25th January 2017 - ADMIN

Successful or value-added marketing is about doing all the “rights”: featuring the right product, tagged with the right price, in the right way to the right customers to create a brand that has a reputation among its customers for delivering a consistent outcome. The introduction of a product in the market requires several critical ingredients to get the right “marketing mix” to enhance your business’s success. The “marketing mix” refers to the elements that capture a brand or product’s unique selling points. The concept has been condensed into the 4PS of marketing:

• Product
• Price
• Place
• Promotion

A shift of focus of these elements can vary depending on the product type, the defined target market and the channel used. Once you appreciate the legal issues concerning branding, you will be able to position your business for sustained success.

In this blog post, we are going to cover how intellectual property rights can be used to protect the “marketing mix” of competitive business owners in Sydney.

Product

A product can be an intangible service or a tangible product that meets a need or want of consumers. A business may think that it has a brand new idea and prematurely introduce a new product in the market. However, before firing all guns in the development phase, it is important to check whether the idea is already present in your target market or whether it really is a totally ‘new’ or novel concept.

For example, you may need to consult a patent attorney to find out whether you have “freedom to operate” in relation to your invention, without infringing the intellectual property rights of others. You should also consult a trade mark attorney to help you make decisions with the choice of your brand name from a legal perspective. You need to ascertain whether your chosen name is one you can legally own because not all names are eligible for trade mark registration and protection.

Before you can successfully market your product, you need a clear understanding of exactly:

• what your product is?
• what makes your product unique?
• do you have clearance to use the brand name?

Price

It can be tricky to choose the right price for your products. Your pricing needs to be competitive and justified to provide a promised value to customers. However, it also needs to be the optimum price that a customer will pay for a product or service because price determination will impact profit margins, supply, demand and marketing strategies. A pricing strategy must take into account development costs, the pricing of the competition, and the target customer group and their willingness to pay.

A pricing strategy will also need to consider the cost of intellectual property infringement as exclusivity will influence cost and therefore price. By preserving control over the commercial use of a businesses’ intellectual property rights, value is added and a business can recoup its investment and development costs. If a competitor could simply take KFC’s core recipes or trade marks to develop similar products, it could price its products much lower than KFC because it would not need to recover its development and research costs.

Place

• Right product, right price, right place, right time

It is important that you identify the right place or distribution channels for turning potential customers into actual customers. Place is the process and methods for moving products and services to your customers. Place covers various channels such as location, retailers, wholesalers, distributors and the Internet. A smart strategy for placement that is focused on reaching your target customer base at the right time will position your business in the best way to connect to them. By protecting your brand name with a registered trade mark, you will be in a far stronger position to protect your intellectual property online and stop customers from riding off the success or reputation of your business name.

Promotion

Effective promotion includes strategies for advertising, public relations, social media marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing, video marketing and more. Promotion is the communication element of marketing and includes all the activities that involve communicating with your customer about your products and services.

As there is a substantial cost associated with promotional activities, it is critical that you protect your brand against competitors misusing it. You need to ensure that through the “marketing mix”, you attract the customer’s attention to you and that the message is not sent instead to a competitor using your name or other intellectual property.

By registering a trade mark, you can protect your intellectual property from theft or misuse by competitors in the industry, giving yourself a clear shot at promoting your products and services in the marketplace.

The use of patent and trademark protection stops unethical competitors from using similar products with the same names as yours or infringing your monopoly rights in a registered patent.
Disclaimer. The material in this post represents general information only and should not be taken to be legal advice.