New Posts updated in Insync 2.0

Now a Scientist too...

New role as business analyst in this retailing industry has made me a scientist too. Objective of the role is to apply some science to the art of selling.

So... What is this applying science is all about? More like a technical analysis happens in stock market. In these first three months, i felt dryness in this job. No glamor. After all finding some logic in the sales happened. Like a postmortem. Sometimes it make me feel I'm only a scientist now. Not an artist anymore which I always love to be.

But soon, once the initial analysis is done I will be responsible for merchandise monitoring(if my boss never lie to me). Which means I've to visit nearly 100 showrooms across the country and I've to apply the science in the field. So the science will join hands with the art very soon. Eagerly waiting for those days by keeping the initial analysis ready to be submitted to the forum.

One thing that really warmed me in these three months is the critical acclamation for the first draft of my presentation from my M.D.. Especially the comment on my role as "the crucial part of marketing" has really made me to walk on cloud nine. Actual credit should go to my boss (V.P. of Sales & Marketing).

So... Keeping my fingers crossed for the day the science shake hands with the art.

FYI : My new role & new company

Designation : Business Analyst
Cadre : Sr. Officer
Department : Sales & Marketing
Company : Stylespa Furniture
Group : K K Birla Group.
For company info visit www.stylespafurniture.com

8th P of Marketing: Personal Interest - Written by Bharath

All we learned in the basics of Marketing is the 4Ps as the mix of marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. As far as a Service is concerned we add three more Ps: People, Physical evidence and Process. What if all these factors are similar to two same kind of Products / Services but of different Brands. We choose one from these two. So what induces a buyer to choose a particular Brand? What gives the chosen Brand an edge over the left out?

It’s the 8th P of Marketing: Personal Interest. Sometimes this 8^th P plays a predominant role than any other P. This 8^th P can be caused by anything.

Consider this case for a better understanding. I chose a particular service outlet because it is near to my girl friend’s home. This 8^th P of marketing may be confused with Promotion.

Try this to get a clear picture: I chose a brand because I hate my boss and my boss hates that Brand. Isn’t my personal interest made me to chose that Brand? How to create this Personal Interest? We have to opt for Personalized Advertisement. But Advertisement is meant to be a mass communication tool.

Is personalized advertisement possible? Yes… it is. Catch the below link. Its a clipping from Steven Spielberg's Minority Report. Its a story happening in Washington D.C. in the year 2054. The clipping shows a sample of Personalized Advertisement. http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=0ucwrnJBD6c&feature=related

So… May be…. In 2054 or before, Personal Interest can be considered as the 8^th P of Marketing. Agree with me?

Marketing is an art; I'm an artist

Anyone can do marketing. That is what my two years work experience has taught me. I’ve seen lot of successful marketers especially sales persons without any professional learning in the respective area.

Doesn't marketing needs proper education like other management functions? Well... If you ask me... the answer is a big "NO". But you need a great passion in it. Of course the two years of learning definitely helped me in my work. Thanks to my lecturers, professors and the great Kotler. But I would have shined in my work without my MBA degree and only with my passion.

But to survive and to maintain the top spot, updating continuously is necessary without any doubts.

So.... undoubtedly... Marketing is an art... I'm an artist...

Enough practice is always needed to master the art.

But I would suggest... Proper education + Great Passion in the art makes a good artist.

Impatient Aspirers

I really enjoyed this short film. Though it revealed me the truth that i'm not unique and just one among 18 million. Good take on the advertising world.

Customer is a Child - Written by Bharath

Lot of speculation about how to treat a customer. As a marketing analyst, working at the back end of the department I believe treating the customer as a child is the right way. Reasons: What can be more beautiful in this world than the smile of a child? You have to treat the child with lot of care and affection to gain his love. But if he starts loving you then he would never leave you unless or until if there is any flaw from your side. And when lot of children around you, you have to give equal importance to every child and have to equally distribute your love but giving each child a feeling that you love him more than any other child around you. That’s more important. Because these children are very possessive and sensitive. And they always need your attention. Advertisements and Sales promotion are the chocolates and ice-creams to attract these children. Warning: Don’t fool or threaten this child to feed him. He is not an ordinary child. He is infant Jesus in the hands of Mary. He very well knows what to do. So give him the due respect. But don’t be afraid of him, he still needs your love. Suggest; don’t advice. Inform; don’t teach. Spend most of your time as you can with him. But don’t forget to concentrate on the next child and love him like the same. The most essential quality of a marketer is to get obsessed in loving these children. Love thy Children.

