Marketing Control

Marketing control is the process of monitoring the proposed plans as they proceed and adjusting where necessary. If an objective states where you want to be and the plan sets out a road map to your destination, then control tells you if you are on the right route or if you have arrived at your destination. Control involves measurement, evaluation, and monitoring. Resources are scarce and costly so it is important to control marketing plans. Control involves setting standards. The marketing manager will than compare actual progress against the standards. Corrective action (if any) is then taken. If corrective action is taken, an investigation will also need to be undertaken to establish precisely why the difference occurred.

Reference:
http://www.marketingteacher.com/Lessons/lesson_control.htm

CRM (customer relationship management)

CRM (customer relationship management) is an information industry term for methodologies, software, and usually Internet capabilities that help an enterprise manage customer relationships in an organized way. For example, an enterprise might build a database about its customers that described relationships in sufficient detail so that management, salespeople, people providing service, and perhaps the customer directly could access information, match customer needs with product plans and offerings, remind customers of service requirements, know what other products a customer had purchased, and so forth.

According to one industry view, CRM consists of:

• Helping an enterprise to enable its marketing departments to identify and target their best customers, manage marketing campaigns and generate quality leads for the sales team.

• Assisting the organization to improve telesales, account, and sales management by optimizing information shared by multiple employees, and streamlining existing processes (for example, taking orders using mobile devices)

• Allowing the formation of individualized relationships with customers, with the aim of improving customer satisfaction and maximizing profits; identifying the most profitable customers and providing them the highest level of service.

• Providing employees with the information and processes necessary to know their customers, understand and identify customer needs and effectively build relationships between the company, its customer base, and distribution partners.
Many organizations turn to CRM software to help them manage their customer relationships. CRM technology is offered on-premise, on-demand or through Software as a Service (SaaS) CRM, depending on the vendor. Recently, mobile CRM and the open source CRM software model have also become more popular.

Reference:
http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/definition/CRM

Target market

A 'target market or target Audience is the market segment which a particular product is marketed to. It is often defined by age, gender and/or socio-economic grouping. Market Targeting is the process in which intended actual markets are defined, analyzed and evaluated just before the final decision to enter is made.

Reference:
www.netmba.com/marketing/market/target/

New Media Marketing

New Media Marketing is a relatively new concept used by businesses in developing an online community, which allows satisfied customers to congregate and extol the virtues of a particular brand. In most cases, the online community includes mechanisms such as blogs, podcasts, message boards, and product reviews, all of which contribute to a transparent forum to post praises, criticisms, questions, and suggestions.

One of the primary arguments to promote New Media Marketing is the premise that traditional advertising is losing its influence on consumers. Backed by statistical evidence demonstrating a growing trend of consumers making purchasing decisions off Internet research and referrals. These advocates strongly adhere to the notion that consumers are more inclined to believe feedback from like-minded peers than corporate marketing verbiage dispersed through traditional television, radio, direct mail, or newspaper advertising.

Although businesses would be exposing certain weaknesses to the marketplace by allowing individuals, or even competitors, to post critical comments, responding with an honest and transparent answer designed around solving the issue at hand may mitigate potential risks.

New Media Marketing is most effectively marketed by Internet-driven technology such as blogs, RSS, Web video productions, and podcasts.

Reference:
technorati.com/business/.../social-media-marketing-a-necessary-evil/

The Distribution Channel

Chain of intermediaries, each passing the product down the chain to the next organization, before it finally reaches the consumer or end-user. This process is known as the 'distribution chain' or the 'channel.' Each of the elements in these chains will have their own specific needs, which the producer must take into account, along with those of the all-important end-user.
Channels

A number of alternate 'channels' of distribution may be available:

• Distributor, who sells to retailers

• Retailer (also called dealer or reseller), who sells to end customers

• Advertisement typically used for consumption goods

Distribution channels may not be restricted to physical products alone. They may be just as important for moving a service from producer to consumer in certain sectors, since both direct and indirect channels may be used. Hotels, for example, may sell their services (typically rooms) directly or through travel agents, tour operators, airlines, tourist boards, centralized reservation systems, etc.

