Then End....?

So now that we've covered most of the main topics in a general Marketing class, as well as some of my ideas and rants, and lots of videos that amused me, I'd like to end by sharing some immages and my ideas about them
First: The 1950's Advertising

There is someting nostalic and almost innocent in my mind about the old style of advertising. The ads were simply telling you how great a product was, or how useful or how much fun. I like that, as opposed to the shark infested water of today's marketing world, where you have to know the sharks are there ready to eat you simply to make a good purchase and not be fooled by fancy gimicks.
Second: Humor and Iconic Images

I think that the two most powerful marketing ploys used are emotional (often thought of as sappy) and humor. This two marketing stragies can build a relationship between a brand and a costumer, and can ensure that the customer won't forget the product. I personally perfer humor, because it bothers me to know that someone is purposefully tweaking my emotions to get me to identify with their product. However, some consumers LOVE the telephone ads that make them cry.


Third: Pricing is Important

How you price you product can determine whether or not it sells, and if it is considered reliable or not. Malt-O-Meal is a very reliable and old brand, just as old and reliable as more expensive brands such as General Mills. But instead of paying for expensive commercials, they keep their product prices low, and expect customers to chose the lower price product often enough to make the company money. This pricing stragedy has worked for decades for the company.

Four:Marketing is about understanding your Market

This product is not sold in the U.S. but is very popular is Asian countries. Understanding what country you are in and what this country wants and needs instead of assuming all countries want the same thing is vital in marketing. Having a good understanding of different world cultures, tabboos, and the sociol psychology of each country will make a marketer a success.

And that concludes the Marketing Adventures of this blogger....for right now....
Finally, for your consideration, would you purchase a action figure that glittered, and was a vampire, and was, well, this?
Haha!

Fin.

The Intangibles

So we all understand how to market a product. Have people test it, make ads and commercials, use humor and buzz marketing.
But how do you market something that you can't put in a bag and take home with you?
How do you market a service? Over 80% of U.S. Gross Domestic Product (the moeny our country makes) is from services! So this is where marketers will find not only the biggest challenges, but the biggest possible payoffs. In other words, it's where the money's at.
In my opinion, marketing a service is not truly that different from marketing a product. You can still use consumer testimonials, still use humor and buzz marketing, and still try to convince people that your service is something they can't live without.
In my mind that hardest part about marketing an intangible service is the possible lack on customer gratification due to the lack of something tangible they can hold, or wave around and say, "HERE! This is what I received for my money!"
When paying money for a service such as medical care, or consulting, or even live entertainment, there is the danger that the customer will forget the value of the service once it is complete.





Some markets try to solve this by making tangible merchandise that consumers can have as proof of their investment/purchase. Bands and sports franchises sell t-shirts, posters, and memorabilia, and most health care offers some sort of gratification, whether it's a release from pain, a prescription, or a sense of physical and mental well-being.
But that's all AFTER a costumer is aware of a service, once they like it, have used it, and have developed some brand loyalty.
How do you market a service that in new, and does not offer something tangible? Take for example a new insurance company How do you convince customers to spend their money with the company?

Customers judge intangible serives with criteria that they may not be aware of, including Reliability, Responsveness, Assurance, Tangibles (as discuseed above, but also including the atsmophere), and the Empathy or caring of the people providing the service.
So a marketer has to first make sure that the customer will feel the intangible serive is realiabilie, and will be just as great a quality every time they use it. One way to do this is to use testimonials of people who have used the service. Another is to offer a free no-obligations trial period. This can lose a company money if the customer does NOT find the service to be invaluable, but it is also a great way to build customer loyality if your service is excellent.
Th best way to market an intangible serive is to give the customer a mental picture that they can identify and unerstand, no matter how silly it may seem. This may come in the form of a mascot, like the Geico Geco, or a piece of atmsphoere, such as a comfortable couch
in a psychologist office, or the idea of a open and colorful office space such as with Google

and Facebook.
To market someting people can't see, touch , or taste, you have to give them things they can, and the mosre creative yet simple, the more effective the marketing campaign.
So marketing an intangible product is not only possible, but done all the time. It allows for great creativity, and that is what any marketing professional loves.

