market research -- research consulting -- business intelligence -- strategic planning

Home

About

News

Services

Basic Concepts
Introduction
The Law of Commerce>
The Market
Your Market (Share)
Market Conversion
Market Exchange
The Conversion/Exchange Dynamic
Conversion Tactics
Promotional Strategies
Using Maintenance Promotion
Distribution Strategies
Supply Strategies

Free Papers
and Downloads

Contact

Links

Basic Concepts in Market Dynamics

7. Conversion Tactics

Building market share involves three broad categories of tactics: promotional, distribution and supply. Tactics are the tools you have available to put your strategy in place. In football, tactics are passing, running, and blocking which make up plays. As in football, a marketer must know multiple tactics, learn to mix them up and co-ordinate them to advance his position. The more skillful you are at marketing tactics, the more competitive and successful you will be.

Conversion tactics are what you do to effect change in your market. When you execute a promotional tactic you change the level of recognition and/or the message the market is hearing. When you put a distribution tactic in place, the resulting change on the market will be the number of people who have access to your product and/or the way they access your product. A supply tactic increases or decreases demand, and/or changes the selection.

Note that every tactic includes the phrase "and/or". Essentially, this means that every tactic has a quantitative (push), a qualitative (pull) and a do both option. Running more ads, for example is a quantitative (push) option. Changing the copy for greater appeal is a pull option. Or, running more ads with the new copy is a do both option. So now, within each of the three broad tactics, we have three more choices bringing us up to nine different decisions one must make to execute a conversion tactic. There is only one more which applies to all categories. This is the decision to do nothing, sit back and wait. Sometimes this is the most difficult of all.

You will also note, tactics are not pure. A promotional tactic will also modify demand and access to a certain degree. A supply tactic may effect recognition and access. For example an ad promoting a feature of your product builds recognition, but it may also justify a higher price and, by showing that it is available at a local store, increase access.

The important concept here is that you must learn to use all tactics available to you. You must never rely on just one. Learn when to mix and match tactics and options for maximum effect, and when to sit back and wait for the results before you take the next step.

In the next section we will take a closer look at promotional tactics. We do this first, because in most cases, promotion is not only your first priority, but it is also the one which takes the longest to show results.

© Copyright



Top of Page