A Better Definition of Marketing
The American Marketing Association defines marketing as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large." Many other firms and organizations have similar definitions. But what does this mean for a small business?
Peter Drucker, management guru, defines it quite succinctly when he said "The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous." The idea is that marketing can help a company to understand its customer so well that its product or service effectively sells itself.
To achieve this, we require a number of distinct but inter-related competencies. Having worked with large-cap and start-up clients across multiple industries around the globe, I have found that marketing needs generally fall into the following categories:
- Business planning: developing the idea behind a business, assessing market demand and evaluating the feasibility of the revenue model (Market research and business case development)
- Marketing strategy: building a marketing plan to enter a new market or grow your market share (Segmentation-Targeting-Positioning (STP), pricing, growth strategy and competitive strategy)
- Brand strategy: identifying key differentiators for your company and using them to build mindshare (Corporate identity, logo design, co-branding and product or service branding)
- New business development: building your pipeline and attracting and retaining clients (Sales management and client relationship management)
- Strategic communications: Aligning all internal/external communications to speak to the market with one voice (Integrated marketing communications, direct marketing campaigns and marketing collateral development)
- Media relations: determining how you respond to or interact with all journalists and multimedia channels (Public relations and crisis management)
- Event management: project management and logistics to bring an event to fruition (Event planning and sponsorship management)
- Digital marketing: developing your web presence and taking your marketing initiatives online (Website development, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising (PPC) and affiliate marketing)
- Advertising: sponsored advertisements through multimedia channels (Advertising campaign development and media planning)
- Marketing analytics: measuring and benchmarking the performance of your marketing campaigns (Marketing ROI and decision analysis)
By developing a better understanding of the marketing function and what it can contribute, this will enable your small business to set a more robust marketing strategy. It can aid you in integrating your marketing function and developing synergies that strengthen the effectiveness and coordination of your campaigns. You could use this as a framework to build mutually-supportive marketing objectives, enabling diverse teams to retain a focus on the same endgame. It also enables you to boost your talent development by identifying functional strengths and weaknesses of individual marketing team members. Last, but not least, it helps you to build internal support by helping company insiders appreciate the complexity of the marketing function. Whereas your corporate strategy sets the vision for your company, marketing develops new ways to get you closer to your customer, generate additional sales and build your strategy for future growth.
Towards an Integrated Marketing Function
Given the scope of marketing needs and expectations, how can an entrepreneur or small business owner profit from this information?
1. Structure your company with the Marketing lead reporting directly to your CEO (or at least one of the officers in the C-suite).
2. Make marketing the job of your entire company. Your marketing will be more effective if you keep everyone focused on the client and take suggestions on how to improve.
3. Raise the bar and develop higher expectations of your marketing function.
4. Understand that you don’t need to engage in all these activities. As with anything else, you don’t have to do everything on your own. Decide on what to focus on but understand the trade-offs and make an informed choice.
5. Based on your decision, decide which marketing activities to perform in-house and which to outsource (if necessary).
The marketing functions discussed are by no means comprehensive. Instead, they should serve as a springboard for further exploration. The key takeaway is that marketing is more than just sales or advertising. In fact, marketing is more than just the sum of its parts. With a truly effective marketing function, you can keep your customers happy, outperform your competitors and find new ways to grow.
Finding the Best Health Content to Launch Your Products
This article will serve as a guide for finding the best health content to launch health related products.
Health content on the web is almost non-existent. Some people have reported giving in to the temptation of buying from PLR membership sites, which are bad and will only take your money without any regards to the quality of the content. There are many methods for looking for quality health website content online. Finding good content is important for marketing purposes, in which most Internet marketers pull visitors from the search engines to their sites, which leads to people clicking on the ads. Here are some ways to get your hands on quality health articles.
Forums- Forums have always been a major place that writers and webmasters like to exchange services, products and ideas. The most popular forums with the highest page rank would be webmaster forums. This is important since you can also get writers to apply to your writing request from the search engines. Some of the most popular webmaster forums are Digital Point and Webproworld. I would advise all buyers and sellers in webmaster forums to be very careful when exchanging services. Digital Point has a lot of scammers and fraud going on, so you have to play smart.
Freelance Writers- Freelance writers are important to get deals and discounts. Some writers are barely making enough money to pay their bills, so they would be happy to write health content for you at discount prices. I have bought a lot of health articles for $1 a piece in packs! This is really good because I wouldn't have to keep looking for a freelance writer each time I needed a new article. Also, another thing I'm starting to see what writers are doing is; they are selling their articles on a personal blog or sell. This is really good for buyers because most of the time, the seller is using Paypal and buyers are protected from fraud. A lot of people don't like Paypal, but in their defense, they do allow buyers to claim to report if anything such as a scam occurs.
