Philip Kotler, the renowed Professor of Marketing at the

							Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen.

Thank you for the opportunity to share with you some ideas about marketing

communication.

       Marketing is an area that I am particularly passionate about. It is an area

also in which, hopefully, I do have some experience. In addition to earning an

MBA in marketing from the Kellogg School of Management which as some of

you know, is the foremost graduate marketing school in the world, I have had

the opportunity to work in consumer marketing, for SC Johnson in Racine,

Wisconsin and for Diageo, the parent company of Guinness. I am currently the

Head of Corporate Services & Legal at Standard Trust Bank which means I am

simultaneously the Bank’s Chief legal officer and Chief Marketing Officer. I am

therefore ultimately responsible for all our marketing communication and brand

building activities.



My objective for this evening is simple – to illustrate that effective marketing

communication is an important pre-condition for growing and managing any

SME. I will try and illustrate with some local examples and would urge you to

challenge me in the discussion afterwards with some other examples. I will be

happy to take questions at the end.



Before I go on, could I please ask you to put all cell phones on silent or vibrate

mode and keep distractions to the barest minimum.




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First let’s set the context so as to ensure we are all on the same piece of paper.

When someone talks about marketing communication, what comes to mind?



……………………. [Audience]



For most people, when you talk about marketing communication, they only think

of advertising. However, advertising is only a miniscule of marketing

communication. Indeed for SME’s advertising might be completely inappropriate

and a waste of resources that could be channelled better elsewhere.



Philip Kotler, a pre- eminent marketing authority defines marketing in his book

‘Kotler on marketing’ as follows:



He says and I quote ‘marketing is the science and art of finding, keeping and

growing profitable customers’. Note the elements:

      First it’s a science

      Second it is an art

      It is about finding profitable customers

      It is about keeping those profitable customers when you have found them

       and it is about

      Growing profitable customers




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Having defined marketing, let us look at the other main component of the topic

for today. SMEs – small and medium size (or scale) enterprises. In 1971, the

Boulton Committee defined SMEs as enterprises with the following characteristics:

      Relatively small share of the market

      Managed by owners or part owners in a personalised way and not

       through a medium of a formalized mgt structure

      Independent in the sense of not forming part of a large enterprise

There is a curious paradox that many SME aspire to leave the SME category. And

indeed the SMEs of the yesterday – Unique Trust, Domod Nkensie, Lizzie’s Wigs etc

are LSEs today (Large Scale enterprises).



If you are seeking to grow and manage your SME, effective marketing

communication is absolutely essential for the following reasons:

      Effective marketing communication creates customer connection.

       Successful marketers focus on creating customer connections and

       enhancing the customer experience which will translate into naira and

       kobo or cedis and pesewas. The logic is as follows: Your initial

       communication should create awareness about the product or service.

       Once a customer becomes aware you use reinforcing messages to get

       him to try the product. At that stage you have to make a connection. This

       notion has been described as ‘the magic that goes beyond the box’.

       Without a connection, the customer may only try the product once and

       never go back. But it is the customer connection that gets him to try the

       product or service again and again and if you do it well, the customer



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    becomes an ‘advocate’ – the most effective form of marketing. The

    customer goes round telling everybody about the product or service and

    would only buy that product. You should note the following data:

           o 70% of a company’s average sales comes from existing customers.

           o 70%-80% of a company’s sales is driven by 20%-30% of customers.

           o 100% of unhappy customers will tell their ‘horror stories’ to at least

           nine other people

           o 13% of those unhappy customers will tell 20 other people.

   How does one make a connection because as an SME owner, you may

    be far removed from the time and place of the eventual purchase of your

    product? I will give you a very simple example to illustrate. How many of

    you have heard of Mama Olive’s plantain chips? I have no idea who

    Mama Olive is but I have connected deeply with this product and I am a

    heavy consumer.

   What did she do right?

       o    She met my consumer need. She communicated with me not

            through flashy advertising but by simply being available first at my

            local Shell and then at many other filling stations and supermarkets.

            Then when I bought it, the taste was exactly as I wanted it to be –

            not the same, but close to the way my mother makes plantain

            chips. Recall that the name of the product is Mama Olive’s, again

            pretty consistent. My mother could have been a Mama Olive and

            that resonates. It is clear from the packaging – simple plastic with a

            computer generated label – that Mama Olive’s is made in a



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           cottage industry of some sort. Again, consistent with the rest of its

           communication. It is ‘rough and ready’ and inexpensive which all

           ties in. Anyone who knows me will confirm that when it comes to

           plantain chips, I only buy Mama Olive’s.

   Another example. Eunqui-I-Décor is a very small interior decorating firm in

    South Labadi. I went to them upon recommendation from my sister (an

    advocate). During my first encounter with them, they took too long to

    deliver a few things I had ordered which made me very angry with them.

    When the sales guy eventually turned up to finish up the work in my

    absence, he noticed that my bed had still not been assembled. He

    assembled the bed and laid it in a way that only an interior decorator

    could and then left a note saying that he thought I would appreciate this

    being done for me. I was so impressed that my anger disappeared and I

    have become an advocate of Eunqui-I-Décor. Often, I know they can

    get a low priced alternative but I am prepared to pay more for the

    personal touch (which by the way has continued).

