Market Intelligence

Market Intelligence is about providing a company with a view of a market using existing sources of information to understand what is happening in a market place, what the issues are and what the likely market potential is.

Market Intelligence can be divided into two spheres

Market Intelligence based on external data
Market Intelligence based on internal data

Market Intelligence from external data:

Market intelligence from external data is normally gathered through what is known as desk research. This means sourcing and analysing published information to build a picture of a market and to try and answer some specific commercial questions such as what is the market potential.
Central to successful desk research is the ability to track down sources of information and to provide the right level of analysis. For example identifying who your competitors are and analysing their market position against yours to find strengths and weaknesses and indications of new developments.

Market Intelligence from internal data:

Much marketing intelligence information can come from making better use of existing information. For instance by carrying out database analysis on orders taken it may be possible to understand where you have cross-sale and up-sale opportunities, or to understand what type of customers are your most profitable.
Database information is not the only source of market data. Your website may also include a high degree of valuable information about who is looking for your products and services.

Finally, don't overlook knowledge about customers, markets and competitors that comes from your staff. Often this is a poorly tapped source of information. Collecting and disseminating such information falls into the realms of customer knowledge management and making better use of this customer knowledge can help businesses focus far more on what the customer wants and says.

Qualities in a leader

John Gardner researched many leaders of north America and listed the attributes and characteristics of leaders. These traits are as follows:

1...Intelligence and judgments based on actions
2...Physical stamina and a vital driving force
3...Task competency
4...Better understanding of the followers and their demands
5...Avidness to accept responsibilities
6...Ability to deal with people
7...Capability to motivate people
8...Trustworthy
9...Conclusiveness Flexibility

posted by Abd ur Rehman

Factors influence the distribution channel

A good distribution strategy will identify the best sales channels for your firm and tell you how to exploit them. It can open up new opportunities, fuel growth and dramatically boost your takings and profits.

The following factors influence the choice of distribution channels by a business.

Market factors
An important market factor is "buyer behaviour"; how do buyer's want to purchase the product? Do they prefer to buy from retailers, locally, via mail order or perhaps over the Internet? Another important factor is buyer needs for product information, installation and servicing. Which channels are best served to provide the customer with the information they need before buying? Does the product need specific technical assistance either to install or service a product? Intermediaries are often best placed to provide servicing rather than the original producer - for example in the case of motor cars.

Producer factors:
A key question is whether the producer have the resources to perform the functions of the channel? For example a producer may not have the resources to recruit, train and equip a sales team. If so, the only option may be to use agents and/or other distributors.
Producers may also feel that they do not possess the customer-based skills to distribute their products. Many channel intermediaries focus heavily on the customer interface as a way of creating competitive advantage and cementing the relationship with their supplying producers.
Another factor is the extent to which producers want to maintain control over how, to whom and at what price a product is sold. If a manufacturer sells via a retailer, they effective lose control over the final consumer price, since the retailer sets the price and any relevant discounts or promotional offers. Similarly, there is no guarantee for a producer that their product/(s) are actually been stocked by the retailer. Direct distribution gives a producer much more control over these issues.

Product factors:
Large complex products are often supplied direct to customers (e.g. complex medical equipment sold to hospitals). By contrast perishable products (such as frozen food, meat, bread) require relatively short distribution channels - ideally suited to using intermediaries such as retailers.

The Marketing Mix and 4 Ps

"Marketing mix" is a general phrase used to describe the different kinds of choices organizations have to make in the whole process of bringing a product or service to market. The 4 Ps is one way - probably the best-known way - of defining the marketing mix, and was first expressed in 1960 by E J McCarthy.

The 4Ps are:

• Product (or Service)
  
• Place
  
• Price
  
• Promotion

A good way to understand the 4 Ps is by the questions that you need to ask to define you marketing mix. Here are some questions that will help you understand and define each of the four elements:

Product/Service

• What does the customer want from the product/service? What needs does it satisfy?
  
• What features does it have to meet these needs?
  
  • Are there any features you've missed out?
    
  • Are you including costly features that the customer won't actually use?
• How and where will the customer use it?
  
