Marketing 101
Marketing, as we have known it, will now and forever be known as traditional marketing or, in some cases, old media. Old does not suggest that it is without value, only that it preceded social media marketing, which is being called new media in some circles. Traditional marketing has an important role in your marketing mix.
Marketing efforts should be a mix of traditional and social media marketing, old and new. Currently, at the outset of 2010, we see traditional dominating that mix, but the forecast is that social media will play a great and greater role in that mix as it continues to evolve through 2010. Just Google “marketing is dead. Long live marketing” and you’ll be astounded how controversial this topic. In any case, traditional marketing: price, product, distribution, and promotion will continue to play a role and inform whatever marketing you choose to do. The following is a most fundamental foundation for understanding traditional marketing.
Marketing is directed at markets. A market is two or more people, who can afford your product/service, and want your product or service. No market, no business! Those who fit into a market tell us how and to whom to direct our marketing efforts. We would be foolish to expend any resources on someone not in the “market” for our product/service. Markets can also be segmented.
This is the age of customization in marketing. We have 10,000 customers, with 5000 being male and 5000 females. It’s cost effective to design a direct mail piece specificly for the men or the women. Web site portals make segmenting easy.
Marketing, all marketing, is the art and science of turning a want into a need. I want to eat, but do I need a steak? I want a car. Do I need a BMW? I want a vacation. Niagra Falls or Hawaii? Marketing has shaped my need. Price, product, distribution, and promotion have all been used in concert or separately to influence my decision. For our puposes, we are going to focus on promotion and promotion is defined as advertising, personal selling, publicity, and sales promotions.
Sales promotions can include discounts, sales, coupons, contests. Examples of sales promotions are:
- Price deal: A temporary reduction in the price, such as happy hour
- Loyal Reward Program: Consumers collect points, miles, or credits for purchases and redeem them for rewards. Two famous examples are Pepsi Stuff and AAdvantage.
- Cents-off deal: Offers a brand at a lower price. Price reduction may be a percentage marked on the package.
- Price-pack deal: The packaging offers a consumer a certain percentage more of the product for the same price (for example, 25 percent extra).
- Coupons: coupons have become a standard mechanism for sales promotions.
- Loss leader: the price of a popular product is temporarily reduced in order to stimulate other profitable sales
- Free-standing insert (FSI): A coupon booklet is inserted into the local newspaper for delivery.
- On-shelf couponing: Coupons are present at the shelf where the product is available.
- Checkout dispensers: On checkout the customer is given a coupon based on products purchased.
- On-line couponing: Coupons are available on line. Consumers print them out and take them to the store.
- Mobile couponing: Coupons are available on a mobile phone. Consumers show the offer on a mobile phone to a salesperson for redemption.
- Online interactive promotion game: Consumers play an interactive game associated with the promoted product. See an example of the Interactive Internet Ad for tomato ketchup.
- Contests/sweepstakes/games: The consumer is automatically entered into the event by purchasing the product.
- Point-of-sale displays:-
- Kids eat free specials: Offers a discount
Publicity or public relations is press or attention directed at your product or business at minimal cost. A few examples are:
- Art exhibitions
- Event sponsorship
- Arrange a speech or talk
- Make an analysis or prediction
- Conduct a poll or survey
- Issue a report
- Take a stand on a controversial subject
- Arrange for a testimonial
- Announce an appointment
- Invent then present an award
- Stage a debate
- Organize a tour of your business or projects
- Issue a commendation
Personal selling is much about building relationships, and as you learn more about social media marketing, you’ll understand the direct connection. Long before there were tv or radio commercials, and even telemarketers, sellers and buyers engaged with each other. The sale was often the result of how the buyer felt about the seller, as much as about what the seller was selling. It’s no less important today.
Advertising is communication, sometimes less intrusive than at other times. A postcard or e-mail reminding you buy flowers for your mom on Mother’s Day isn’t terribly intrusive. Crazy Eddie, screaming at you in that tv commercial, is intrusive or what is now being described as interruptive advertising. The fact is that we as consumers and audience have, up until recently, had an understanding with advertisers: you pay for our entertainment on the radio or tv, keep the cost down for our newspapers and magazines, and we won’t squawk at even the most interruptive advertising. With e-mail and spam, that’s changed.
E-mail and spam, not e-mail, changed the dynamic. We didn’t, and don’t, like telemarketers, but legislation protects us, so it didn’t produce any major change in the understanding between advertiser and consumer/audience. Spam pushed us over the top.
Spam drove us to social media. If you read Dave Evans’ Social Media Marketing: One Hour a Day, he lays out the evolution of social media clearly and points a finger, the finger, at spam. If social media is about nothing else, its about the consumer taking control. But, before I say more about social media, I want to finish up a few more points on traditional marketing, particularly advertising, which we have defined as communication.
Advertising does one of three things: educates, reminds, or persuades. Please note the or. One of the big problems for advertisers is trying to do or be all things in one ad. Different audiences, or segments within a market, demand different messages.
I hope this has given you a starting point for understanding traditional marketing. This will be immensely helpful in getting a handle on social media marketing. The two forms of marketing share, as you will note in the posts, many of the same elements. Your comments and suggestions will be most valued, and I’ll use them to continue building this page.
