Archives for September 2019

The marketing mix consists of combined concepts used to capture a brand’s unique selling points and what help the brand stand out from its competitors. The components making up the Four P’s Model are product, price, promotion, and place. While all of these elements are equally important and must be combined for a marketing strategy to be effective, I will focus on what place and promotion specifically can say about the marketing mix.

After a marketer has a clear grasp of what a product is and exactly what makes it unique and has made price determinations, promotion and place come into play. Promotion focuses on how marketing agencies can distribute product information to consumers in a way that allows them to stand out from similar products or services on the market. Promotion includes advertising, public relations and social, email, video, and search engine marketing. In order to maximize return on investment, each of these elements must be tied to a well-situated brand. The communication methods used to make promotion decisions depend heavily on product place decisions.

Marketing is also about placing the right product at the right price, at the right place, and at the right time. Knowing this, it’s crucial for marketers to evaluate where they can best place an advertisement to entice possible clients to become actual clients. The “place” aspect of the marketing mix is where product production and distribution channels are planned. The kinds of communication utilized to inform the target audience about a product are directly impacted by the placement of a product. Place decisions in the marketing mix also affect the company’s promotion activities and how they will offer it to consumers. If the right “place” is used, a company can increase their sales and maintain them over a stretch of time, meaning a greater market share and increased revenues and profits for the business.

The roles that promotion and place play in the marketing mix feed off of each other and when integrated correctly with one another, can produce desired behaviors from a target audience and help businesses understand their own products and services in a way that they can successfully plan a marketing strategy.

In order to effectively attract and retain customers, most businesses (big or small) need a good marketing plan in place. A marketing plan helps businesses develop products and services that meet the needs and demands of target markets. When a strong marketing plan is put int full effect, customers can differentiate how certain products or services differ from their competitors.

There are certain requirements a good marketing plan must meet. It should help a business reach a target audience and acquire customers by setting out measurable business objectives. There are many important aspects of a successful marketing plan that marketers can incorporate to meet these expectations including researching, identifying a target market, positioning, competitive analyzation, developing a marketing strategy, budgeting, and tracking metrics. These components of a marketing plan are crucial for keeping the sales pipeline flowing.

Research is the most important start to a marketing plan. In order to understand a business’s objectives, marketers must identify what a consumer’s buying habits are in that particular industry, the market size, and any other trends. With the research needed to proceed, marketers can then identify a target market to determine what kinds of buyers would likely purchase the product or service so that they can have an understanding of who they need to cater their services to.

Once marketers have identified their target market, they need to incorporate positioning into the marketing plan. The plan should state how the brand will be perceived in the marketplace. The position listed in the market plan should discuss what marketing messages the company will use in order to be perceived differently by the public, which leads directly into the competitive analysis component of the marketing plan. Marketers must analyze who their competition is and what products or services they are offering. This part of the marketing plan is essential to a businesses’ success because it will allow a marketer to better position their business so that it shines amongst the crowd of competitors.

A very important part of the marketing plan that a marketer should absolutely incorporate is the marketing strategy. This should be the “meat” of the plan and should explain what strategies a business should use to meet sales goals. Will the strategy include emails, direct mail, social media, and couponing to target their customers? Marketers should use this component to clearly outlines what activities can be used to create a successful strategy for acquiring new customers.

Finally, there are some fine detailed mathematical elements of a marketing plan that should not be left out. Marketers must establish a budget and plan out how much money will be spent on marketing and should use metrics like Google Analytics to track how successful marketing efforts have been. Metrics assist marketers in evaluating marketing results and is an important element of any marketing plan.

There are many other details that go into writing up a valuable marketing plan but the important aspects listed above should help a marketer get started in achieving business success.

The relationship between marketers and customers shouldn’t end once a customer has made a purchase. Marketers should find ways to continue nurturing relationships with their customers in order to maintain brand loyalty and create a powerful brand experience. Customer Relationship Management systems help make this happen, but all too often marketers don’t use these systems to their fullest extent.