Creating a Buzz

One of the best parts of marketing is the oppertunity to get people talking.
"Did you see that crazy commercial last night?"
Creating a buzz about your product can be time consuming, but is very rewarding when you see it pay off.
There are several ways to do this. There are the expensive ways, creating a complete marketing campaign with print ads, commercials and spokes people, paying for product placement in movies and television, giving mass amounts of the product to celebrities and hoping the will endorse it. There are also cheaper, more creative, (and some would say devious ways to create a buzz. These tactics are often called Guerilla Marketing.
Of the first catagory, my favorite is the product placement. It has always been so entertaining to me to see how many products I can spot in a movie.
A hilarious example is shown in this clip from the cult movie "Return of the Killer Tomatoes," and it starts at 1:00 in the clip. It shows how many productions use funding from product placement to finance a film.

Another movie that has fun with product placement is the 1990's teen flick, "Josie and the Pussiecats," about a band that catches on to an evil plot to brain wash America's teens. The movie is full of blatent product placement, and besies the plot, the never say ANYTHING about it!

That's the big money marketing tactic, but great impact can be achieved with small amounts of money as well. Guerilla marketing is unexpected marketing. It works best when people have no clue the are about to be pitched something. If you were out jogging one morning, and looked down to see giant foot prints on the sidewalk or jogging path, you would probably be curious. And if they lead to a store or another ad stating what they were advertising, you would not be likely to forget that experience or that product.
Another guerilla marketing tactic is placing ads in bathrooms stalls. After all, you basically have a captive audience, right? But to really work well, these ads have to please and entertain the audience/consumer, not annoy them. No one likes telemarketing calls, or getting random slips or paper as the walk down the street, but people love to feel a part of something big. If it seems like you are letting them in on a joke (such as this flash mob dancing to Beyonce's "All the Single Ladies") then they will think of your product with pleasure.

So when you think of how to market your product, think buzz, but most of all, think creative!

Distributing Your Product

Once you have your product, you have to figure out where to place it. Do you want to sell it in a Wal-Mart or a Neiman-Marucs? Most of this depends on who you want to buy it.
If you want rich up and comers to consider your $300 sunglasses a status symbol, you would choose to sell it in a high end store like Neiman-Marcus. But if you wanted your $5 sunglasses to be easly accessible and worn by everyone, you would probably choose to place them in a Wal-Mart.
You may choose to sell you product in singular units or you may choose to sell your product in bulk. All of these factors influence pricing, and are important to consider.
Walk into your local grocery store.
What do you see on the shelves? Food, cleaning suppplies, home-care products? How did they get there?
Chances are a big truck came from a local or distant warehouse and brought they items. Most grocery stores don't have enough storage room for tons of product,
and they only have enough room to keep most of their products on the shelf. This is one reason why Just In Time Delievery is vital in today's market.
Just In Time Delievery is a guarentee that your product will be shipped right off your assembly line, straight to it's destination, whether that's a warehouse or a retailer.
Another reason this is so important is because you really don't have enough storage space to hold all of your product, AND the materials to make your product. You need that materials delievered right on schedule, and the finished product taken right on schedule.
For these reasons it would be very stressful to be a Distribution Manager. Dealing with all that stress, "Is it here yet?" "Oh no, the product is here and we don't have any room!" would drive me insane! But somebody's got to do it, and as long as I understand it, I can avoid it so it won't be me!

The Price is Right!...Right?

