Marketing Aquaculture Products — 1

tangible and intangible. To successfully market
your product, you must understand its benefi
ts from the buyer’s perspective. Th e off ering
includes a tangible product or service, plus
related services, such as delivery guarantees,
warranties, and packaging. It also includes
intangible benefi ts resulting from uniqueness of
product or outstanding customer service.
Your business and marketing plans should address
what type of customers you seek, what the
buyers need, and how your off erings meet their
needs. It should also describe how your off ering
is communicated and what value it holds
for the consumer.
Most organizations sell more than one product.
A multi-product off ering-mix approach
oft en adds value in that it leverages economies
of scale and expertise, and increases revenue
generation potential. Big companies off er all
sorts of products and services, retail stores off er
hundreds of products to meet the breadth of
needs of their customers.
Th is off ering mix should be viewed as a fl uid
entity when developing the company’s marketing
strategy. Some off erings may have
surprising popularity, others less so. Th is will
dictate decisions on which product lines to
grow, maintain, harvest, or sold or discontinued.
Consumer demand, the cost of production,
gross margin, and total sales volume are
the four basic critical factors in the decision to
manage individual product lines. Th e key here
is proper invested of resources in response to
changes in the (consumer/client) market.
When communicating the relevance of your
products. Consider the gift of knowledge approach
to help reach your market. Feel free to
talk about what sets your product apart from
the pack in ways that reassure your clients. A
leading consumer-products manufacturer was
recently evangelizing hygiene, instead of just
trying to sell bottles of soap. As a result, one
builds the perception that you are in the market
to provide a needed service and improve your
sector; not to exploit the market for the sole
purpose of garnering profi t.
As you work with your product and your
clients, either buyers for retail stores or the consumer,
remember that you are communicating
why your product is good for them. If it is not
suited to them it will be a hard, or impossible
sale. Woody Norris, Chairman American Technology
Corporation, said in Popular Science,
June 2007, “Ask (yourself): Is it commercially
plausible? If you invent a novel ballpoint pen
that’s going to cost $100,000; nobody’s going to
care.”
Now let’s consider a brief primer on the general
principles of business development. Business
development involves evaluating your business
and related businesses so that you can use
the information to reach your goals and full
potential. Th e primary activity “tool set” falls
into the broad areas of marketing, information
management, and customer service. In larger
companies, there are usually two functional
areas. One is sales-oriented (client-facing); the
second is an operational function to support
sales and develop public-relations outreach for
the business.
Th ese primary tool sets for business development
can be broken down into a number of
techniques and tactics oriented toward gaining
new customers, penetrating existing markets
and developing new ones. As you can see, it is
necessary to develop a skill set that is a mixture
of the marketing, legal, strategic planning,
fi nance, proposal management and sales
expertise.
• Self assessment of your marketing
experience, communication strengths
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