| This article was presented at the Food Congress in Melbourne recently and I had a great time researching the topic. I came to a realisation during the process that while I love exploring the endless applications of Australian flavours, most of my customers are absorbed with getting people in through their restaurant doors or developing new products. We all need to market our wares but it is easy to lose focus. To get absorbed in the process of working in the business rather than on it. I hope you get something from this article. I know I did from researching it, beginning to apply the principles and getting back on track of why I am in business at all.
Oils
ain’t oils Marketing is not advertising. It is not promotions nor is it selling. Marketing is a strategy, which is applied to an entire business. It is a perspective, which may address your actual market, a potential market or your target market. It is an intentional process of creating and maintaining the relationship of ‘customer’. Its sole purpose is to make a beneficial difference in the lives of some group of customers. What is that difference, how you provide the benefit and your customers themselves will change but the need to make a difference never does. It equally applies to large or small companies and to products or services offered. Niche marketing is most often thought of in terms of a boutique product or service aimed at a small, top end customer group, often of type A consumers who are early adopters, high disposable income, yuppies, sinks, dinks or otherwise socially advantaged individuals. It is much more than this, not limited to specialty products or services but very relevant to large manufacturers, set cuisine restaurants, institutional caterers and other big businesses in hospitality. Define your reason for living The first step in marketing is to define a mission which relates to making the beneficial difference to the lives of your customers. The rules here, are to use simple terms to describe the customers’ predominant preferred and valued outcome. It cannot be assumed that your customer values the same things as you. I value using native foods. My customers value the income stream derived from differentiating their menus and products with native foods. A mission statement should create the response “WOW! Tell me more” not just “Ho hum - so that’s what you do around here”. Fleshing the bones If we compare the strategy of marketing to simple, electrical energy it could do one of two things. We could power a light bulb and illuminate a small room. Much of the energy is dissipated as heat and the light will fall away in proportion to the square of the distance. Now think of a laser beam which could cut through plate steel or send a signal to the moon and back. The energy to do this is the same as to power a light bulb but it is highly focused and its effects are far more impressive. I am suggesting that niche marketing is the laser-like strategy of making a specific, beneficial difference in the life of a strictly defined customer. Here are some of the elements of this strategy which also demand an alignment of our actions in achieving our desired result. All the ducks have to line up Alignment in the mission is all important in niche marketing. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck but barks like a dog you probably wouldn’t get one for the pond. To use a native food example, milling and baking giant, Goodman Fielder, had the Bush Breads of Australia range which was a five year success as a niche bread product and leveraged their entry into Woolworths' bakeries. There were some difficulties in the hot bread shop market since the branding introduced uncertainties at a time when native ingredients were popularly considered to only encompass game meats. In hindsight, more appropriate branding, possibly highlighting the functionality or the rare qualities of the flavours they included, may have been better received, even in the white bread marketplace of the hot bread shops. Nevertheless, the Bush Breads were a huge success and are still talked about as a significant innovation in bakery. Their alignment with customers’ perceptions and with other aspects of the market was not as laser sharp as it needed to be. If it were (and had GF not lost out on supplying Woolworths) it would undoubtedly have kept the range growing. As it is, many smaller bakeries are now offering native flavoured breads, pastries and other baked goods filling the niche left by the Bush Breads. Another example is an ice cream range which was marketed under an Australiana brand. It suffered from a host of misalignment liabilities. The word, Australiana, has negative connotations in our society engendering touristy kitsch imagery. The range seemed to be engineered for children with syrups which were very sweet. The sugar masked the native fruit flavours which were compromised from the beginning with lillipilli and Kakadu plum chosen for their ‘familiarity’ while more appropriate ice cream flavours from less well recognised ingredients were rejected by ‘Marketing’. Even the potentially successful wattleseed flavour was muddied with chocolate which also had a masking effect on the level of wattle flavour used and in addition, precipitated complaints from quite a few consumers who happened to be allergic to chocolate. Finally, the range designed for children and packaged for tourists in an adult, gourmet, premium ice cream concept was marketed using an international supermodel who most would naturally suppose, never eats ice cream. How else could she stay so thin? Following all of this, the company then became the target of a take-over and new products were relegated to the sink or swim school of promotions. This may be a textbook example of what not to do to a new product. Image is everything Consumers buy what they want following a preconception of who they are or to what group they belong and how benefits from owning the product add to this image. It is rarely a logical decision of buying what is needed for a rational result. Product development becomes a collaborative venture of a twist from research and development with a subtle offering from packaging followed by strong image associations from marketing the overall brand. Hence, today’s sporting
