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There are three Ds; not four in marketing

And discounting is not one of them

Recently we read an article by Lois Brayfield, CEO of JSchmid, a specialty creative agency in catalog design and driving response with direct marketing. In her article she explained that marketing should have only three components. Perhaps not always easy to achieve but definitely easy to explain. The components are referred to as the “three D’s”.

The first D is Disrupt. Even when you as the manager or owner of a liquor store are not focusing on your store, there are plenty of things working to get your attention. Even when you are driving in your car or trying to relax at home, things are before you or in your mind. You know this is true when a child or spouse says, “Hey, didn’t you hear what I said to you?”.

Any message that is going to get to you by way of television, radio, billboard, or social media has a big challenge in the form of the first, “D”; disrupt. Yes, somehow that message from another business must do something to disrupt you from whatever you are doing or thinking about.

Now that the advertiser has gotten your attention, be it ever so briefly, their message you see or hear is at least 15 seconds if not 60 seconds. In print it could be as small as one-eighth page; billboards would be just a few seconds as you drive by; and with social media it varies from Instagram to TikTok and YouTube.

But within whatever time is there, the message must do something that holds your attention. Brayfield refers to this component as the “delight” that will cause you to hold onto that advertising message in your memory.

The final component in Brayfield’s trilogy of the letter “D” of marketing, and perhaps the most important is to “drive” you to act. It goes without saying that with your store we want the customer to be driven to make a purchase.

Within the three “D’s” that Brayfield offers, everyone has a strategy of how to get you as a customer to make a purchase. If you are not handling this aspect of your business yourself, you are hiring someone or a business to handle this important aspect of your business for you.

The title of the article says there are three “D’s” in marketing and not four. However, there is a fourth “D” that continually runs rampant within the trade. It is often seen as a way to take a shortcut through the other three we have already described.
That fourth “D” is discounting. Somehow, we have collectively gotten to the point where discounting is seen as the necessary ingredient for delighting and driving the customer to action.

The first concern we have with the discounted price is the loss of margin. Do the math of offering four dollars off any bottle. What does that leave you as a margin? Calculate the four dollars as percentage points in your price. When you look at the net profit of your store as a percentage, are you making money on that sale?

When discounting occurs in promos such as “Wine Wednesday” or “Beer Thursday”, are you increasing sales or just moving more of the sales to those specific days which now have discounted prices on these items?

Bottom line of our exploring Brayfield’s “three D’s”; it seems we need to do a better job of adhering to having only three and not four. That fourth “D” can be deadly to a profitable business.

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This article is copyrighted by Tom Shay and Profits Plus Solutions, who can be reached at: PO Box 128, Dardanelle, AR. 72834. Phone 727-823-7205. It may be printed for an individual to read, but not duplicated or distributed without expressed written consent of the copyright owner.

This article is copyrighted by Tom Shay and Profits Plus Solutions, who can be reached at: PO Box 128, Dardanelle, AR. 72834. Phone 727-823-7205. It may be printed for an individual to read, but not duplicated or distributed without expressed written consent of the copyright owner.