The year 2015 was rich in conferences, seminars and workshops of ICT4D stakeholders across the African Continent hugely aimed at unmasking value added products and services and related marketing mix issues. Of course this talk is not very new.
So how can organizations really step into the marketing realm of providing real value for customers across the Continent?
To start with value-addition is very much a marketing concept and understanding this is the only path to realizing offerings that offer real customer value.
What marketing is not
Marketing has for a longtime been
thought of as selling and for some it has come across as using fancy words to
spend organizational resources on activities that cannot quite be justified
financially. From the time of the industrial revolution, however, marketing has
evolved from merely being about producing
as cheaply for consumers or convincing people to buy. Marketing is now more
than just about segmenting customers to suit whatever the brand offers. And the
practice is certainly more than just customer service.
We all carry out marketing
In today’ world marketing is important in the private as well as public
sector organization, the Not-For-Profit and startup all practice some form of
internal and external marketing communications. In Essence marketing is about
value exchanges between the organization and their customer. Really marketing
is every individual and organizational
activity that builds satisfying exchange
relationships in a dynamic environment through the creation, distribution,
promotion and pricing of goods, services and ideas as the great marketing book
by Dibb et al puts it.
And why talk about
value-addition?
Marketing is based on adding
value for customers and considering customer needs is the starting point. It is
no wonder every marketer in 2015 talked about providing value-added services! In reality value addition means
that organizations package their entire offering or value preposition to meet a need in the customer’s life; making life
easier and more convenient at a price that the customer is willing to pay for
and return when they have a new need is
what marketing is all about.
The place of marketing
For different organizations
marketing yields differently depending how it is viewed and on the roles and the level of importance
that an organization attaches to it. In
some organizations marketing is seen as an exchange process where the firms
sees marketing as being more about
making both the customer and the firm
better off after an exchange of value.
Marketing can also be taken as a
function of management whereby an organization develops marketing plans that serve as leverage for attaining corporate
goals such as growth. This normally entails that marketing is not as important as other
departments and is at the mercy of for
example finance department who could decide to fund or not fund all the
marketing tactics.
Then there are those
organizations that view marketing as a dynamic operation that requires swift
analysis, planning and action to align the organization with trends in the
market be it competitor action or changing customer needs.
Still other organizations are
marketing-oriented and the customer takes the centre stage. All organizational
resources are allocated to meet the
customer’s needs. This means that all the people across the different
departments work together and make
decisions that are focused on satisfying the customer. And these are the
organizations that provide really valuable offerings to customers.
Finally, organizations can view
marketing as a catalyst for change whereby the marketer is the voice of the
customer in the firm. Here the marketer
helps to improve the firms offering by advising the firm on how best it
could align its offering to meet the actual needs of the customer.
In the real world however, organizations can
take more than one view of marketing. A
truly marketing oriented organization,
premised on strategic marketing, also views marketing as a catalyst for change and perhaps as
a dynamic operation. This enables the
organization to be dynamic and provide real value for the customer in an
ever-changing market place.
Reinvent and adapt or go home
It is paramount for organizations,
be it the Not-For-Profit (NFP) or corporate, to be responsive to changes in the
market place in order to stay competitive. Organizations that refuse or fail to
reinvent and adapt to the changing customer expectations of the market are only shooting themselves in
the foot, and like Kodak, will probably not survive long.
In the tech world for example, it
is not so much a “dog-eat-dog” price-war
situation that yields customer value. It
is all about knowing your customer, satisfying and even delighting them, it all
comes down to the customer experience.
Apple is one brand that knows just how to delight their customers and
keep them loyal with an unmatched product and service experience.
Is your organization marketing
oriented?
So whenever you talk about value-added
services, ask yourself, do you know your customers and do you know what they
need? Next as a professional marketer you can employ the marketing audit
coupled with the popular Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis to see just how positioned
your organization is to meet customer needs.
In my next article, we will start
the year 2016 by diving into e-health, looking at how the market place in
Africa stands for ICT4D or the ICT- oriented NFP organizations. Get to know how the NFP, National Research
and Education Network (NREN) or even the startup can find their place in this
market and present a meaningful value preposition to their customers.
Wishing you a Happy New Year!