   I chose these examples because I don’t think Mama Olive’s or Eunqui-I-

    Décor has ever paid for a radio or TV or newspaper ad. But they do

    effective marketing because they have a good idea of who their

    customer is and take that into consideration.

       o   Mama Olive’s knows (or it appears to me that she knows) that I like

           to connect with my childhood by resorting to plantain chips as a

           quick snack on the go. She knows that customers like me

           sometimes don’t have time for a meal and plantain chips is ideal.



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              She knows I must be able to get to the plantain chips whenever I

              need it since the decision to buy is often impulsive. As a result of

              that, she is at most filling stations that I drive through.

          o   Eunqui-I-Décor may have figured out that I have no clue how to fix

              beds, prefer to sleep on a bed rather than a mattress on the floor

              and that I was too busy at work to find time to get someone to

              assemble the bed.

To understand your customer you should always carry out market research. This

does not have to take the form of a questionnaire or a focus group necessarily.

Keeping your eyes open about your customer’s habits and lifestyles and listening

alone could be enough.

      o   A better known example (and one using mass communication) is

          Kasapa.

                 Kasapa is not trying to be all things to all men and women. You

                  hear the gong and then the famous words – Good Talk, Great

                  Value. Tells me Kasapa is targeting ‘value conscious customers’.

                  Unlike its competitor which previously was ‘communicating for

                  the nation’, Kasapa focused not on network but on delivering

                  cheap talk which is more important to its customers than

                  network coverage. With a Kasapa handset priced around

                  C300, 000, free Kasapa to Kasapa calls you might argue that

                  they are on track.




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                 The examples I have given also show that effective market

                  communication is about consistent messaging across all

                  customer touch points. I find it very funny that SIC says ‘Our

                  promises are sacred, yet when you go to make a claim it takes

                  a long time for the claim to process it’



A company must strive to deliver a consistent and positive message at all

contact points. If like Domod Nkensie, you say ‘pa pa no no’ then you should be

prepared to replace any defective saucepans for example. Both your internal

marketing and your external marketing should be consistent – to the ‘t’.

Marketers typically think of external marketing but not internal marketing. Internal

marketing is as important as external marketing.



Internal Marketing Communication is essentially what the firm communicates

about itself internally. The image you form when you meet the reception lady for

example, when you see the branded company cars outside, the physical

appearance of the office etc. Your staff are crucial to this and it is important that

they all understand the company’s values, the product offerings etc.




   As an SME, resources are likely to be more scarce than for your LSE

    counterparts. You may not be able to spend a fraction of what Unique Trust or

    Areeba spend. But your message ought to be as effective. You got to cut

    through the clutter, but how? Classic advertising - in newspapers, magazines,



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    trade journals and on Radio, TV etc are a no-brainers so I will not dwell on it

    except to say if you are going to use any of those media, be clear that your

    target customers are in fact watching that show or buying that magazine,

    based on basic research.



I would suggest that you consider a few other alternatives, obviously depending

on your product, budget and objective:

   Direct Marketing: direct mail to select customers, telephone marketing,

    Internet. TravelKing – a leading travel agency- does a great job of direct

    marketing by complying customer email data and sending customers details

    of promotions. Direct mail via email is inexpensive but because of all the spam

    that people get, if you are going to use it, get help with graphics etc to ensure

    that your message is so visually appealing that it gets read.

       Ghana Post has a marketing department that works with businesses to send

        out mailings to individuals and corporates with Post Box numbers. An

        entrepreneur wanting to introduce a new office product for example can

        send out a flyer to post boxes in Accra Central, Ministries, Cantonments and

        Accra North thereby capturing a large %age of the Accra business market.

   Public Relations: articles in print media about your product, business or you

    written by you or a journalist. If you are a consulting firm for example and you

    write a great piece on recruitment for example in Graphic, you will be

    communicating that you are an expert in that field

   Meetings, workshops etc – would have the same effect but please go

    prepared.



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   Viral marketing - viral marketing is also known as word of mouth advertising is

    consistent with our cultural and social and cultural mindset and values. A

    great way for example to market a new youth item might be to ‘plant’

    people in the main hang outs for young people, to exhault the virtues of the

    product or to been seen using the product in a very visible way.



   Effective communication also means that Communication not based on a

    single vehicle but on as many different communication vehicles that are

    necessary, given budgetary constraints. Rather spend your entire budget to

    launch a product on advertising on TV for example, you may decide to do

    the following:

Hold a press conference to get ‘free’ press coverage. ‘Free’ in quotes because

you will incur some costs such as hiring the venue, Section…etc. You can then

follow up with a print advertising campaign



One size does not fit all. Clearly. What size fits you or your SME will depend on the

nature of your products, your resources and more importantly your customer.

Whatever your business (even if it is a Church) effective marketing

communication can help you grow.



Thank you for the priviledge and courtesy you have accorded me this evening

by listening.



Thank you.



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If you have follow up questions etc, feel free to email me at

elikem@kuenyehia.com




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