There have also been some innovations in the distribution of services. For example, there has been an increase in franchising and in rental services - the latter offering anything from televisions through tools. There has also been some evidence of service integration, with services linking together, particularly in the travel and tourism sectors. For example, links now exist between airlines, hotels and car rental services. In addition, there has been a significant increase in retail outlets for the service sector. Outlets such as estate agencies and building society offices are crowding out traditional grocers from major shopping areas.

Reference:
www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-distribution-channel.htm

Famous Marketing Blunders

1. Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."

2. Coors put its slogan, "Turn It Loose," into Spanish where its translation was read as "Suffer From Diarrhea."

3. Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick", a curling iron, into German only to find out that "mist" is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the "manure stick."

4. When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as they did in the U.S., with the beautiful Caucasian baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the label of what's inside, since most people can't read. Yikes!

5. Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious naughty magazine.

6. An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of "I saw the Pope" (el papa), the shirts read "I saw the potato" (la papa).
7. Pepsi's "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" translated into "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave", in Chinese.

8. The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as "Ke-kou-ke-la", meaning "Bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax", depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 characters to find a phonetic equivalent "ko-kou-ko-le", translating into "happiness in the mouth."

9. When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to have read, "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you." Instead, the company thought that the word "embarazar" (to impregnate) meant to embarrass, so the ad read: "It won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant."

10. Frank Perdue's chicken slogan, "It takes a strong man to make a tender chicken" was translated into Spanish as "It takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate."

Reference:
http://www.digitaldreams.com.ar/english/empresa/marketing_blunders.htm

Market segment

A market segment is a group of people or organizations sharing one or more characteristics that cause them to have similar product and/or service needs. A true market segment meets all of the following criteria: it is distinct from other segments (different segments have different needs), it is homogeneous within the segment (exhibits common needs); it responds similarly to a market stimulus, and it can be reached by a market intervention. The term is also used when consumers with identical product and/or service needs are divided up into groups so they can be charged different amounts. These can broadly be viewed as 'positive' and 'negative' applications of the same idea, splitting up the market into smaller groups.

Reference:
http://www.businessplans.org/Segment.html

Buyer behavior

An important part of the marketing process is to understand why a customer or buyer makes a purchase.

Without such an understanding, businesses find it hard to respond to the customer’s needs and wants.

Marketing theory traditionally splits analysis of buyer or customer behaviour into two broad groups for analysis – Consumer Buyers and Industrial Buyers

Consumer buyers are those who purchase items for their personal consumption

Industrial buyers are those who purchase items on behalf of their business or organisation
Businesses now spend considerable sums trying to learn about what makes “customers tick”.

The questions they try to understand are:

•Who buys?

•How do they buy?

•When do they buy?

•Where do they buy?

• Why do they buy?

Reference:
http://tutor2u.net/business/marketing/buying_introduction.asp

Developing Your Brand Strategy

Developing a brand strategy can be one of the most difficult steps in the marketing plan process. It's often the element that causes most businesses the biggest challenge, but it's a vital step in creating the company identity.
Your brand identity will be repeatedly communicated, in multiple ways with frequency and consistency throughout the life of your business.

Reference:
http://marketing.about.com/od/brandstrategy/tp/brandstrategydev.htm

Roles of marketing channel in marketing strategy:

• Links producers to buyers.
• Performs sales, advertising and promotion.
• Influences the firm's pricing strategy.
• Affecting product strategy through branding, policies, willingness to stock and customizes profits, install, maintain, offer credit, etc.
An example of this is Apple orchard: Apple orchard >Transport > Processing factory > Packaging > > Final product to be sold > Apple pie eaten
An alternative term is distribution channel. It is a 'path' or 'pipeline' through which goods and services flow in one direction (from vendor to the consumer), and the payments generated by them flow in the opposite direction (from consumer to the vendor). A marketing channel can be as short as being direct from the vendor to the consumer or may include several inter-connected (usually independent but mutually dependent) intermediaries such as wholesalers, distributors, agents, retailers. Each intermediary receives the item at one pricing point and moves it to the next higher pricing point until it reaches the final buyer.
Reference:
www.informaworld.com/WJMC

Marketing channel

A marketing channel is a set of practices or activities necessary to transfer the ownership of goods, and to move goods, from the point of production to the point of consumption and, as such, which consists of all the institutions and all the marketing activities in the marketing process. A marketing channel is a useful tool for management

Reference:
www.informaworld.com/WJMC

Competitor analysis

Competitor analysis in marketing and strategic management is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors. This analysis provides both an offensive and defensive strategic context through which to identify opportunities and threats. Competitor profiling coalesces all of the relevant sources of competitor analysis into one framework in the support of efficient and effective strategy formulation, implementation, monitoring and adjustment.

