Jon Oliver Communications - Marketing Agency. Wolverhampton, West Midlands

Many engineering businesses are product led – often this is the case when they claim to be market oriented.  You can understand why when you look at the numbers game that so many work to – in fact they are generally sales oriented producing product and setting sales targets to keep them moving off the factory floor or out of the warehouse.

Ask any MD for the most common sales meeting excuse for lost orders or falling sales and its probably “our pricing seems high compared to the competition”.  This is the marketers ‘Golden Gate’ to drive marketing into the ethos of the operations management. 

Let’s face it for most senior management members in the Industrial/Engineering sectors marketing is all about putting a few brochures together, exhibitions, give aways etc – this can be a difficult one to argue as well  because marketing, at this level, is a drain on resources and budget.  A few very simple starting points can open the Golden Gates and allow the marketing department to make a real impact.

So let’s address the too expensive scenario – more often than not this is down to the customer’s perception of the product offering – they [customers] see your product as expensive when in reality it offers more value – or may even be priced lower but perceived to be more expensive.  Don’t get bogged down here with complex academic charts, marketers ‘tools’ and matrixes just plot your business against your competitors on a simple x-y axes  which can be anything you like e.g price v features , price v service, etc.

Understand gut feel is important and if you know your markets and competitors you can get a good feel for where your business is positioned relative to competitors – be honest with your positioning though.  Get all the sales team’s thoughts on this and why not talk to a few customers?

So what does this tell us – well it’s a strong starting point for marketing communications (that’s the science of throwing a brochure or website or PR together in layman’s terms) and helps marketers to work with the rest of the business to define where the product should be positioned. 

A good marketer will pick the process up here with relish and show how messages designed to position the business, aimed at the correct audience, through the most efficient media will provide a good return on investment.

You could of course talk to Jon Oliver Communications (www.jonoliver.com) and we’ll sort it all out for you.