Types of Word of Mouth Marketing

• Buzz Marketing: Using high-profile entertainment or news to get people to talk about your brand.

• Viral Marketing: Creating entertaining or informative messages that are designed to be passed along in an exponential fashion, often electronically or by email.

• Community Marketing: Forming or supporting niche communities that are likely to share interests about the brand (such as user groups, fan clubs, and discussion forums); providing tools, content, and information to support those communities.

• Grassroots Marketing: Organizing and motivating volunteers to engage in personal or local outreach.

• Evangelist Marketing: Cultivating evangelists, advocates, or volunteers who are encouraged to take a leadership role in actively spreading the word on your behalf.

• Product Seeding: Placing the right product into the right hands at the right time, providing information or samples to influential individuals.

• Influencer Marketing: Identifying key communities and opinion leaders who are likely to talk about products and have the ability to influence the opinions of others.

• Cause Marketing: Supporting social causes to earn respect and support from people who feel strongly about the cause.

• Conversation Creation: Interesting or fun advertising, emails, catch phrases, entertainment, or promotions designed to start word of mouth activity.

• Brand Blogging: Creating blogs and participating in the blogosphere, in the spirit of open, transparent communications; sharing information of value that the blog community may talk about.

• Referral Programs: Creating tools that enable satisfied customers to refer their friends.

Online video ads expected to increase a lot in 2008

A new Internet marketing survey conducted by Western Wats in an AT and T-commissioned study reveals that about 65 percent of small businesses surveyed said they advertised in a printed yellow pages directory.

Approximately 53.1 percent of the small businesses that responded to the survey said they expected to buy online video ads in 2008 and 2009.

About 24 percent said they advertised on the Internet, and approximately 67.4 percent said they had their own Web site.

"Overall, it would seem that there are many consumers that are still using the Yellow Pages as their primary choice for local business information.

Frank Jules, CEO of AT&T Advertising and Publishing said "however, we've also noted that they're also searching on the Internet before they actually buy."

About 61.9 percent of U.S. consumers said they still preferred the printed Yellow Pages to find local business information, according to data from The Kelsey Group released by AT&T as part of the findings.

Those numbers were actually higher than the 13 percent who preferred Google and other search engines, and the 7.2 percent who said they preferred the Internet yellow pages best.

Source: eMarketer

Framework on Brand Equity

Click on the image to have a closer look

Marketing Research Process

Marketing Advice from Kotler

The following conversation has been taken from an interview that Mr.Kotler had with MC News. It consists of lot of Marketing tips and Advices.

Do you think consultants and other professional service providers need to improve their marketing strategies and tactics?

Consultants need to improve their brand-building ability. Of course, consultants such as McKinsey, Booz Allen, and others have established strong brands. But most consultants are less distinguished. The key to branding, especially for smaller firms, is to focus on a limited number of issue areas and develop superb expertise in those areas.

By analogy, the head of an architecture firm once told me that his firm could work on any building. I asked, "Suppose I want to build a prison. Could you do a good job?" "Yes," he said. "But what if another firm has built many prisons that are well-regarded. What can you do to convince me that you are more skilled at building prisons." He had no answer.

There has been a great deal of talk about value-based pricing and billing, that is, consultants basing their fees on value to be delivered to clients. Is this approach viable?

One major challenge is that some consultants are seen as pricing excessively for the services rendered. Consultants must do a better job of documenting their work time but also that they did the work in the most efficient manner. I know of a law firm that is willing to propose the cost of the work in advance and if they are off the mark, they will absorb the difference. Clients want to know what the cost is likely to be.

I think that value-based pricing represents an opportunity for differentiation that a smart firm can use to attract new clients against straight fee-based consultants.

