Is Lateral Marketing What You Need?

In the world of commerce, declarations are popular that everything has already been done and that the basic principles have not changed for thousands of years. The concept developed in 2003 and used by the largest companies today proves otherwise. What exactly is lateral marketing? Application examples can be found below. 

Lateral marketing is marketing concept developed in 2003 by Philip Kotler. Kotler is the author of 80 books and has over 60 years of marketing research behind him. What is his theory? 

What is lateral marketing?

A common practice during various brainstorming and work on marketing concepts is to look for new applications and customers for a given product within the existing market.

Lateral marketing involves finding new customer needs for which you can propose appropriate products. Allows go beyond the current market, which gives completely new development opportunities. It can be used at the level of a company which, by making a small or large change in the offered products, can gain a completely new character, group of customers or opportunities.

In this way, it becomes resistant to changes in the market. It targets two markets instead of one, and sometimes it tracks true innovation. Sometimes this type of marketing is used only on a small scale, in order to change the approach to a specific product line or product. Quite often in the history of business, an insignificant side product of a given company has become the one that brought it enormous fame.

Lateral marketing techniques 

Lateral marketing is a relatively fresh concept, based on completely different assumptions than traditional ones.  

• Traditional marketing consists of specific steps and time frames - lateral marketing allows for breaking them if the effect is satisfactory. 
• Earlier marketing strategy it arose as a result of brainstorming, where the correct elimination route was ultimately chosen out of many different concepts. Lateral marketing does not make choice by gradually narrowing down the choice - any concept or combination of concepts may be appropriate. 
• Customary sales support it is based on the slogans: more and better. Lateral marketing can be based on: otherwise. 
• Marketing audit within traditional marketing, it would define the needs of the market. By using lateral marketing, completely new markets and opportunities can be taken into account. 

The example cited in the book is the situation of a breakfast cereal producer who imagines no milk or a bowl to serve his breakfast. A disharmony arises. The owner of the company is considering the numerous ways in which he can "fix" this situation: by pouring water, juice, coffee on the cereal ... After a long brainstorming, the right solution in this situation turned out to be the development of the cereal bar. Such a product allows you to eat cereals without milk and without the use of a bowl. 

Lateral marketing - examples of applications 

Lateral marketing can be seen at every step. Where does such popularity come from? Many large companies are well aware that it works. For example, women have always made up a smaller percentage of people buying beer. The companies have created colorful, sweet alcoholic drinks reminiscent of lemonade, rosé wine or apple cider. As a result, they created a new market and a previously non-existent need.  

You can also go the way of searching for an unusual group of recipients for which a product can be created. This is probably how the idea for non-alcoholic champagne for children or wine for pregnant women arose. Lateral marketing may also involve a change in the way you buy or pay, such as subscribing to services instead of a one-time bill or ordering online instead of live. Sometimes this is the way to reach a completely new customer. At other times, an entirely new need may be created in an existing one. 

Not only traditional marketing

Lateral marketing can confuse with other common definitions in trading. The horizontal market covers many different sectors or customer groups with a very broad profile. Such marketing must therefore be targeted at everyone: men and women of virtually all ages.

Vertical markets cover one sector or industry, and the marketing of such products covers a specific group, e.g. only young women from large cities interested in ecology.

Lateral marketing allows you to go beyond these patterns, changing the product and going beyond these markets. With the current saturation with products and services, it is worth appreciating that, unlike traditional marketing, lateral marketing creates a market, instead of increasingly desperately looking for a place in a fragmented or crowded market that already exists.

With this concept, the company can focus on identifying additional needs that can be satisfied by changing an existing product. It can also acquire additional customers that it can reach by making changes to an existing product. In this concept, it is not the customer, but the product that is "most important". It is around him that most of the activities are focused. This is because the creative thinking process is based on induction, not deduction. Companies are still making market segmentationso it becomes more fragmented and saturated. Their innovation is more and more often expressed in making changes within the product or service, which, however, are not intended to fundamentally change their essence.