Bargain- Some writers will bargain prices with buyers. At many times, I would usually get $5-$10 off the original price for an article pack. Never take no for an answer and you will see that you can easily purchase 10 quality articles for only $5! Also, make sure to take a good look at the seller's sales page. It will tell you a lot about the quality of the content, such as the article's title, word count, summary and snippet (sample). All sellers should have this on their blog or site if they want to make a sale. Don't be afraid to ask them questions and if they don't have a contact somewhere on the page, do not buy from them. They should have a way to communicate with potential customers.
Experiential Marketing: The Key to Long Term Client Relationships
Marketing seen in more human terms to give people a better idea of the basic concepts behind marketing.
Let’s take a moment and think of marketing in some more familiar terms. Marketing is after all merely a form of abstracted inter-personal human relationships. So let us see marketing in terms of two people, interacting in everyday ways.
Imagine there is someone walking towards you in the street. They walk by and don’t say a word. Are you going to be friends with that person? Perhaps this person was great in every way and you two would really hit it off. But because they said nothing and did nothing, you will never really know. Now what if they asked you for money? Would you give it to them?
Imagine this second scenario: You are walking down the street and someone comes up to you and says they have a watch for sale, and they claim it’s really nice. Are you going to trust their product? If you really wanted the watch, you might buy it on a whim, but it would require a leap of faith. Maybe you would get lucky and maybe you wouldn’t. If you somehow got a great deal, you might try to seek that person out again, but unless that person keeps coming through with great products at cheap prices, you won’t really have a long term relationship there.
Imagine this third scenario: A person tells you they got your name from a friend and calls you up. They say they heard you were looking for a watch and they happened to have one for sale. You don’t know this person but since your friend referred them to you, you listen to them, though you aren’t a hundred percent trustworthy. They have your attention and you’ll give them the time of day, but if they don’t sound entirely convincing, you will write them off without a second thought.
Imagine this fourth scenario: You are walking down the street. Your friend, who you met through a mutual friend, stops to chat. They’ve given you a few trinkets here and there, a water bottle, a key chain, a picture frame. You’ve gone to concerts with them. You’ve shared laughs. You stay in touch. They mention they heard you have been looking for a watch and they know where you can get a great one. Will you heed this friend’s advice? Most people would.
Here you can see the difference between marketing strategies. Obviously, the winning strategy is to build a long term, trusting relationship with a customer through constant visibility, communication, and a mutual relationship of give and take. Experiential marketing is most effective when a customer feels like they have a relationship with a certain brand or product. Making your presence felt in a physical sense, where you are a sharing in the day to day life of a consumer, will reap the most benefits when it comes to the bottom line of making sales.
Marketing Werks
Why You Need a Bankruptcy Lawyer
Understand how a bankruptcy can help you keep bill collectors at bay and start over.
With so many businesses and individuals facing what is known as the Second Great Depression, filing for bankruptcy is a step that more and more people are finding they have to take in order to save their most valuable assets, primarily their home. Although you can file for bankruptcy on your own, a good Houston bankruptcy lawyer is highly recommended to help you through the maze of legal mumbo jumbo that you may not understand.
You will most assuredly have some questions and feelings about this legal procedure and a Houston lawyer can answer your questions and set your mind at ease. Feelings of failure may intrude but he or she will help you understand that this may very well be the thing needed in order to save your home and perhaps business. A good lawyer will also let you know that you are not the only one in this economy who has had to "start over."
If you are worried that filing bankruptcy will cause you to lose your home, you should voice that concern to your attorney. There is a "Homestead Exemption" available which allows you to keep your through the bankruptcy ordeal. Ask your attorney if you have a chance with the homestead exemption and he/she will tell you whether the pursuit will be worthwhile.
Another thing a Houston bankruptcy lawyer can do is help you rebuild or restructure your business while keeping collection agencies and debt collectors from hounding you. Bankruptcy is basically a way for a person to simply start over and it is a need that is happening more and more with the current economical problems we are having.
Each state has its own laws and hiring a Houston bankruptcy lawyer is the best thing for a person to do so that everything is legal and your rights are protected in the matter. If you find yourself in the position of having to do this to save your home or business, or you need to simply start over given the economy situation, do so with an attorney by your side.
SEO - Marketing Strategy for Your Website
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the most effective marketing strategy for your website to boost your web site’s search engine ranking.
These days, search engine optimization is the most effective and popular marketing strategy for your website to improve your website’s organic search engine ranking and drive more targeted visitors. As a result, SEO marketing strategy is important for any Internet company to become successful in online business. It is a complex process, which involves long term planning.