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 Strategies
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
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
Case Study: Starbucks Social Media Marketing Strategy
With more than 17000 Starbucks stores in the world, spanning throughout 49 countries , and with significantly higher prices than the market average, the Starbucks enterprise is a tale of success, and a direct result of a genius social marketing and branding strategy. At the core of the business their signature fresh, dark-roasted, full-flavored coffee brews and beans consorting with specialty teas and blended beverages, the special ambiance, its principles and its sense of connection and community; it’s all about creating the ‘Starbucks Experience’, which is the soul of the business, a place to gather, talk and enjoy the allures of their savory brews, a ‘Third Place’ in people’s lives between home and work, for customers to feel perfectly comfortable and imbued with familiarity. Connecting and engaging with the customers is a very important aspect of Starbucks philosophy and one of the reasons why they have been so successful in Continue reading
Strategic Considerations in the Product Life Cycle Concept
A Product in its life cycle under goes a lot of stages, sales and profit of a product shows a lot of variation in each stage so it becomes important for a marketer to know the marketing situation and where his product is placed in Product Life Cycle (PLC),thus impacting the marketing strategy and the marketing mix. Knowledge of the product’s life cycle can provide valuable insights into ways the product can be managed to enhance sales and profitability. Marketing activities are heavily dependent on the stage in the product life cycle. Product Life Cycle has four stages: Introduction Growth Maturity Decline In reality very few products follow such a prescriptive cycle. The length of each stage varies enormously. For example Fashion products tend to have a short life cycle i.e. the time between the launch of a product and the point at which the product is mature is very Continue reading