When some starry-eyed startup or a small company takes on the big budget corporate in the marketing domain with an underground marketing campaign that costs nothing but causes shock-waves for months, its called guerrilla marketing. Guerrilla marketing is a different kind of marketing which does not involve big budget but it is about out of the box thinking; it is about using anything around to market a product, an idea or a social message virtually anything under the sun. It believes in entertaining and engaging the target customer. It does not involve preaching or educating but it is about exciting the viewer to find out a secret or solve a puzzle. Guerrilla campaigns purely depend on creativity, intensive word of mouth campaigns and its oddness like using unconventional locations. Some guerrilla campaigns are so brilliant that it has made bystanders feel lucky to be there to witness them. AMA defines Continue reading
Marketing Management
Marketing management combines the fields of marketing and management. Marketing consists of discovering consumer needs and wants, creating the goods and services that meet those needs and wants; and pricing, promoting, and delivering those goods and services. Doing so requires attention to six major areas – markets, products, prices, places, promotion, and people. Management is getting things done through other people. Managers engage in five key activities – planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. Marketing management implies the integration of these concepts.
Advertising Agency – Meaning, Functions and Benefits
An advertising agency is an independent organization set up to render specialized services in advertising in particular and in marketing in general. Advertising agencies started as space brokers for the handling of the advertisements placed in newspapers. Over the years, the function of the agencies has changed. Their main job today is not to aid media but to serve advertisers. An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising (and sometimes other forms of promotion) for its clients. An advertising agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client’s products or services. An agency can also handle overall marketing and branding strategies and sales promotions for its clients. Typical ad agency clients include businesses and corporations, non-profit organizations and government agencies. Agencies may be hired to produce an advertising campaign . Continue reading
Power Equations of Distribution Channels
The use of power by individual channel member to affect the decision making or the behavior of other is the mechanism by which congruent and effective roles become specified, roles become realigned, when necessary and appropriate role performance is enforced. There are a number of power equations that may be available to one channel member in his attempt to influence the other and vice versa. 1. Reward power 2. Coercive power 3. Legitimate power 4. Referent power 5. Expert power Let us discuss these power equations one by one; 1. Reward power: This refers to the capacity of one channel member to reward other if the latter conforms the influence of the former. This power base is present in virtually all channel system. The rewards are usually manifest in the perceived or actual financial gains, which channel member’s experience as the results of conforming to Continue reading
Event Marketing – Using Events as a Business Marketing Tool
An event is a live multimedia package with a preconceived concept, customized or modified to achieve the clients objective of reaching out and suitably influencing the sharply defined, specially gathered target audience by providing a complete sensual experience and an avenue for two-way interaction. Event marketing involves canvassing for clients and arranging feedback for the creative concepts during and after the concept initiation so as to arrive at a customized package for the client, keeping the brand values and target audience in mind. Marketing plays an important role in pricing and negotiation as well as identifying opportunities to define and retain event properties by gathering marketing intelligence with regard to pricing, timing, etc. Event marketing has been defined as a state of focused event strategy managed consistently over a period of time to reinforce aspects of brand character. There are further definitions wherein the focus has been more on the Continue reading
Introduction to Marketing Environment
Marketing is a general term used to describe all the various activities involved in transferring goods and services from producers to consumers. In addition to the functions commonly associated with it, such as advertising and sales promotion, marketing also encompasses product development, packaging, distribution channels, pricing, and many other functions. The modern marketing concept, which is applied by most successful small businesses, is intended to focus all of a company’s activities upon uncovering and satisfying customer needs. After all, an entrepreneur may come up with a great product and use the most efficient production methods to make it, but all the effort will have been wasted if he or she is unable to consummate the sale of the product to consumers. Marketing Environment: In order to correctly identify opportunities and monitor threats, the company must begin with a thorough understanding of the marketing environment in which the firm operates. The Continue reading
Pros and Cons of Relationship Marketing
Relationship Marketing (RM) is defined as the process in which the construction, cultivation and strengthening of strong value laden relationships with customers and other stakeholders occur. Another way relationship marketing can be defined is as both business marketing and consumer marketing benefit from attention to conditions that foster relational bonds leading to reliable repeat purchase. Pros of Relationship Marketing 1. Customer Loyalty A significant benefit that can be derived from successful relationship marketing (RM) in a business is the development of loyalty in customers. Customer loyalty and positive word-of-mouth recommendations are usually the two outcomes of effective RM. Furthermore, RM can provide exclusive benefits for customers, consequently reducing competition from other businesses that offer the same product which can thus assist in the achievement of consumer loyalty. Loyalty is defined as a close bonding between the consumer and the seller which results in frequent purchase of a certain product or Continue reading