How do you decide how to price a product? Do you guess how much your market would be willing to pay for it? Or do you price it according to how much it cost to make?
While Pricing is the easiest of the four P's (Product, Promotion, Placement, Price) to change, it is also the easiest to get wrong!
The very bottom line with pricing is YOU HAVE TO COVER COSTS. This often means covering the cost of any promotion or prime placement as well as the cost of making the product. Each product has a base line price that you can not go under without suffering a loss-UNLESS you have a stragic pricing stragedy.
If you are having an introductory sale, you may want to begin by selling you product UNDER COST to get people hooked on it. While this method is effective in getting people to try your product, it may backfire once you raise the price. You could potentailly loose all the customers, and not make up the cost of selling below cost of producing the product.
A confusing and baffling part of pricing are the luxery items that are sold so far over cost that how they determine what, exactly, the price should be, is often a mystery to me. I am speaking of the $650 handbags by design houses such as Coach or Fendi,
and of the $700 pairs of shoes.
One reason a customer would be effected to pay so much is for the status the item brings. If they can buy a $650 purse, and everyone else KNOWS that purse cost that much, then surely they are wealthy, successful, and happy.
Perhaps the price managers for high end items keep their finger on the pulse of the consumer, and decide how much such a consumer is willingly to pay for the status symbol. But Sometime it seems that they are setting impossible prices so that once a person is able to pay them, the person feels that they have arrived.
Whatever a particular pricing strategy, I personally still love shopping at the Dollar Store, and yet I do love the feeling of owning a good $50 bag, and think of it as an investment. Investment into to what exactly? My wardrobe? I'd like to think so, but realistly it's an investment into the product producer's pocket.

Managing Product Lines

of four major companies? One example is Kraft Food Corporation, which has so many different product lines such as Wishbone salad dressing, WheatThins, Oreos, and even Tang!

Each of these products is it's own product line, with many side products and complementary products. Oreo's alone has over 15 different cookie products in the Oreo line!


Did you know that most food products are produced by one
It would be far too much to expect one manager to look after ALL the products and be able to handel them and foresee problems. Instead each product line has it's own manager to overlook the line and ensure quality and customer satisfaction. The manager makes decisions regarding whether to add a new product to the product line mix, (this is called stretching) or to get rid of a few product in the product mix (this is called contraction).
There are also upward and downward line stretches, where a line creates a less expensive addition to their existing line to capture a lower income market, and not allow their competetors to gain control over that market. An upward expansion is when a company creates a luxery line or more expensive version of their product. This is made to appeal to a higher end demographic, and can help elevate an entire product line.
In the case of Volvo, the foreign car, their product line is narrow, as they only offer a few options or products. But in the case of Oreo's, the product line is full, meaning they offere as much as possible! If I had a choice, I would chose to be the marketing head of a wide product line, because there are so many more options to choose from, and different angles one could try to promote products. You could use cross marketing and have Oreo cookies include a coupon for Oreo candy bars, or you could build an entire campaign around the bevy of Oreo products. All in all, the more a product line has to offer, the more challenging and interesting it would be to manage.

Innovation

Innovation basically means coming up with new products, or making people believe the product is new. Some innovations are easily to spot, like when the wheel was created thousands or years ago, or the advent of the automobile, computer, or cell phone. All of these innovations can be classified as disruptive innovations, because they radically change or disrupt the way things are done. Before the wheel, items had to be carried around, and after, people learned how to use the wheel to make carts to carry things, and to transport more goods at a time. Before automobiles, a cart drawn by horses was the best way to travel in a city or in the country, and have control over your route. After the automobile, roads had to change, jobs had to change, pretty much EVERYTHING changed.


They are other types of innovation, like continuous innovation, where a little bit of learning is required, but it's more of an add-on to existing technology. Examples of this include the remote control for the televison, because while some learning was required, the first remotes were simple, and they have slowly gotten more and more complex.
The tricky thing about marketing innovations is figuring out how your market will respond to a new product, and whether to play up the newness of it, or to make it seem like an easy to use product. For example how would you present a service that allows people to video call friends all across the world using the internet? Would you present it as a completely new product that breaks down boundaries, is the next wave of telecommunications, or would you present it as an easy to use product, something that is like instant messaging, but with voice and video? This product exists, and is called Skype.
Even though it is a disruptive innovation because it is changing the way people communicate and whether or not the purcahse phones, it was presented as easy to use and took off. It is now even used as a noun, and is popular with almost all demographics! Deciding how to market something to it's best advantage is one of the most basic and difficult aspects of marketing. With innovative products, the success of the product, and whether or not people get to see and use it, depends on the marketing plan.