Marketing Materials

Search engine marketing

2008-12-27T09:20:00.000-08:00

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, SEM methods include: search engine optimization (or SEO), paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion. Other sources, including the New York Times, define SEM as the practice of buying paid search listings

As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid-to-late 90s, search engines started appearing to help people find information quickly. Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay per click programs offered by Open Text in 1996 and then Goto.com in 1998. Goto.com later changed its name to Overture in 2001, and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, and now offers paid search opportunities for advertisers through Yahoo! Search Marketing. Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000 through the Google AdWords program. By 2007, pay-per-click programs proved to be primary money-makers for search engines.

Search engine optimization consultants expanded their offerings to help businesses learn about and use the advertising opportunities offered by search engines, and new agencies focusing primarily upon marketing and advertising through search engines emerged. The term "Search Engine Marketing" was proposed by Danny Sullivan in 2001 to cover the spectrum of activities involved in performing SEO, managing paid listings at the search engines, submitting sites to directories, and developing online marketing strategies for businesses, organizations, and individuals.

Public marketing

2008-12-27T09:18:00.000-08:00

concepts and tools to According to Kaplan and Haenlein (2009) public marketing is the application of marketingpublic administration. Public marketing has evolved to a self-contained discipline merging thoughts from marketing and public sector management. Against the background of contro-versial debates going along with the development of the field, marketing in the public sector has to face new challenges today. Relationships to customers, employees and other stakeholders appear to become central to the success of public sector organisations. Therefore public marketing should evolve from a shallow tool kit to a profound knowledge base for public managers.

Proximity marketing

2008-12-27T09:17:00.000-08:00

Proximity marketing is the localized wireless distribution of advertising content associated with a particular place. Transmissions can be received by individuals in that location who wish to receive them and have the necessary equipment to do so.

Distribution may be via a traditional localized broadcast, or more commonly is specifically targeted to devices known to be in a particular area.

The location of a device may be determined by:

A cellular phone being in a particular cell
A Bluetooth or WiFi device being within range of a transmitter.
An Internet enabled device with GPS enabling it to request localized content from Internet servers.

Communications may be further targeted to specific groups within a given location, for example content in tourist hot spots may only be distributed to devices registered outside the local area.

Communications may be both time and place specific, e.g. content at a conference venue may depend on the event in progress.

Uses of proximity marketing include distribution of media at concerts, information (weblinks on local facilities), gaming and social applications, and advertising.

Product marketing

2008-12-27T09:16:00.001-08:00

Product marketing deals with the first of the "4P"'s of marketing, which are Product, Pricing, Place, and Promotion. Product marketing, as opposed to product management, deals with more outbound marketing tasks. For example, product management deals with the nuts and bolts of product development within a firm, whereas product marketing deals with marketing the product to prospects, customers, and others. Product marketing, as a job function within a firm, also differs from other marketing jobs such as Marcom or marketing communications, online marketing, advertising, marketing strategy, etc.

A Product Market is something that is referred to when pitching a new product to the general public. The people you are trying to make your product appeal to is your consumer market. For example: If you were pitching a new video game console game to the public, your consumer market would probably be a younger/teenage market (depending on the type of game). Thus you would carry out market research to find out how best to release the game. Likewise, a massage chair would probably not appeal to younger children, so you would market your product to an older generation.

Market research

2008-12-27T09:14:00.000-08:00

Market research is generally either primary or secondary. In secondary research, the company uses information compiled from other sources that appears applicable to a new or existing product. The advantages of secondary research are that it is relatively cheap and easily accessible. Disadvantages of secondary research are that it is often not specific to your area of research and the data used can be biased and is difficult to validate. Primary market research involves testing such as focus groups, surveys, field tests, interviews or observation, conducted or tailored specifically to that product.

Marketing strategy

2008-12-27T09:13:00.000-08:00

A marketing strategy is a process that can allow an organization to concentrate its limited resources on the greatest opportunities to increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. A marketing strategy should be centred around the key concept that customer satisfaction is the main goal.

A marketing strategy can serve as the foundation of a marketing plan. A marketing plan contains a set of specific actions required to successfully implement a marketing strategy. For example: "Use a low cost product to attract consumers. Once our organization, via our low cost product, has established a relationship with consumers, our organization will sell additional, higher-margin products and services that enhance the consumer's interaction with the low-cost product or service."

A strategy consists of a well thought out series of tactics to make a marketing plan more effective. Marketing strategies serve as the fundamental underpinning of marketing plans designed to fill market needs and reach marketing objectives. Plans and objectives are generally tested for measurable results.

A marketing strategy often integrates an organization's marketing goals, policies, and action sequences (tactics) into a cohesive whole. Similarly, the various strands of the strategy , which might include advertising, channel marketing, internet marketing, promotion and public relations can be orchestrated. Many companies cascade a strategy throughout an organization, by creating strategy tactics that then become strategy goals for the next level or group. Each one group is expected to take that strategy goal and develop a set of tactics to achieve that goal. This is why it is important to make each strategy goal measurable.

Industrial marketing

2008-12-27T09:11:00.000-08:00

Industrial marketing is the marketing of goods and services from one business to another. The word "industrial" has connotations of heavy machinery, mining, construction etc. but "industrial marketing" is not confined to these types of business activities. Broadly (and inadequatly) marketing could be split into consumer marketing (B2C "Business to Consumer") and industrial marketing (B2B "Business to Business").

Internet marketing

2008-12-27T09:10:00.000-08:00

Internet marketing, also referred to as web marketing, online marketing, or eMarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet.

The Internet has brought many unique benefits to marketing, one of which being lower costs for the distribution of information and media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, both in terms of providing instant response and eliciting responses, is a unique quality of the medium. Internet marketing is sometimes considered to have a broader scope because it refers to digital media such as the Internet, e-mail, and wireless media; however, Internet marketing also includes management of digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management (ECRM) systems.