Bain and Company would sometimes tell a client that a proposed project would save the client a specific amount. If it failed to do that, Bain would make up the difference. They attracted a lot of clients that way.

Client loyalty has become the Holy Grail for most consultants. Are there two or three tips you could give consultants to help them improve client loyalty?

Clients like to believe that their consultants, especially those on retainers, are thinking about their businesses. Smart consultants will send occasional articles that they come across that might interest a client. They may go further and send articles that would have more of a personal, non-business interest for the client.

One consultant who works with a major candy company is in an enviable position. The candy company found his ideas to be so useful that they said to him: anytime you want to think about some issue in our business and you think we might be interested in your views, just write them down and send us a bill for your time.

Do you think the consultant-client relationship is changing, and if so, what's the nature of the change?

Clients are under increasing cost pressure to cut expenses. They are examining their health, legal and consulting bills more critically. They want value for their money. This should not be a threat to a consulting firm. A consulting firm cannot last that wants revenue without generating proportionate value. The consulting firm's challenge is to constantly figure out how to generate more client value per dollar of cost, and to demonstrate this. Whenever possible, the consulting firm should estimate the ROI value they hope the project will create for the client.

What one piece of advice would you give to a consultant who is just putting together a marketing strategy for a firm?

A consulting firm needs to choose defined areas of expertise and become the best in those areas. The firm should communicate its expertise through written articles, speeches, and exceptional performance. The firm should prepare effective brochures, ads, and other media. They should build a network of referral sources with accountants, lawyers, and other professionals.

How can consulting firms learn more about effective marketing?

They can attend short courses on marketing offered by many business schools. They can contact a professor of marketing to use as an occasional consultant. They can arrange for class projects under the professor. They can solicit marketing ideas from their advertising agency. Ultimately they might spot an excellent professional marketer and put him or her on a retainer.

In addition to my previous books, I would also recommend that they read my new chapter on marketing in a forthcoming book called The Contemporary Consultant, edited by Larry Greiner.

What are the most important skills/aptitudes required for today's consultants?

The most important skill is client relationship management. Some people have a natural aptitude for gaining trust and respect from their clients. They are caring and sensitive people, good listeners and learners, and good problem solvers. The firm that hires more of these people will succeed regardless of other things.

Build a good database on each client's activities, interests, opinions, and other pertinent information. This will enable you to customize your services and communications to each client.

Your firm's marketers must also develop brand-building skills that go far beyond brochures and advertising. Brand building also occurs through event management, sponsorships, contributions to good causes and other activities.

How can consultants attract more clients?

Consultants need to identify the specific clients they want to acquire. Many years ago I told a law firm that it needed to distinguish between soliciting business and positioning itself for business. The latter is much better and consists of building a reputation for doing something so well that word of mouth acts as the soliciting force, not sales calls. Consultants can generate buzz through giving speeches, writing articles, and joining organizations and soon word of mouth will convey their true reputation.

Kotler on Marketing

Marketing takes a day to learn;
Unfortunately it takes a lifetime to master

Kotler's Quote 1

"Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. It is the art of creating genuine customer value."

Kotler's Quote 2

"Marketing is a learning game"

Kotler's Quote 3

"Today's smart marketers don't sell products; they sell benefit packages. They don't sell purchase value only; they sell use value."

Guru of Marketing

Philip Kotler (born 27 May 1931 in Chicago) is the S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He was selected as the #4 management guru of all time by the Financial Times (behind Jack Welch, Bill Gates, and Peter Drucker), and has been hailed by the Management Centre Europe as "the world's foremost expert on the strategic practice of marketing." Also considered one of the pioneers of social marketing.

Dr. Kotler has authored what is widely recognized as the best selling textbook on marketing: Marketing Management, now in its 12th edition. He has also authored, or co-authored a number of other books, including Kotler on Marketing; Lateral Marketing; Strategic Marketing for Non-Profits; Marketing for Healthcare Organizations; Marketing Professional Services; Marketing From A to Z; The 10 Deadly Marketing Sins; Marketing Moves; Marketing places; the Marketing of Nations; and Social Marketing.

