The Ps And The Marketing Mix
You may or may not have heard of the 4 (or 5) Ps of marketing. Whether or not you have heard of them, they will have influenced you. They might have been devised decades ago and formerly adopted by theorists in 1960 when Jerome McCarthy laid them out as the fundamental principles behind the marketing mix, but they are still as relevant now as they were then.
The basis of the marketing mix is:
- Product
- Place
- Price
- Promotion
Those are the original four; people were added to the mix later.
What, Where, How Much, Why And Who?
Whatever people want to sell you, those are the key things they must include in the marketing mix.
- The product is the item or brand. How is it being positioned in the market? Budget, value, top-end, premium or exclusive? This can also be called ‘What’.
- The place where it is being sold (instore, online or direct?). This can be known as ‘Where’.
- The price – how much will the market pay for the product? It is easy to assume people buy on low price, but this is often not the case. Some in the market seek a high price tag for exclusive or premium items. So we can think about this as ‘How Much.’
- Promotion is about differentiating the product from the competitors and getting people to ‘buy-in’. Promotion can include brand advertising, bonus offers, influencer recommendations, partnerships and PR. This boils down to ‘Why’.
- People is all about who the product is being sold to, who is being targeted, and who the product is aligning with to influence sales. People’s data has also become a massive part of the people equation, and digital marketing has exploded. The better a brand understands ‘Who’ is buying or likely to buy their product or service, the better their chance of selling more.
The Rise Of Bonus Marketing
Bonuses sit firmly under the promotion element of the marketing mix. Most people regard advertising and brand building as the glamorous side of the advertising business. Forty years ago, anyone working ‘below the line’ was looked down upon by the swanky executives working in their uptown offices. However, fast forward to today, and we see bonuses and sales promotion powering the marketing mix. Some sectors spend more on bonus marketing than just about anything else. They are a powerful tool; everyone always wants a little more (or a lot).
Coupons and bonus promotions have been around in the FMCG sector forever. In their most modern guise, they are mostly combined with store loyalty programs, and offers are driven by the data collected on the individual to tailor specific bonuses. They are used extensively in the online casino and sports betting markets to attract new customers and reward loyalty.
Bonuses In The Online Gambling World
A whole industry has grown around letting people know where to find the best bonus offers. Hannah Cutajar is a leading expert in the casino bonus industry, and she and her team are on a mission to sort out the wheat from the chaff and help players in Canada and around the world find the top bonus offers in their market.
She says,
“Every online casino wants players to sign up and play at their platform and not the competitors. They offer welcome and sign-up bonuses. These can include matching deposits and even no-deposit bonus codes. Players also get to bag plenty of free spins and other bonus offers. We do always warn people to look out for the terms and conditions. Sometimes, a headline offer can look incredibly generous, but on studying the small print, the strings attached to redeeming the bonus.”
So, reputable bonuses in the gambling industry aim to get people to play on a particular site, deposit money, and have fun while playing. Unfortunately, some bonuses are there to trick people, and it is essential to be aware of this. It is not that the provider does not honour the terms and conditions of the offer, but they can make wagering requirements so excessive that only someone with very deep pockets would ever get to cash out their winnings.
A Cautionary Tale – Cleaning Up The Wrong Way
However, it is not only in gambling that one needs to be aware of terms and conditions that can trip you up. If you ever see a bonus or promotion that looks too good to be true, the chances are they are. However, years back, it was the promoter who got the terms of their bonus offer wrong. The uptake was so high that fulfilling the offer became a nightmare that nearly took Hoover down.
In 1992, The UK arm of the company offered two free international flight tickets to everyone who spent £100 on a Hoover vacuum cleaner. The purpose of the promotion was to drive up sales of vacuum cleaners. Until then, the word Hoover and vacuum cleaner were essentially synonymous, but the likes of Dyson were starting to make serious inroads into the American company’s market share.
The promotion was advertised heavily on TV and in print media. The company put in place steps to make it relatively tricky to redeem the offer, but they failed to understand that the offer was so attractive people would be prepared to jump through every hoop to get their hands on the free flights. It went down in history as the worst bonus offer ever conceived.
Initially, it was only for flights to European destinations, but when they expanded it to cover round-trip flights to New York or Orlando, the public went into overdrive to get their hands on the tickets. The bonus was worth £600 in return for spending £100. No one in the industry was prepared to insure the risk, and Hoover went ahead believing that most people would spend far more than the minimum and only a small number would jump the necessary hoops to redeem the offer. Neither of these statements turned out to be true.
While the company generated an estimated £30 million in gross sales, it is estimated that the flights cost them more than three times that. The company then went out of its way to prevent the customers from claiming and using their bonus flights, and its
reputation never really recovered in the UK.
Unintended Consequences
Those working on bonus offers to attract and keep customers need to remember all elements of the marketing mix and make sure the revolution generated is the one which was intended.