Given that competitor analysis is an essential component of corporate strategy, it is argued that most firms do not conduct this type of analysis systematically enough. Instead, many enterprises operate on what is called “informal impressions, conjectures, and intuition gained through the tidbits of information about competitors every manager continually receives.” As a result, traditional environmental scanning places many firms at risk of dangerous competitive blindspots due to a lack of robust competitor analysis.

Reference:
www.netmba.com/strategy/competitor-analysis/

competitive strategy

A plan for how a firm will compete, formulated after evaluating how its strengths and weaknesses compare to those of its competitors. For example, a small meatpacking firm may decide to concentrate on a special niche product offered in limited areas after determining it cannot compete on price with major competitors.

Reference
http://www.yourdictionary.com/business/competitive-strategy

Expanding Market Share in a Shrinking Economy

Savvy business owners are taking the time to adjust business activity in order to maximize sales performance in current economic times. Following are six tried-and-true principles of business. Taking some time to adjust your business development activity to reflect these principles will go a long way in making 2009 a growth year.

1. If you do nothing, you get nothing. Another way to phrase this is: every day you don’t pitch a customer, is a day you have no deal to close. It is always important to invest strategically in keeping your brand in front of your target audience. In a shrinking economy, it can often be to your advantage to increase marketing and promotional budgets. Doing so assures: the right message, is in front of the right audience, at the right time and gets you invited to the table so you have a chance at winning the deal. Commit to presenting your company to at least one
potential client each day through advertising, PR and promotional activities or good-
old-fashioned appointment setting.

2. When it comes to relationships, it’s the little things that count. Often the courtship that occurred at the beginning of a business relationship dwindles. As sales and marketing staff move on to the next deal, the frequency and context of contact between the businesses change. No one likes being treated as a number. You must continue to make clients feel important, valued and appreciated. Make it a policy that your team is in contact with every client once a week. The contact needs to be personal and initiated by your company. Don't make it about a pitch or taking an order. Over time your client satisfaction ratings will skyrocket.

3. The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. Businesses change vendors every day. Surveys show that more than 75 percent of those changes occur by buyers who were satisfied with their former vendor. This goes back to the little things and not letting the honeymoon end. On the other side, this offers great opportunities for new business. Every one of your competitors' clients is up for grabs. You can win their business if you keep in front of them and woo them with your attention and caring. Know that this also means that everyone of your clients is up for grabs as well.

4. Every piece of business could be gone tomorrow. Since business deals are primarily based on the relationship between two people, if you or your client changes staffing, that piece of business could be gone. The reality is, a client is only a client as of the last order they placed. There is never a guarantee of future orders. Murphy’s Law indicates that the day your pipeline dries up, is the day your biggest client will cancel their contract. This means you must constantly provide added value to your current clients to keep their business. You must also keep your new business pipeline full. Not just with growth leads, but with replacement business. To keep your pipeline full, advertise strategically and consistently; promote your company through intentional media coverage and event placements (PR); generously distribute professionally developed marketing materials; then get in front of your target audience and ask for a presentation meeting.

5. Change your message and the way you deliver it. Clients and potential clients in shrinking economies don’t care what you have to say. They do care that you hear what they need. Push-marketing works in a robust economy. In a shrinking economy, you have to figure out what clients want and care about. Put another way: I don’t care what you want to do for me. I care that someone does what I need done. Taking time to strategically evaluate your message and delivery is a must to keep your business alive. Every first meeting needs to be a lot of listening about what your client thinks, feels and wants. Then reiterate the areas of key concern to get their agreement. In the second meeting, make everything you say directly tie to what your client expressed. Think of it as saying, “what this means to you is…” as a direct response to each of their concerns.