• What does it look like? How will customers experience it?
  
• What size(s), color(s), and so on, should it be?
  
• What is it to be called?
  
• How is it branded?
  
• How is it differentiated versus your competitors?
  
• What is the most it can cost to provide, and still be sold sufficiently profitably? (See also Price, below).

Place

• Where do buyers look for your product or service?
  
• If they look in a store, what kind? A specialist boutique or in a supermarket, or both? Or online? Or direct, via a catalogue?
  
• How can you access the right distribution channels?
  
• Do you need to use a sales force? Or attend trade fairs? Or make online submissions? Or send samples to catalogue companies?
  
• What do you competitors do, and how can you learn from that and/or differentiate?

Price

• What is the value of the product or service to the buyer?
  
• Are there established price points for products or services in this area?
  
• Is the customer price sensitive? Will a small decrease in price gain you extra market share? Or will a small increase be indiscernible, and so gain you extra profit margin?
  
• What discounts should be offered to trade customers, or to other specific segments of your market?
  
• How will your price compare with your competitors?

Promotion

• Where and when can you get across your marketing messages to your target market?
  
• Will you reach your audience by advertising in the press, or on TV, or radio, or on billboards? By using direct marketing mailshot? Through PR? On the Internet?
  
• When is the best time to promote? Is there seasonality in the market? Are there any wider environmental issues that suggest or dictate the timing of your market launch, or the timing of subsequent promotions?
  
• How do your competitors do their promotions? And how does that influence your choice of promotional activity?

The 4Ps model is just one of many marketing mix lists that have been developed over the years. And, whilst the questions we have listed above are key, they are just a subset of the detailed probing that may be required to optimize your marketing mix.

Amongst the other marketing mix models have been developed over the years is Boom and Bitner's 7Ps, sometimes called the extended marketing mix, which include the first 4 Ps, plus people, processes and physical layout decisions.

Another marketing mix approach is Lauterborn's 4Cs, which presents the elements of the marketing mix from the buyer's, rather than the seller's, perspective. It is made up of Customer needs and wants (the equivalent of product), Cost (price), Convenience (place) and Communication (promotion). In this article, we focus on the 4Ps model as it is the most well-recognized, and contains the core elements of a good marketing mix.

Using the 4Ps Marketing Mix Model

The marketing mix model can be used to help you decide how to take a new offer to market. It can also be used to test your existing marketing strategy. Whether you are considering a new or existing offer, follow the steps below help you define and improve your marketing mix.

1. Start by identifying the product or service that you want to analyze.
   
   
2. Now go through and answers the 4Ps questions - as defined in detail above.
   
   
3. Try asking "why" and "what if" questions too, to challenge your offer. For example, ask why your target audience needs a particular feature. What if you drop your price by 5%? What if you offer more colors? Why sell through wholesalers rather than direct channels? What if you improve PR rather than rely on TV advertising?

Tip: Check through your answers to make sure they are based on sound knowledge and facts. If there are doubts about your assumptions, identify any market research, or facts and figures that you may need to gather.

4. Once you have a well-defined marketing mix, try "testing" the overall offer from the customer's perspective, by asking customer focused questions:
   
   1. Does it meet their needs? (product)
      
   2. Will they find it where they shop? (place)
      
   3. Will they consider it's priced favorably? (price)
      
   4. And will the marketing communications reach them? (promotion)
      
      
5. Keep on asking questions and making changes to your mix until you are satisfied that you have optimized your marketing mix, given the information and facts and figures you have available.
   
   
6. Review you marketing mix regularly, as some elements will need to change as the product or service, and its market, grow, mature and adapt in an ever-changing competitive environment.

Key points:

The marketing mix helps you define the marketing elements for successfully positioning your market offer.

One of the best known models is the Four Ps, which helps you define your marketing options in terms of product, place, price and promotion. Use the model when you are planning a new venture, or evaluating an existing offer, to optimize the impact with your target market.

Business Strategy vs. Product Strategy

Many companies confuse or blur the two, and the result is easy to spot. The senior executives want to focus on the business strategy, but they find they are forced to make decisions at a level far below where they're comfortable or usually even interested, such as which specific products, projects and even features to invest in, and what the interdependencies are between these features and projects, and often what is on the actual page and how to resolve conflicts.