In addition, Dr. Kotler has published more than one hundred articles in leading journals, including the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Business Horizons, California Management Review, and the Journal of Marketing. He holds many major awards, including the Distinguished Marketing Educator of the Year Award of the American Marketing Association and Marketer of the Year by the Sales & Marketing Executives International (SMEI).

Through his consulting firm, the Kotler Marketing Group (KMG), Dr. Kotler has consulted to many major U.S. and foreign companies - including IBM, Michelin, Bank of America, Merck, General Electric, Honeywell, and Motorola - in the areas of marketing strategy and planning, marketing organization, and international marketing.

He presents continuing seminars on leading marketing concepts and developments to companies and organizations in the U.S., Europe and Asia, and participates in KMG client projects.

Kotler's Five top tips for Marketing Success

1. Come in under the radar

"Building a brand is a roll-out process, not a drop everywhere in the world at one time. Do you know what the best selling imported beer is in the United States? It's Corona. Who would expect a beer from Mexico to be popular? The fact is it's a terrific beer. But they didn't just come to the U.S. and put it everywhere. They went to the cities with a Mexican population -- Los Angeles, Chicago, New York -- and then they put it in restaurants and stores there. The key to brand-building is to have something good that you roll-out in a very intelligent way. Maybe even invisibly for a while because you want to be under the radar screen of competitors."

2. Know your customer

"There are still too many CEOs who identify marketing with selling and advertising. But marketing has evolved to be not only product centered but customer centered. We are saying you've got to understand and choose the customers you want to serve. Don't just go after everyone. Define the target market carefully through segmentation and then really position yourself as different and as superior to that target market. Don't go into that target market if you're not superior.

"We are trying to make the case that it's much more important for a company to be customer-centric than product-centric. The same customer you have for product X, may be available for product Y and Z and so on. And you won't know that if you have separate product managers, each only concerned with selling his or her product."

3. Own your branding

"We are not in a state of competition anymore; we're in a state of hyper-competition. So people are desperately looking for handles -- functional features, emotional appeals -- that will draw people to their product. We should think of owning a word or a phrase that helps to build customer retention and loyalty. Look at how we buy the Mercedes because it's the best engineered car. We buy a BMW because it's the best driving performance. We buy the Volvo because it's the safest automobile. A lot of these companies lose that edge too, but they don't lose the impression."

4. Stay ahead of the competition

"The worst thing is that if something works, your competitors are going to clone it and before you know it anything that you had as a differentiator is imitated by the others. So you're in the business of constant innovation. Constantly asking yourself, 'Three years from now, what will our differentiator be?'

"I had the CEO of a large company approach me and ask me to sign a copy of my book, which I always do, but this was a first edition from 1967. I looked at the book and I said I won't sign it. 'Why not?' he asked. I said, 'That book is from before there was the Internet. It has very little on branding, so I think it's useless.' At which point he said to me, 'Are you trying to sell me a new copy?' And I said, 'Yes, but it's not for my benefit-- I don't need the money." Markets change, so marketing has to change."

5. Make it an experience

"Once in a while we find someone having a whole new approach to a mature market. Starbucks is a very good example where coffee is coffee but they decided to sell it differently, put a higher price, make it good-tasting and make it an experience rather than just some coffee. In fact, I've heard that if Starbucks closed its shops, a lot of people would go crazy. They are in such a habit of going to the Starbucks before work, taking the coffee, and they'd become desperate otherwise.

"There's a big movement to say, 'we're not just adding services to our business and our product, we're actually trying to design an experience.' You'll see that language being used. We're in the experience design business."

Pepsi's Counter ad to Coke

Guerilla Marketing

Guerrilla marketing is an unconventional way of performing promotional activities on a very low budget. Such promotions are sometimes designed so that the target audience is left unaware they have been marketed to and may therefore be a form of undercover marketing (also called stealth marketing). The ethics of guerrilla marketing have often been called into question due to an alleged deceptive, misleading, or subtle nature of the campaigns. The Picture portraits an example for Guerilla Marketing for an amusement part.