Small Business School
Marketing few concepts:
Marketing, now a days has become as important as production and engineering itself. The reason is simple, competition. Not only local and national companies, today all global companies are face to face for selling their products. And marketing is the tool which is making all the difference. All companies are paying special attention to the functions of marketing to enable them to place their product rightly to large section of society.
In such a scenario, understanding of marketing, its types and forms, functions becomes an essential part of corporate world, specifically to those who are new or in the initial stage of their career in the field of marketing/selling. Followings are the types of marketing, explained in simple words to make understanding of marketing very clear. It will be helpful for all who are interested in the field of marketing.
Ambush Marketing:
Ambush marketing is an effort by an unauthorized party to take advantage of the goodwill of an event at the expense of another company's (usually a rivals) association with the event.
For example, Pepsis campaign Nothing official about it, during the event of cricket tournament when its rival Coca cola was the official sponsor for that event.
The advantage of such an ambush is that the event gets highlighted due to the increased number of sponsors. On the other hand, the exclusivity of the association is diluted and the investment made by any one sponsor is devalued by the number of sponsors.
During the Event:
Often supporters of the rival company enter the event premises, either wearing or publicizing their merchandise. This type of action creates difficulty in context, that event organizers may not be entitled to prevent such products being taken away from supporters as they enter the stadium. Alternatively, they may simply not have sufficient warning or resources to enable them to take effective action.
Outside the stadium hosting the event, it is also difficult for event organizers and/or sponsors to know how far to go to protect the share of the sponsors. Once the goodwill has been ambushed, the rival has succeeded. Of course, prevention is better than cure, and policing the event should be carried out both by the event organizer and the sponsor, so that any attempt at an ambush may be swiftly acted upon.
Benchmarking:
Amongst the many tools being used today to support continuous improvement, Benchmarking has fast emerged as the most powerful .It provides a focus on to the external environment enabling to set realistic performance targets and achieve the same by understanding world class practices. It is a process of continuously comparing own business processes against that of business leaders and adapting their best practices to achieve rapid improvements.
How important is it for Indian companies to benchmark:
Extremely important! Particularly for those companies that trade globally and have to face international competitors. However, now it is equally crucial for domestic players as well. Ever since the Indian economy has opened up, the nature of the market has changed and competition has increased.
What do you benchmark
To begin with, all products and processes within a company can be benchmarked for improvement. For instance, if a company were to benchmark customer satisfaction as a process, it should ideally break it up into segments like order-booking, billing, manufacturing, retailing, follow-up and post sales service benchmarking each of these as a process, for best results. A product can also be benchmarked in a similar fashion. When automaker Ford redesigned Taurus, it benchmarked over 200 design features against seven competitors.
Benchmarking steps:
• Decide what to benchmark.
• Identify who and how to benchmark.
• Collect data, which is relevant to you and will help you in benchmarking.
• Analyze performance gaps.
• Project future performance gaps.
• Communicate findings.
• Revise performance guidelines.
• Develop action plans.
• Implement and monitor the processes, which are benchmarked on a continuous basis.
• Recycle or start the process all over.
Guerilla Marketing:
Not every company can afford huge ad campaigns, constant publicity programs and a huge sales force. The best course of action for the companies is to keep the operations small. This gives you the advantage of moving fast, thinking on your feet, and the flexibility of employing a broad range of marketing tools. The foremost advantage is paying attention to details in a way that big companies cant.
What techniques can a marketer use the answers lie in the Guerilla marketing techniques, which were introduced by Jay Conrad Levinson (author of Guerilla Marketing, Guerilla Marketing Weapons).
Need for guerilla marketing:
Because of big business downsizing, decentralization, relaxation of government regulations, affordable technology, people around the world are gravitating to small business in record numbers.
Guerilla marketing has been proven in action to work for small businesses around the world. It works because it's simple to understand, easy to implement and inexpensive.
• Guerilla marketing is needed because it gives small business a delightfully unfair advantage: certainty in an uncertain world, economy in a high-priced world, and simplicity in a complicated world, marketing awareness in a clueless world. " (Jay Conrad Levinson)
Niche marketing:
Customers today, are more knowledgeable and therefore more demanding. They do not want to spend time researching their purchase decisions. They expect that their needs are understood and products delivered to satisfy, before they are even articulated. The opportunity that an extended market provides is neutralized by the limitation of resources. As a marketer, if you dont have sufficient resources, the whole world cannot be your market!
Yet, if you can identify an intense need or desire of a substantially big target set, and fulfill it, you can be successful! In a chaotic world (thanks to the information explosion), it is very crucial that you synergies all your marketing energies to communicate with your target customers. If you concentrate on a specific target group, the chances that your message will be heard are high.
A niche market is a sub-segment with distinctive traits and common characteristics, which require a special combination of benefits for which the customer is willing to pay. Any niche attempt has specialization at the core. You should be doing what comes best to you. You can, however, specialize on any of the following platforms:
• Geographic
• Consumer profile
• Seasonal requirement
• Unique consumer needs
• Product / Service benefits
• Quality of the product / service
• Price
• Value addition in the product
Relationship Marketing:
It is a process of establishing, maintaining and enhancing long term, trusting, win win relationships with customers, distributors, dealers and suppliers at a profit so that the objectives of all parties involved are met.
It is the same as one-to-one marketing. This customer-focused business model also goes by names like real-time marketing, Customer Relationship Management, customer intimacy and a variety of other terms. However, the idea is the same: Establish relationships with customers on an individual basis, and using the information you gather to treat different customers differently. The exchange between a customer and a company becomes mutually beneficial, as customers give information in return for personalized service that meets their individual needs.
These were some of the many concepts of marketing. Concepts of marketing are being challenged day by day to meet competitions.
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