And on the other side, the product managers feel like they don't understand the reasons behind decisions that directly impact their products, they feel like the strategy is guard-railing every few months, and they don't feel empowered to do their jobs.

Very often I'll attend a product planning session with senior executives and they're being presented with lots of detailed product plans but without the business context. When I ask where the business strategy is, I'll often get a blank look. The team wants to make more money so these are the features they want to add, or so their reasoning goes.

Business strategy is about identifying your business objectives and deciding where to invest to best achieve those objectives. For example, moving from a direct sales model (your own sales force selling directly to customers) to an online sales model (your customers buy from your site) is a business strategy. Deciding whether to charge for your services with subscriptions or transactions fees or whether you have an advertising-based revenue model is a business strategy. Deciding to move into an adjacent market is a business strategy.

Now, clearly there are some big product implications to each of these business strategies. But they are not one in the same. There are lots of ways to sell online, lots of ways to monetize value, and lots of ways to develop or acquire and integrate an adjacent offering. The product strategy speaks to how you hope to deliver on the business strategy.

Moreover, while the business may believe something is a great business opportunity, you don't yet know if your company can successfully deliver on this opportunity. Maybe it will cost too much to build. Maybe customers won't value it enough to pay for it. Maybe it'll be too complicated for users to deal with. This is where product strategy and especially product discovery come into play.

The business maintains a portfolio of investments, and the business can and should adjust that portfolio mix as businesses and markets develop.

Take as an example Amazon. They've got a portfolio of investments including their core e-commerce offerings by category, they've got third-party selling, they've got an infrastructure technology (cloud computing) business, and they've even got their own growing consumer electronics business (love that Kindle 2). I especially like Amazon as an example because they illustrate so many points of good business strategies (and good product strategies).

Amazon may have made their business in selling hardcopy books and they've been a great innovator there, but instead of spending all their time trying to protect that business, they've also got an investment that could one day revolutionize that entire business. To Amazon's credit, they realize that if they don't pursue this someone else probably will. Similarly, they have worked hard to create innovative technologies to allow them to provide a differentiated e-commerce customer experience, yet they also have been leaders in making that technology available to others (Amazon Web Services) because it's possible that cloud computing business will one day be even
larger than what they can ever do themselves as an online retailer.

That's a business strategy and you can see their portfolio planning. Now each of these businesses has one or more product strategies. As an Amazon user you can see the evolution of the e-commerce retailing business. You can also see the evolution of the Amazon Web Services product line; every few months another piece of the puzzle is launched. You can see the evolution of the electronic reader and the supporting technologies.

Think of it this way. The business strategy and business portfolio planning provides a budget and a set of business metrics. The product organization then lives within that budget to pursue as aggressively as possible the best ways to hit those business metrics.

Some product strategies will prove more successful than others, and this will impact the business portfolio planning. And not every business of course will resonate with customers, so a big part of business strategy is knowing when to continue to invest and knowing when to cut your losses so that you can invest elsewhere.

Two key techniques to help with these investment decisions are Opportunity
Assessments (see http://www.svpg.com/blog/files/assessing_product_opportunities.html) and Product Discovery (seehttp://www.svpg.com/blog/files/product-discovery.html). What's most important however is to make sure you're asking the right questions and making the hard decisions (see http://www.svpg.com/blog/files/seven-deadly-sins-of-product-planning.html).

So business owners and senior executives are responsible for the business strategy and the business portfolio planning, and the product organization (especially the directors of product management) are responsible for the product strategy and the product portfolio planning. Keep these two concepts straight and I think you'll find that you will have more clarity and understanding in terms of objectives and responsibilities, as well as better managed business and product portfolios.

Product concept of Marketing

Product marketing deals with the first of the "4P"'s of marketing.

Product marketing, as opposed to product management, deals with more outbound marketing tasks. For example, product management deals with the nuts and bolts of product development within a firm, whereas product marketing deals with marketing the product to prospects, customers, and others. Product marketing, as a job function within a firm, also differs from other marketing jobs such as Marcom or marketing communications, online marketing, advertising,marketing strategy, etc.