CRM systems are powerful tools for sales teams that are capable of tracking customers. By utilizing these systems, marketers are able to assess the contact that customers have with a brand. All contact efforts are carefully tracked in a contact record, making the information easier to access. In all reality, CRM systems should make a marketer’s job much more effective. However, one of the problems with CRM systems within marketing research is that these systems are not being used to their fullest potential.

Most CRM systems are used primarily to create email lists. While this is useful, CRM systems are capable of so much more. Marketers can use CRM systems to chat with customers, create ads, utilize social media tools and send out email marketing campaigns. CRM systems also allow marketers to track the customers that are engaging with a company’s marketing efforts. There are some specialized CRM tools that marketers should put more of an emphasis on in order to manage customer relationships.

One under utilized form of CRM that marketers should focus on is combining CRM software with eCommerce functions. Combining these resources would be useful for small business that focus on selling products online. Because many of these small online businesses may not have brick and mortar stores, the CRM platform in this case would have to put a heavy emphasis on social media marketing.

A second major focus for marketers should be social and mobile CRM platforms. These extensions help create a more dynamic product by allowing marketers to focus on customer engagement from anywhere and at any time. By uniting social data and CRM data, companies can be better equipped to see customer interactions with a brand on any channel and gain greater insight into who they are. Social CRM platforms also prepare companies to better interact with their customers. It is a win/win situation for both the company and the customer, and for this reason marketers should focus more of their efforts on learning about specialized CRM technologies.

Marketers must always keep in mind how important design elements are and how certain designs can impact marketing results. UX used to be an area that really involved graphic artists an designers but has now shifted over and become a priority for marketers as well. Marketing and UX design really go hand in hand with each other and focus on making a product seem as desirable to customers as possible. A positive user experience plays a crucial part in boosting customer satisfaction and business conversion.

Marketers and UX design teams alike should focus on intertwining UX and digital marketing. When a mobile app or website is used as a powerful tool to give a customer a great user experience, the product or brand becomes more marketable.

Creating personas should also play a crucial role in UX. Marketers need to pay attention to consumer demographics and insights. This can be done by segregating customers based on certain demographics. One helpful tool for this is Google Analytics.

Marketers should also focus on how users will engage and interact while using the product. The person marketing the product should participate with UX designers in making design decisions to boost engagement and maximize conversion. One important part of this is integrating impressive visuals. When a website is organized and has interesting storytelling, users are engaged. It is crucial to tell a brand’s story by using layouts, images, and copy.

Another crucial part of the user experience marketers should focus their attention on is discoverability, which can boost a UX experience by allowing customers to browse and use keywords while using a website or app in order to discover what they are looking for.

Creating a positive user experience is a multifaceted operation where UX teams and marketers must come together and although these aspects of UX design barely scratch the surface, they are ideas for marketers to be mindful of.

I received my first computer when I was nine years old. I remember signing onto a website where you were able to find a “pen-pal” your same age and send each other emails back and forth. It was so much fun and I used to eagerly anticipate emails from my pen-pals on a daily basis. Less than a decade later, Myspace became extremely popular. As one of the first major social media platforms, it gave people a space to communicate with each other and to market products or themselves. I remember plenty of people using their profile as an innovate way to market their modeling and music pages.

I luckily grew up during this era and then saw Twitter, Facebook and Instagram quickly follow and rapidly establish themselves after that. Social networking websites are an area of marketing that I not only find extremely interesting, but that I feel I am well versed on and would make a great “go-to” person for. Social media marketing allows people and businesses to interact with each other and establish relationships. Social media is a medium that connects businesses with consumers and allows for personal interaction. It also allows businesses to reach narrow target audiences.

Social media marketing is fast, efficient, and can reduce marketing costs. As each generation becomes more digitized, it’s essential to keep up with social media and the latest trends because it is becoming such a large part of engaging with customers. Because I have been using social media platforms since they first became popular (I’m a “true” millennial in every sense of the word), I feel that I have a strong grasp on how it works and how to engage with people. During my fist job in Italy as an English language communications specialist, I also dabbled in social media marketing and was able to learn how to use programs like Hootsuite to manage content for clients.

When it comes to visual imagery, white space refers to the areas without any text or images. In order for our design to function and attract the eye, we need to use white space rhythmically with used space.

