Marketing Strategy

What is Marketing?

• Marketing deals with identifying & meeting human and social needs. 
• Marketing is "an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating & delivering value for customers & for managing relationships in ways that benefit the organizations & its stake holders". (American Marketing Association)
• Marketing Management: the art & science of choosing target markets & getting, keeping & growing customers thru creating, delivering, & communicating superior customer value. 
• Marketing is a societal process by which individuals & groups obtain what they need and want thru creating, offering & freely exchanging products/services of value with others.

Marketers & Prospects

• A (attention, marketer: Someone seeking a response a purchase, vote, donation) from another party call the prospect.

Source: Bernard Leong, https://s3.amazonaws.com/saylordotorg-resources/BUS/BUS305/BUS305-3.2.4-EntrepreneurMarketingPlanStrategiesDistributionAndChannels-CCBYNCND.pdf
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

8 Demand States

1. Negative Demand: Consumers dislike the product & may pay a price to avoid it.
2. Non-existent Demand: Consumers are unaware or uninterested in the product.
3. Latent Demand: Consumers share a strong need that cannot be satisfied by an existing product.
4. Declining Demand: Consumers begin to buy the product less frequently.
5. Irregular Demand: Consumer purchases vary on a seasonal, monthly, weekly, daily or even hourly basis.
6. Full Demand: Consumers are adequately buying all products put in the market place.
7. Overfull Demand: More consumers would like to buy the product that can be satisfied.
8. Unwholesome demand: Consumers may be attracted to products that have undesirable social consequences.

Marketers use the term market to cover various groupings of customers.

Types of Markets

• Consumer Markets
• Business Markets
• Global Markets
• Non-Profit Markets & Governmental

Marketing Practices

Marketing planning process involves 5 steps:

1.   Analyzing marketing opportunities
2. Selecting target markets
3. Designing strategies marketing
4. Developing market programs.
   
5. Managing the marketing effort - Execution

Integrated Marketing Approach: 4 Ps of Marketing

Product

Positioning of Product

Price

Pricing Strategy Matrix

How to Set the Price

• Selecting the Price Objective - Position of market offering due to survival, maximum current profit, maximum market share or maximum market-skimming pricing.
• Determining Demand - Price Sensitivity - methods include surveys, price experiments and statistical analysis.
• Estimating Costs - Charging a price based on cost of producing, distributing and selling of a product.
• Analyzing competitors' costs, prices & offers
• Selecting a price method: for e.g. markup pricing, target return pricing, value pricing.

Promotion: Common Platforms

Place

• Distribution Channel
• Integration based on Merger & Acquisition:
• Manufacturer acquires Wholesaler (Forward Integration)
• Wholesaler acquires Manufacturer (Backward Integration)
• Retailer buys over another Retailer (Parallel Integration)

Packaging

• Physical Presentation
• Value Added Qualities
• Bundled Package (Product with Service)
• One Stop Services

SWOT Analysis

• Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT)
• Involves monitoring the external and internal marketing environment.

Strength/Weaknesses

Opportunity/Threat

• A marketing opportunity is an area of buyer need & interest in which there is a high probability that a company can profitably satisfy that need.
• Three main sources of market opportunities:

1. Supply something that is in demand.
2. Supplying product or service in a new or superior way.
3. Totally new product that bring about a new consumer behavior or impact.

Opportunities

• A company may benefit from converging industry trends & introduce hybrid products or services that are new to the market.
• A company may make a buying process more convenient or efficient.
• A company can meet the need for more information or advice.
• A company can customize a product or service that was formerly offered in a standard form.
• A company can introduce a new capability.
• A company may be able to deliver a product or service faster.
• A company may be able to offer a product at a much lower price.

Questions for Market Opportunity Analysis

• Can the benefits involved in the opportunity be articulated convincingly to a defined target market?
• Can the target market(s) be located & reached with cost effective media & trade channels?
• Does  the company process or have access to the critical capabilities & resources needed to deliver customer benefits?
• Can  the company deliver the benefits better than any actual or potential competitors?
• Will the financial rate of return meet or exceed the company's threshold for investment?

Success Probability

Opportunity Matrix

Example

1. Company develops more powerful lighting system.
2. Company develops device to measure energy efficiency.
3. Company develops device to measure illumination level.
4. Company develops software program to teach lighting fundamentals to TV studio personnel

Probability of Occurrence

Threat Matrix

Example

1. Competitor develops superior lighting system.
   
2. Major prolonged economic depression.
   
3. Higher Costs.
   
4. Legislation to reduce number of TV licenses.
   

Marketing Channels

• Marketing  Channels are sets of interdependent organizations involved in the process of marketing a product or service available for consumption and use.
• Set  of pathways which follows after production, culminating in purchase & use by the final user.

Push/Pull Strategy

• Aitspush  strategy involves the manufacturer using sales force & trade promotion money to induce intermediaries to carry, promote & sell the product to the end-user.
• Aadvertising pull strategy involves the manufacturer using to induce consumers to ask intermediaries for the product and is appropriate  when there is high brand loyalty & involvement in the category when people perceive differences between brands.

What is branding?

• Awithbrand is the symbolic embodiment of all information encoded a product or service.
• Branding is the process by which a company, product or image becomes synonymous with a set of values, aspirations or states.

Brands in the World

Key Elements in Brands

Principles of Influence for Marketing/Sales

• Aristotle (Rhetoric)
  • Logos (Logic)
  • Pathos (Emotion)
  • Ethos (Ethics)
• R. Cialdini - 6 Rules of Influence
• Reciprocation, Commitment Consistency, Authority, Social Proof, Liking & Scarcity

Reciprocation

• People generally feel obliged to return favours to them.

Commitment & Consistency

• People have a general desire to appear consistent in their behavior.
• Strong desire to commitments by providing reasons to justify them.

Social Proof

• People generally look to other people similar to themselves in making decisions.

Liking

• People  are more likely agree to brands which they like:
• Physical Attractiveness
• Common goals

Authority

• People act in an automated fashion to commands from authority, particularly to leading brands.

Scarcity

• People  tend to want brands as they become less available.

What is social media?

Why Startups need Social Media

• Getting the attention of the mainstream media.
• Budget  constraints and not able to afford big marketing budgets.
• Advertising and Marketing purposes.
• Crisis management given no PR channels

Crisis Management - Kryptonite

Social Media Tools

• Blogs - Blogger/Wordpress/Tumblr/ Posterous
• Rich Media Sharing - Flickr,YouTube, Vimeo, PhotoBucket, Picasa, Phlook, Todou.
• Social Networks - Facebook, Linkedin, Ning, CyWorld
• MicroBlogging - Twitter, Plurk, Yammer
• Aggregators - Digg, StumbleUpon
• Online Forums - HardwareZone (HWZ), Comsenz
• Mobile: FourSquare, Gowalla

Social Technographics Ladder

Case Studies

Case Study 1: Corporate Blog Page for Start-Ups

Singapore based Case Study: blog.zopim.com

To engage users and let them know the latest features of the web application.

Case Study 2: Facebook Pages for Non-Profit Organizations

How to measure ROI for marketing for Facebook

Case Study 3: Twitter for Start-Ups

• Start by identifying your start-ups or communications objective using Twitter:
• Customer Service - e.g @starhubcares
• Product Promotion & Sales - e.g. @vodafonenews_au
• Crisis Management - e.g. @flusingapore
• Events activation
•  Issue Advocacy
• Corporate Reputation Management

Twitter to track major events: Singapore Idol 2009