Be Different or be dead

March 19, 2021

Why a marketing strategy to bundle is absolutely the wrong thing to do

Source: Pexels

Why a marketing strategy to bundle is absolutely the wrong thing to do.

A marketing strategy to bundle is a catastrophe; it’s nothing more than price cutting in disguise.

’Customerization’ replaces the traditional marketing approach of developing products and services for the masses in favor of creating packages of value for the chosen few customers you have selected to serve.

Many marketers equate packaging to bundling, and yet they are completely different concepts.

A bundle:

▪️ the whole = the sum of its parts. It is a collection of products and services kluged together without forethought of an integrated value proposition.
▪️ is driven by a price theme of savings.
▪️ price is a discount over what you would pay for all of the components if purchased individually. They follow ‘the more you buy the less you pay for each element’ theme.
▪️ is branded using the word ‘bundle’ to describe the pasting together of individual products or services - eg “The Financial Services Bundle”.
▪️ forces the potential customer to define value they would likely receive. Rarely is the value proposition offered anything else but cheap prices.
▪️ is easy to copy by competitors within an industry (everyone offers bundles these days) since it is really a lower price in disguise.
▪️ consumes relatively few marketing resources. The price message over a collage of existing products and services doesn’t require a significant investment to go-to-market.
▪️ is smoke-and-mirrors innovation. It gives the illusion (to the marketers) that the process is innovative when it clearly it’s nothing more than an assemble-and-discount one.

It’s a price play, pure and simple.

A value package:

▪️ the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Package components are combined together to generate more value that they would by pasting them together.
▪️ is driven by a value theme and the great ones are built around the idea of creating new experiences for people.
▪️ the price is a premium to the sum of the individual product and service components. Value packages are priced on the basis of the overall value created and not on the price points of the components.
▪️ is branded as something NEW, and reflects the set of benefits created for the customer.
▪️ makes the value explicit for the customer. The value proposition is expressed in terms of value received from the collection of components operating synergistically.
▪️ is tough to copy by the competition since the package is the result of a value integration process.
▪️ consumes more marketing resources associated with integrating value components, branding, strategic partnerships (for package components that must be ‘imported’ from another supplier).
▪️ it exemplifies true innovation by discovering an unmet need and creating a new offering with a unique set of value.

Unforgettable marketing is NOT a price game.

A marketing strategy to bundle your products doesn’t work in the long term. It’s a value play.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 3.19.21 at 10:36 am by Roy Osing
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