5 reasons to form a marketing strategy

February 20, 2013 by Leave a Comment

A marketing strategy is devised by the firm to know exactly where it stands in the competitive environment and what strategy it needs to implement to be one of the front runners in its respective industry. Overall, There are five main reasons to formulate a marketing strategy.

1) To form a long term and short term goal for the company – The first steps of marketing strategy involve forming the Vision statement and Mission statement of the company. Though both, the vision and mission are long term statements, Vision is used more for what the company wants to achieve throughout its existence whereas Mission statement is more of an action plan of how the company will achieve its vision. Thus while forming marketing strategy, the firm decides on its vision and mission. [Read more...]

What is marketing strategy

February 18, 2013 by 1 Comment

There are many explanations and definitions which tell you what is a marketing strategy. However, it all boils down to one sweet and simple explanation. Marketing strategy basically tells you WHAT you are going to do for the marketing of your product / firm or organization.

Marketing strategy is a small part of Business strategy. Where business strategy deals with manufacturing, operations, procurement etc; Marketing strategy will look towards marketing mix, business environment, distribution and other such marketing related areas.

Both, business strategy as well as marketing strategy, are important for a firm to move forward. A firm needs to know what Business strategy it needs to follow? Which businesses will the organization like to be present in? Where is the industry heading? And what moves need to be taken to establish and sustain the business?.

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What is Market research

July 14, 2012 by 6 Comments

Whether you want to enter the market with a new product, increase the market base of an existing product or give a unique offering to your customers, you need Market Research.

With your target group becoming smarter day by day, and word of mouth becoming stronger through social networks, Market research caa become the one thing which helps you make the right decisions. Market Research provides the right direction such that your customer base is satisfied with you and you get to know which plans and features need to be adopted to retain or expand on the customer base.

So what is Market Research? –  The correct definition of Market research is as follows. “Market research is the systematic collection of information on existing and exponential markets for analysis and subsequent action”. Now to actually understand Market research, you need to understand this statement accurately. [Read more...]

4 features which build customer value

July 3, 2012 by 2 Comments

What do your customers value in your product? This is a question asked by many people. If you know the answer, you are a very smart marketer. But surprisingly, simple though the question is, most people dont spend time answering it. Instead they keep looking at their own product and at their own organization rather than looking at their customers and asking this simple question –  What do my customers value? There is a simple way to analyse customer value. This method is also known as Customer value analysis. The same can be explained in 4 simple steps.

1) Which features / attributes do the customers value the most –  This method is increasingly being used by marketers to find out which features offered by their product matters most to the customers. Based on this analysis, companies can alter the features offered by their products such that they acquire more customers and retain their existing ones. A company can have multiple variants of the same product so as to create customer value. Thus each customer can have his own choice. This is the example used nowadays in FMCG, wherein, a simple product like soap is being offered in as many variations as possible to satisfy the end customer. Thus these products are targeting the customer value. [Read more...]

What is Marketing communications

June 25, 2012 by 3 Comments

In the traditional manner, the communication between two humans involves a simple process which is as follows.

Sender —> Encoding —> Message —> Decoding —> Receiver

Like the above human model, Marketing communications too involves a communication message being sent from the Sender (which can be a company, product or a brand) to a receiver (who can be an audience, your target group, stakeholders or anyone whom you want to target your message)

Marketing communications model What is Marketing communications

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Are you in your marketing zone

June 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment

If you have any small business or even a large corporation, your marketing will involve 2–3 main strategies which are used regularly and 4–5 smaller marketing strategies which are used time to time. Thus any company, at any given point of time should know which marketing strategies can it use and what are the alternatives in their hands. Knowing this crucial information is known as “being in the marketing zone”.

In essence, if you know which marketing activities give you the best returns, you are in your marketing zone. Being in your marketing zone helps you in three main factors

  • It makes the complete marketing process simpler for the company
  • In bleak times, the company knows which marketing strategies have worked best for them in the past
  • The company can think forward of better marketing strategies once it has its base intact [Read more...]

How to use your customer database

June 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment

A customer database is generally used by companies which have repeat buyers, which go through regular updates, give repeated services or for cross selling different products to the same customer. Nowadays, customer databases are being maintained by each and every company so as to remain in touch with their customers and provide them swift and rapid service. There are several ways a customer database can be used by companies.

1) Identifying prospects –  Identifying the buyers who regularly buy from you and also customers whom you can cross sell your products can be found from your customer database. You can decide the marketing and advertising strategy and message on the basis of features demanded by your current customers. A certain set of features may be common in a group of buyers and you can be on the lookout for other such customers who match the demography / psychography. Finally, your existing customer can become a repeat customer through usage of your customer database.  [Read more...]

4 elementary ways to measure customer satisfaction

June 17, 2012 by 2 Comments

There are several ways to measure customer satisfaction. However, some methods are elementary and can be applied to any business format, be it a large corporate or a small and medium enterprise. As these measures can be carried out through internal analysis, they should be done as regularly as possible. This helps you keep yourself up to date of what your customer needs.

Periodic surveys –  Periodic surveys involves getting in touch with your customers and taking feedback from them directly. There are various forms of periodic surveys such as online surveys, email surveys etc. You can even have a retail survey wherein you take feedback from your walk in customers. The benefit of a periodic survey is that you can get direct feedback from your customers and you can have an idea of where you stand in the customer satisfaction index (CSI). Furthermore, by comparing the current CSI with the last one, you can also observe a change in your consumers preferences. [Read more...]

Emotional Marketing – The language of heart

June 5, 2012 by 3 Comments

It is often said that “emotion stimulates the mind 3000 times faster than rational thought”. Emotions drive our behavior, the world is driven by emotions! Today, customers really aren’t much interested in attributes; they simply want to know if they can have a product that suits their personality (it’s all about values).

It is not just about a single customer, all customers behave in a similar manner: they purchase products emotionally and then rationalize their choice intellectually. [Read more...]

7 tactics for excellent product management

June 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Product management is a very important function for organization and it deals with the planning, forecasting or marketing of a product. A product manager is usually responsible for selecting the right product for the company, planning the procurement / manufacturing, as well as its marketing. Further to managing the product inventory, the marketing is taken care of by the product manager and the sales is taken care of by Sales managers. Both these managers work in sync to make the product a success.

So what can make you a better product manager? And how good is your product management? Here are some pointers to have an excellent and planned product management in your organization.

1) Know the market – While thinking of product management, knowing the market is absolutely important. Each and every product in the market has several competitors. You need to know which features help you differentiate yourself from the competitors. The marketing mix model can be used for find out these differentiating features, or you can also conduct a comprehensive SWOT analysis of your product portfolio. Of the 4P’s of marketing there would be at least one P in which you would be differentiated. Furthermore you also need to know what particular products are the most “in demand” in the market and which type of products do you have. Accordingly you can devise a strategy where you can go for product expansion and can build further product variants thereby capturing market share. [Read more...]