Role of Product Marketing

Product marketing in a business addresses four important strategic questions:^[1]

• What products will be offered (i.e., the breadth and depth of the product line)?
• Who will be the target customers (i.e., the boundaries of the market segments to be served)?
• How will the products reach those customers (i.e., the distribution channels to be used)?
• Why will customers prefer our products to those of competitors (i.e., the distinctive attributes and value to be provided)?

Powerful Marketing and Branding Tips

These are the next three tips

1. Hit them from all angles!
   It’s called shotgun marketing. A shotgun shell contains hundreds of tiny lead balls, increasing your chance of hitting a target. Marketing is much the same … the more media you use effectively, the better the chance that your message will be seen and remembered. There is no secret solution to marketing; it’s all about creating a total user experience across all platforms that projects your brand.
2. Use technologies and trends; they are your friends!
   Using various technologies such as online bookings, reservations, response forms, PDF downloads, Blogging, Wikis, internal search engines, and newsfeeds can have a dramatic effect on your overall brand identity and on your marketing strategy in general. There are too many benefits to go into here, but feel free to visit us at www.imageworksstudio.com to learn more.
3. Calls to action.
   Calls to action are perhaps the most important aspect of marketing and advertising. After all, what good is any message or image if it doesn’t initiate an action that leads to a conversion? When developing a call to action, remember the four personality types and make use of available technologies to make compelling, interactive offers. You should have a unique call to action for each type of person who represents your customer base. For example … Visit www.imageworksstudio.com to learn more about successful branding and to request a free evaluation of the effectiveness of your home pages.

Drivers of customers equity

a firm's customer equity is the total of the discounted lifetime value of all of its customers. In their new book Driving Customer Equity: How Customer Lifetime Value is Reshaping Corporate Strategy, Rust, Zeithaml and Lemon state that customer equity has three drivers:
1. Value equity, "the customer's objective assessment of the utility of a brand, based on the perceptions of what is given up for what is received"
2. Brand equity, "the customer's subjective and intangible assessment of the brand, above and beyond its objectively-perceived value"
3. Retention equity, "the tendency of the customer to stick with the brand, above and beyond the customer's objective and subjective assessments of the brand."

The customer equity model enables marketers to determine which of the three drivers—value, brand or retention equity—are most critical to driving customer equity in their industry and firm. Using this approach allows marketers to quantify the financial benefit from improving one or more of the drivers.
For example, if a regional grocery chain wants to evaluate whether or not they should spend $2 million on an advertising campaign that will improve ad awareness by 1 percent, the customer equity model translates the percentage improvement in ad awareness into the percentage improvement in brand equity (a component ofcustomer equity). The percentage improvement in customer equity then translates into dollar improvement. Comparing the advertising expenditure to the dollar improvement allows the company to calculate its return on the advertising investment.
When Brands Are Commodities, Owning the Customer is Essential
Recently, our firm Copernicus Marketing Consulting undertook a joint research study with leading researcher Market Facts that investigated whether brands are becoming more similar and commodity-like over time. The study examined consumer perceptions of similarity in 48 pairs of leading brands and 51 different product and service categories-from both the Old and New Economy.
Our research found that in categories as diverse as hair care products and rental cars, a nationally representative sample of adult consumers perceives the leading brands (#1 and #2) becoming more similar rather than more distinct. Of the 48 categories evaluated, the leading brands in 40 of these categories are perceived as becoming more similar. Moreover, in 28 of 37 categories, consumers indicated price was more important than brand when making a purchase. In six categories, price and brand were about equally important, and in only three categories was brand more important (automobiles, liquor and beer).
Given this research, it is clear that brand equity alone is becoming an increasingly weak measure for marketing efforts. The customer equity model provides a basis for projecting the ROI of any strategic investment that improves customer equity whether as a function of value, brand or retention equity. It provides a catalyst for companies to become truly customer-centric and to make marketing programs more successful and accountable.
It's a mystery to us why managers seem to spend millions of dollars on marketing programs without knowing if their investment produces a fair return. One possible explanation, however, is that managers simply do not know how to project the return on investment for their marketing programs. They have lacked a basic model that links marketing actions with customer spending actions, and instead use intuition to make decisions. The customer equity model has the potential to forge that missing link.