Internet marketing ties together creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including design, development, advertising, and sales. Internet marketing does not simply entail building or promoting a website, nor does it mean placing a banner ad on another website. Effective Internet marketing requires a comprehensive strategy that synergizes a given company's business model and sales goals with its website function and appearance, focusing on its target market through proper choice of advertising type, media, and design.

Internet marketing also refers to the placement of media along different stages of the customer engagement cycle through search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), banner ads on specific websites, e-mail marketing, and Web 2.0 strategies. In 2008 The New York Times working with comScore published an initial estimate to quantify the user data collected by large Internet-based companies. Counting four types of interactions with company websites in addition to the hits from advertisements served from advertising networks, the authors found the potential for collecting data upward of 2,500 times on average per user per month.

International marketing

2008-12-27T09:09:00.000-08:00

International marketing refers to marketing carried out by companies overseas or across national borderlines. This strategy uses an extension of the techniques used in the home country of a firm.

Introduction to International Marketing. International marketing is simply the application of marketing principles to more than one country. However, there is a crossover between what is commonly expressed as international marketing and global marketing, which is a similar term.

The intersection is the result of the process of internationalisation. Many American and European authors see international marketing as a simple extension of exporting, whereby the marketing mix is simply adapted in some way to take into account differences in consumers and segments. It then follows that global marketing takes a more standardised approach to world markets and focuses upon sameness, in other words the similarities in consumers and segments. So let's take a look at some generally accepted definitions.

Global marketing

2008-12-27T09:07:00.000-08:00

The Oxford University Press defines global marketing as “marketing on a worldwide scale reconciling or taking commercial advantage of global operational differences, similarities and opportunities in order to meet global objectives.” Oxford University Press’ Glossary of Marketing Terms.

A company marketing only within its national boundaries only has to consider domestic competition. Even if that competition includes companies from foreign markets, it still only has to focus on the competition that exists in its home market. Products and services are developed for customers in the home market without thought of how the product or service could be used in other markets. All marketing decisions are made at headquarters.

The biggest obstacle these marketers face is being blindsided by emerging global marketers. Because domestic marketers do not generally focus on the changes in the global marketplace, they may not be aware of a potential competitor who is a market leader on three continents until they simultaneously open 20 stores in the Northeastern U.S. These marketers can be considered ethnocentric as they are most concerned with how they are perceived in their home country.

Experiential marketing

2008-12-27T09:06:00.000-08:00

Experiential marketing attempts to connect consumers with brands in personally relevant and memorable ways. The alternative term customer-experience marketing emphasises the idea of communicating the essence of a brand through a personalised experience.

As a marketing methodology, experiential marketing aims to move beyond the traditional "features-and-benefits" marketing, cast to a wide audience that includes not only those who may benefit from a brand or product, but also those who would not benefit at all. (As a result of such traditional marketing, people avoid messages whenever possible and by any means possible i.e. pop-up blockers, the United States National Do Not Call Registry and DVRs (such as TiVo) to avoid exposure to commercials.) In contrast, experiential marketing presents an experience that people choose to attend to and participate in after identifying the relevance of a brand or product to their needs.

Database marketing

2008-12-27T09:05:00.000-08:00

Database marketing is a form of direct marketing using databases of customers or potential customers to generate personalized communications in order to promote a product or service for marketing purposes. The method of communication can be any addressable medium, as in direct marketing.

The distinction between direct and database marketing stems primarily from the attention paid to the analysis of data. Database marketing emphasizes the use of statistical techniques to develop models of customer behavior, which are then used to select customers for communications. As a consequence, database marketers also tend to be heavy users of data warehouses, because having a greater amount of data about customers increases the likelihood that a more accurate model can be built.

The "database" is usually name, address, and transaction history details from internal sales or delivery systems, or a bought-in compiled "list" from another organization, which has captured that information from its customers. Typical sources of compiled lists are charity donation forms, application forms for any free product or contest, product warranty cards, subscription forms, and credit application forms.

The communications generated by database marketing may be described as junk mail or spam, if it is unwanted by the addressee. Direct and database marketing organizations, on the other hand, argue that a targeted letter or e-mail to a customer, who wants to be contacted about offerings that may interest the customer, benefits both the customer and the marketer.

Agricultural marketing

2008-12-27T09:02:00.000-08:00

Agricultural marketing can best be defined as series of services involved in moving a product from the point of production to the point of consumption. Thus agricultural marketing is a series of inter-connected activities involving: planning production, growing and harvesting, grading, packing, transport, storage, agro- and food processing, distribution and sale. Such activities cannot take place without the exchange of information and are often heavily dependent on the availability of suitable finance. Marketing systems are dynamic. They are competitive and involve continuous change and improvement. Businesses that have lower costs, are more efficient and can deliver quality products are those that prosper. Those who have high costs, do not adapt to changes in market demand and provide poorer quality are often forced out of business. Marketing has to be customer oriented and has to provide the farmer, transporter, trader, processor, etc. with a profit. This requires those involved in marketing chains to understand buyer requirements, both in terms of product and business conditions.

Several organizations provide support to developing countries to develop their agricultural marketing systems, including the marketing section of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).Improvement of marketing systems necessitates a strong private sector backed up by appropriate policy and legislative frameworks and effective government support services. Such services can include provision of market infrastructure, supply of market information, and agricultural extension services able to advise farmers on marketing. Training in marketing at all levels is also needed. One of many problems faced in agricultural marketing in developing countries is the latent hostility to the private sector and the lack of understanding of the role of the intermediary. “Middleman” has become very much a pejorative word.