the same car, differentiated with powerful new features. Most of the basic parts may still remain the same. However, what charms the customer is what is tinkered with, and you are sure they will still go for it.
Kola Owolabi (08023203198)
Kola Owolabi is a Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Management Consultants (FIMC.CMC) and Chief Executive Officer of David Solomon Consulting Limited, based in Igbesa, a suburb of metropolitan Lagos, in the vicinity of Crawford University. The company can be reached via phone or WhatsApp at 08023203198