Ten Low-Cost Ways to Promote Business

Business promotion is to running a successful business. The first axiom of business promotion is that you have to do this consciously. You can't rely on other people to do it for you, no matter how great your product or service is. The second axiom of business promotion is that like every other aspect of your business, it's a budgeted activity. But business promotion doesn't have to be expensive. Here are ten inexpensive ways to promote your business.
1) Use every outgoing piece of paper, and every electronic document as business promotion.
 You have business cards, but you also put out a lot of other documents in the course of doing business. Check these to make sure you're using their promotional possibilities to full advantage.
2) Writing articles on topics related to your business expertise is an excellent business promotion technique.
Well-written articles can provide free advertising and build positive word-of-mouth. As the goal is to promote your business, ideally you'd like it to appear in a publication that your target audience will be reading.
3) Sending out press releases is another great way to get some free business promotion.
The press release has to actually contain information that is newsworthy, and be engaging enough to get people's interest.
4) If you're an Internet user, spend some of your online time on business promotion.
Posting messages in forums is a great way to make your business known to people you would otherwise be unable to contact.Getting people interested in your business and perhaps attracting new customers works best if you choose forums that are business-related or directly related to your business's product or service.
5) Use buddy marketing to promote your business.
For example, if you send out brochures, you could include a leaflet and/or business card of another business, which had agreed to do the same for you. This gives you the chance to reach a whole new pool of potential customers.
6) Give out freebies as business promotion.
Besides using freebies as business promotions, you can also use them regularly as customer rewards. For example, I recently had a picture framed; the framer had attached a free picture hanger to the painting's wire, with a small card thanking me for my patronage.
7) Promote your business on a talk show
8) Promote your business by giving a seminar or presentation.
9) Use your vehicle to promote your business.
Mobile business promotion isn't just for white delivery vans. Think of all the people who see your vehicle will attract towrd your business.
10) Promote your business through your lesiure activities.

Everyone wants to promote his/her business after seeing this article i share it with you all because it tell us very easy and low cast ways to promote our business. Nowadays there are alot of talk shows so if we anyone tell about his/her business on it every one will aware about the business and can ask queries about the product.Paste the ful name and motive of your company on every outgoing document so whoever read the envelop will get know about the company.

reference: http://sbinfocanada.about.com/cs/marketing/a/bizpromotion.htm

WHEN REVENUE BECOMES WORTHLESS

THROUGH OUT THE GLOBECOMPANIES, BOTH MERCHANDISING AND MANUFACTURING DO CASH ASWELL AS CREDIT SALES. CREDIT SALES ARE MERELY TO INCREASE REVENUES AND TO COMPETE IN CUT THROAT BUSINESS COMPETITION. CREDIT SALES BRING RISK WITH THEM. A DEBTOR MAYY REFUSE TO PAY, IT MAY BE POSSIBLE THAT HIS BUSINESS HAS GONE DOWN SO UNABLE TO PAY HIS LIABILITY, EEN HE MAY BECOME FRAUDLENTOR BANKRUPT. ON THE OTHER HAND HE MAY DO A PART PAYMENT AND CAN REFUSE TO PAY REST OF PAYMENT. NOW YOUR COLLECTIBLES BECOME UNCOLLECTIBLE. THESE UNCOLLECTIBLES ARE KNOWN AS BAD DEBTS. BAD DEBTS CAN BE RECOVERED BY US "RECOVERY COMPANIEY" SERVICES.ITS QUITE POSSIBLE THATCREDITOR WILL GET HIS CLAIMS BECOMING UNCOLLECTIBLE. STILL PROBABILITY LIES THAT EVEN RECOVERY WILL N OT BRING BACK ALL YOUR BADF DEBTS(OPERATING EXPENSE). NOW REVENUE STILL CAN NOT BE RECOVERED WILL BECOME WORTHLESS.