6. Necessity is the mother of invention. If you only go after the opportunities that your company has previous experience in, you will never have reason to expand your offerings. If IBM stuck with manufacturing mechanical punches, sorters, tabulators and typewriters, they would not exist today. Staying on top of the latest-and-greatest in your market segment and incorporating it into your own offerings is a must. This means you must not only market what you do, but what you could do. It may even mean adjusting your core competencies to allow for new technology and fluctuations in market demand.
The great thing about shrinking economies is they force you to seriously evaluate your business, how you do things and adjust your tactics. In order to be relevant in today’s market and maintain long-term success, some great questions to always keep in mind are:

What do you wish to accomplish?
What is your strategy to achieve it?
What are realistic results for your strategy?
What are the steps and tactics necessary to activate the strategy?
What are the realistic results for each step or tactic?
Have you invested enough resources into each step or tactic to achieve the desired return?

Taking time to evaluate your marketing, PR and advertising will go a long way in making 2009 a growth year.

Reference:
http://forums.industryweek.com/showthread.php?t=2189

Product adaptation in new markets

Modifications of the product itself are often required to make the product appeal more to the market this is the so called product adaptation. It can also be necessary to make the product safer, more up to date or more useful for a different target audience, especially on domestic markets. Product adaptation on international markets it is important to adapt the product to the culture.

Things that can differ in different cultures are the taste of the product, the style, the colour, or symbols, language, but also more specific like differences in technology, environmental differences, religion etc. The taste of a product is very important for the food, drinks and cigarette industry. Style is more important in car and fashion industry, which also includes the colour and symbols. The meaning of a colour or a symbol can differ from culture to culture.

Reference:
http://www.seomagnifier.com/product-adaptation-65/cms-article.html

Ethical Marketing

Ethical marketing is about whether a firms marketing decision is morally right or wrong. The morality of the marketing decision can encompass any part of marketing from advertising to the pricing of their product or service, to the sourcing of their raw materials.

In today’s corporate world ethical marketing is playing a larger role in marketing strategy. An increasing number of consumers are buying products/services because they feel that the products, services or organisations responsible for those are ethical. In response to this consumer demand organisations have increased their focus on ethical marketing. The UK Co-operative bank is good example of an organisation that tries to follow a ethical principal, based on what the customers feel strong about.

When companies are reviewing marketing strategies they need to consider whether the marketing decisions that they are making are ethical and reflect consumer and market expectations.
An individual’s view of ethics and morality is influenced by a variety of things including their culture, background, experience, upbringing/family, peers, community, religion and country.

Reference:

http://www.learnmarketing.net/ethicalmarketing.htm

Careers in Marketing

Millions of people around the world are pursuing careers in marketing. These include marketing manager, those employed in advertising and other promotion areas, salespeople, and many, many more. In fact, when you consider how many different jobs fall under the heading of marketing, it is estimated that worldwide over 30% of all workers work in marketing.



Reference:
http://www.knowthis.com/principles-of-marketing-tutorials/careers-in-marketing/

Interview Questions and Answers

Job interviews are always stressful - even for job seekers who have gone on countless interviews. The best way to reduce the stress is to be prepared. Take the time to review the "standard" interview questions you will most likely be asked. Also review sample answers to these typical interview questions.

Then take the time to research the company. That way you'll be ready with knowledgeable answers for the job interview questions that specifically relate to the company you are interviewing with.

Reference:
http://jobsearch.about.com/od/interviewquestionsanswers/a/interviewquest.htm

Product management

Product management is an organizational lifecycle function within a company dealing with the planning or marketing of a product or products at all stages of the product lifecycle.

Product management (inbound focused) and product marketing (outbound focused) are different yet complementary efforts with the objective of maximizing sales revenues, market share, and profit margins. The role of product management spans many activities from strategic to tactical and varies based on the organizational structure of the company. Product management can be a function separate on its own or a member of marketing or engineering.
Reference:
www.280group.com/blog/

Secondary - Marketing Research

Secondary marketing research, or desk research, already exist in one form or another. It is relatively cheap, and can be conducted quite quickly .However, it tends to have been collected for reasons other than for the problem or objective at hand. So it may be untargeted, and difficult to use to make comparisons (e.g. financial data gather on Australian pensions will be different to data on Italian pensions). There are a number of such sources available to the marketer, and the following list is by no means conclusive:

• Trade associations

• National and local press Industry magazines

• National/international governments

• Websites

• Informal contacts

• Trade directories

• Published company accounts

• Business libraries

• Professional institutes and organisations

• Omnibus surveys

• Previously gathered marketing research

• Census data

• Public records


Reference: http://www.mindtools.com