The space between design elements which is added for emphasis and structure is called “active white space.” It is considered asymmetrical and assists the design in appearing more dynamic. The white space between words on a line of the space surrounding a graphic is known as “passive white space.” Although it may seem that active white space carries more weight as a visual element, passive white space is also important in how it works with a design.

Despite its name, white space doesn’t necessarily have to be white, it must just consist of emptiness. The power of white space in visual imagery is that is can evoke emotions in designs by adding drama and emotion. Some clients consider white space in an advertisement to be wasted space that could be used to display more information or visual elements. However, design theory promotes the use of white space to display elegance and ensure a quality user experience. Humans are not robots and can become easily overwhelmed with an overabundance of information. White space not only calms us and allows us to breathe, but it allows our eye to move freely around the design and can make or break an image. It is crucial to find the right balance between white space and the rest of the elements making up an image in order to hold the readers’ attention and to keep the design from looking too busy.

White space is also categorized depending on the density of the micro white space used and how it relates to macro white space. The small spaces in between the design elements (the spaces between lines and paragraphs) are known as micro white space. This type of white space impacts content legibility and allows people to read and process text more easily. Macro white space, on the other hand, is defined as the larger spaces between the more crucial layout elements, as well as the space surrounding the design. Macro space is powerful in containing the design as a whole and is easy to notice. This kind of visual simplicity is not only calming, but it is not overwhelming and allows the viewer to concentrate and focus on the overall message.

White space is a strong tool to use in order to enhance the user experience. As a designer, one must be aware of how white space impacts the content, design, user, and brand of a company However, as long as white space is used properly, it can provide many visual advantages.

The art of persuasion in marketing is vital for marketers to make sales. Marketers must persuade prospective customers to purchase products and services. Large efforts go into convincing people and influencing their behaviors and thoughts. In order to do this, there are various persuasion skills and techniques that marketing professionals can utilize.

The first persuasion technique that can prove useful to marketers is to have a plethora of information on the product that they are trying to market or sell. For a marketer to try to push a product, they must exude confidence and be well versed on the details of the product or service they are promoting. It is also important for a marketer to understand the needs and expectations that a customer has of a product or service. Why does a customer need a particular product? Once a marketer it able to understand the mind of the person they are marketing to, they can fine tune their persuasion techniques to try and make a sale. This would essentially be determining the psychological need of a product, which is an important first step in persuading a customer to make a purchase.

Once a marketer has determined a need for a product, they can move onto the reciprocity persuasion technique. When we receive something from someone, we feel appreciative. When we feel appreciative, we want to reciprocate and give something back in return. In the case of marketing, a brand may offer something such as a free gift or an exclusive discount upon registration or upon making a purchase over a certain limit. This works in persuading customers to not only register for an account on the company website, but to make a purchase and become a loyal customer as well.

Another useful technique is using the scarcity principle. This is a technique that is often seen used on e-commerce websites. Have you ever been to a website that advertises a sale on a particular product and has a message notifying you that there are only 3 items left in stock? When a customer feels that an item is running low, they feel a sense of urgency and may make the purchase immediately. This tactic also goes hand in hand with the idea of exclusivity. Victoria’s Secret is a brand that is known for using this tactic. Victoria’s Secret often runs exclusive sales for customers who have the Victoria’s Secret Angel credit card. This makes customers feel that they are “special” customers and have access to products before other customers do, so they are more willing to make a purchase in order to have the product before anyone else does.

Social proof is also a very strong persuasion tactic. Think of how many customers follow social media influencers. People are very likely to endorse a product that has been endorsed by someone that they like and trust. The clothing brand Fashion Nova is known for using this tactic by using celebrities such as Kylie Jenner to endorse their clothing. Because customers trust her sense of fashion and she is well-liked as a celebrity, a customer is willing to invest in that product. Marketers who understand that likeable people tend to have an impact, will have a sense of influence and persuasion over their target audience.

There are a variety of persuasion principles that can be used in the world of marketing as an advantage to make sales. The tactics referenced above are only a few examples of principles that can help bring awareness to a service or product, but each business must find techniques that fit with their goals and mission.