Marketing Aquaculture Products — 1

Evangelize. Once you know what you are and
where your product stands, get the word out
in those terms. You are not a round peg in a
square hole; you are the perfect fi t for delivery
of a very-specifi c high-quality product. Consider
shameless self-promotion, if you don’t
feel passionate enough about your business
to strongly communicate its attributes, why
should anyone else?
Th is is where your mission statement can come
in handy. Use it to develop an elevator speech.
Many entrepreneurial geniuses live by the elevator
speech. Th e concept is simple, you need a
short little conversational spiel that tells everything
about your product, that can make a sale
or generate interest in your enterprise, that you
can deliver in the length of time it takes to ride
up a couple of fl oors in an elevator. Start with
your mission statement and then expand it to
talk about who you are, what you produce, why
your product is the absolute best, and then why
the person to whom you are talking should try
it or support it. Politicians do this when they
corner potential campaign donors at cocktail
parties; entrepreneurs do this when the meet a
venture capitalist in an airport waiting room;
car salespeople do it to sell cars; door-to-door
salespeople do it when they get their foot in
your front door. You fall into the entrepreneur
category, so don’t feel bad for having a ready,
smooth synopsis that you can deliver to state
your case. If it is too long, the listener will lose
interest. It should be informative and cover key
points, but leave the listener curiously hungry
for more.
Does your company and product provide
a solution or a breakthrough? Oft entimes,
in the marketing of high-technology, this is
the key question asked by a client’s marketing
10 — Marketing Aquaculture Products
agency. It is key to considering the tone and
direction of your communications. Consider
that solutions enable incremental improvements;
breakthroughs create new markets and/
or change current market forces.
For an aquaculture operation, an example of a
solution could be regularly supplying product
to select group of fi rst-class restaurants and
working with their chefs to continually deliver
the quality they require and develop new avenues
to present the product to the consumer.
An example of a breakthrough could be creatively
introducing the product to a group of
consumers who have not had any exposure to
it, or have only misconceptions about it; then
convincing them to try the product. Th is could
be done through a booth at a farmer’s market
or other venue where fresh product could be
expertly prepared and served, while fresh or
frozen product was available for sale, perhaps
with a complimentary recipe, breading mix or
preparation how-to instruction sheet. Another
example could be taking unsold fi sh-fi llet product
and adding a value-added processing step
to turn it into a smoked spreadable gourmet
snack food with various applications and many
new marketing opportunities. In this scenario,
one could almost equally make the case that
resulting product was a solution and a breakthrough.
Do you market a product or an “off ering”?
It has been said that successful companies
don’t market products, they market off erings.
Th is approach allows you to think beyond the
tangible “product” entity and consider what the
consumer is actually buying and their reasoning
behind that purchase. Th is is an extremely
valuable approach for judging where you fi t
against consumers’ other alternatives, to better
identify unmet needs in the overall marketplace,
specifi c wants of your target markets, and
to direct the development of your venture’s new
products and services.
An off ering encompasses the benefi ts or
satisfaction provided to your target markets,