icons endorse products aimed at teenagers; The associations do not always have to make sense. They just get established through placement and repetition. Our Australian ingredients are:
However, given all of the above, niche marketing comes down to putting yourself in your customers’ shoes and seeing what beneficial difference will have the greatest effect in their lives. Vic Cherikoff Food Services P/L, for example, is not in the native food business. We help restaurateurs and manufacturers establish a continuing income stream and a reputation for innovative products. We supply solutions to customers who need a point of difference for their offerings and wish to stand out from their competition. This is our mission statement and our reason for being. Create the sizzle to sell the steak Marketers are asking a big commitment from their customers: They are offering an intangible, future gain (the beneficial difference) which may be the satisfaction from owning or consuming the item being offered in return for very tangible dollars. Some of the methods in making the strategy effective include:
Reducing the risk may include the common money back guarantees or it may be showing how the cost contribution in using the product or service is so low or easily recoverable that the relative risk is insignificant. But also consider this:
Novel, native flavoured menus or products need to be familiar in concept and perception but their flavour needs that twist of newness. This twist is the tangible, high perceived value offering and may come from the base flavours, top notes, after taste, impact or some nutraceutical functionality. However, while the product itself needs to be mainstream and familiar the point of difference needs to be clearly discernable. Many restaurants have failed where the food looked good, ate well in pleasant surroundings but had so little point of difference apart from claims of containing authentically Australian flavours that the lack of repeat purchase or recommendations eventually killed the business. The same can be said for several manufactured products - another result of all elements of the marketing process not being in alignment. The promise made did not live up to the expectation. The corn flakes package What we have covered so far has been the development of the package for the niche marketer. The strategy is to focus efforts, image and story to create a package to make a beneficial difference in a targeted customer’s life. It should present a core benefit to the consumer and make the choice obvious and easy. Who would buy corn flakes their very first time as a bulk product with no carton? It is the box which positions the product, sets the benefits and tells the story. Once this is done then buying bulk corn flakes from a health food type outlet or even a supermarket home brand still reinforces the image created by the original package. Note. There will be numerous packages for the specialty product marketer to suit many core benefits. A sit-down menu will have a different focus to a function or cocktail menu. However, all will have the strategy of addressing the marketing mission of creating on-going income, making chefs’ lives easy and reducing stress, appealing to clients expectations, generating recommendations and positive comments of endorsements from regulars. In-house, we can add presenting innovative flavours to stimulate the creativity of the kitchen team and the opportunity to value-add the experience of diners and interaction from waiting staff as they address inquiries and hand out selling tools (business cards, example menus, promotional offers etc). Any and all offer beneficial differences for the customer. Advertising, promotions and selling activities now focus on targeting the customer and providing the identified benefit. Writing your own PR can lay on just the right amount of polish in exactly the right places and keep the marketing aligned with the mission. Networking, referrals, testimonials and personal representations can get results using tools also in alignment with the desired image and outcome. Advertising and promotions for specialty product marketers is more often free editorial and this is a win for the publications as much as for the niche marketer since one needs reader interest and the other needs targeted advertorial. Lets look at the forest, not the trees Your mission is perfectly aligned with your market and your marketing efforts create the relationship your customers most want. Your goods and services are well-packaged, presented with sizzle and priced so that your company can prosper and grow. You know exactly where and how to promote your offerings to your established clients and new customers can be reliably and predictably created. Everything you do and say to your market sends out a single, clear message of positive benefit. The on-going challenge
now is to avoid growing to a size where the internal organisation loses
sight of the mission and exists to keep itself growing. And perhaps the corporation which results is where niche marketing ends. The customer is replaced by the shareholders as the prime beneficiary of the business activity. This is not to say that businesses shouldn't grow. Marketing from within a large corporation doesn't need to be institutional as long as the principles presented here are used to maintain the niche marketing focus on benefit delivery to targeted customers. At the end of the day, Zig Ziglar was right: The best way to get what you want is to help others get what they want. Use
the back button on your browser or go Copyright
Vic Cherikoff Food Services P/L
|
