Do it right and you can convert more leads. Do it wrong and your customer gets the water torture.

Drip marketing is the rather inelegant term for a marketing campaign that relies on repeated contact, or “touches,” with a potential customer.

Unlike a leaky faucet, drip marketing is no accident. Successful drip marketing involves a carefully planned and thoughtfully targeted series of communications that will get your message across to customers and keep your company’s name in their minds. As prospects move through the early stages of the sell cycle, drip marketing helps ensure that those potential customers become your actual customers.

If you’re in sales you already know that prospects are not always ready to buy when you’re ready to sell.  Drip Marketing is a term used to describe an automated system that uses emails, newsletters, direct mail and postcards to continually drip out information to your list of prospects and customers.  Developing a strategy for keeping in contact on a continuing basis is what will cause a prospect to buy from you rather than from one of your competitors.

Let’s examine more closely how drip marketing can increase your sales:

1. Build a relationship– Sending out regular messages to your target market allows you to share information about your business and assures the prospect that your relationship with them will not end with the sale.

2. Presell your prospects – Educate them and help them do their research.  When they’re ready to make a purchase, who do you think they’re going to call?

3. Be persistent–Marketing experts recommend you have some sort of contact every 10-21 days to keep your name foremost in your prospects’ minds.   Think about what information you already have that you could divide up and send to your prospect list.   Brochures, white papers, manuals, FYI emails, etc.

4. Become the expert– Supplying your prospects with evidence that you know what you’re talking about will develop your image as an expert.   What have you accomplished that positions you as a leader in your industry?  Don’t be afraid to self-promote!

5. Be yourself–Studies have shown that prospects are more likely to make a purchase from someone they know and trust rather than a stranger who is selling a similar product.  Don’t be afraid to let your personality shine.  Let them see that you are a real person and that you care.

6. Mix it up– Prospects are bombarded with messages every day.  It’s hard to cut through all the clutter in order to get your message noticed.  Use a combination of email, postcards, direct mail, automated voice messaging, phone calls, Twitter, Facebook, etc.   You never know which of your messages will connect with which prospect.

7. Fix your follow-up failure– An automated marketing database will allow you to make sure that no one falls through the cracks.  Think of all the people you’ve met at networking events and trade shows.  What about referrals and your past customers?  If you’re like most salespeople, you have a pile of business cards on your desk with the intent to follow-up.  Unless you have an automated system, regular follow-up rarely happens and many sales are lost.

8. Target your audience– As you have probably discovered, your target market can be divided into various subsets. Using a database allows you to further segment your market and personalize your messages accordingly. Your prospects will become purchasers if they can relate to your sales message, which will be different for every segment of your target market.

9. Eliminate your slow sales times–Just as people are nearing the end of one marketing cycle and making purchases, new people will just begin receiving your information, thus continuing the cycle.  If you automate your marketing messages – such as via email auto responders or postcard campaigns – you will have a steady stream of sales.

10. Appreciate your current customers– Now that you have a customer base that has bought a product, you can use drip marketing to up-sell or cross-sell them to other products or services you offer.   Your current customers are a goldmine as they already know and trust you.

While planning a drip marketing campaign will take time, the effort is well worth the investment.  Once your automated system is set-up,  it will decrease the amount of time you spend in trying to manually follow-up with people and increase the amount of sales you can make each month.

Advertising is a form of communication used to help sell products and services. Typically it communicates a message including the name of the product or service and how that product or service could potentially benefit the consumer. However, advertising does typically attempt to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume more of a particular brand of product or service. Modern advertising developed with the rise of mass production in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.^[1]

Many advertisements are designed to generate increased consumption of those products and services through the creation and reinvention of the “brand image”. For these purposes, advertisements sometimes embed their persuasive message with factual information. There are many media used to deliver these messages, including traditional media such as television, radio, cinema, magazines, newspapers, video games, the carrier bags, billboards, mail or post and Internet marketing. Today, new media such as digital signage is growing as a major new mass media. Advertising is often placed by an advertising agency on behalf of a company or other organization.

Organizations that frequently spend large sums of money on advertising that sells what is not, strictly speaking, a product or service include political parties, interest groups, religious organizations, and military recruiters. Non-profit organizations are not typical advertising clients, and may rely on free modes of persuasion, such as public service announcements.^{[citation needed]}

Money spent on advertising has increased dramatically in recent years. In 2007, spending on advertising has been estimated at over $150 billion in the United States^[2] and $385 billion worldwide,^[3] and the latter to exceed $450 billion by 2010.^{[citation needed]}

While advertising can be seen as necessary for economic growth, it is not without social costs. Unsolicited Commercial Email and other forms of spam have become so prevalent as to have become a major nuisance to users of these services, as well as being a financial burden on internet service providers.^[4] Advertising is increasingly invading public spaces, such as schools, which some critics argue is a form of child exploitation.^[5] In addition, advertising frequently uses psychological pressure (for example, appealing to feelings of inadequacy) on the intended consumer, which may be harmful.

History

Edo period advertising flyer from 1806 for a traditional medicine called Kinseitan

Egyptians used papyrus to make sales messages and wall posters. Commercial messages and political campaign displays have been found in the ruins of Pompeii and ancient Arabia. Lost and found advertising on papyrus was common in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Wall or rock painting for commercial advertising is another manifestation of an ancient advertising form, which is present to this day in many parts of Asia, Africa, and South America. The tradition of wall painting can be traced back to Indian rock art paintings that date back to 4000 BCE.^[6] History tells us that Out-of-Home advertising and Billboards are the oldest forms of advertising.

As the towns and cities of the Middle Ages began to grow, and the general populace was unable to read, signs that today would say cobbler, miller, tailor or blacksmith would use an image associated with their trade such as a boot, a suit, a hat, a clock, a diamond, a horse shoe, a candle or even a bag of flour. Fruits and vegetables were sold in the city square from the backs of carts and wagons and their proprietors used street callers (town criers) to announce their whereabouts for the convenience of the customers.

As education became an apparent need and reading, as well printing developed, advertising expanded to include handbills. In the 17th century advertisements started to appear in weekly newspapers in England. These early print advertisements were used mainly to promote books and newspapers, which became increasingly affordable with advances in the printing press; and medicines, which were increasingly sought after as disease ravaged Europe. However, false advertising and so-called “quack” advertisements became a problem, which ushered in the regulation of advertising content.

As the economy expanded during the 19th century, advertising grew alongside. In the United States, the success of this advertising format eventually led to the growth of mail-order advertising.

In June 1836, French newspaper La Presse is the first to include paid advertising in its pages, allowing it to lower its price, extend its readership and increase its profitability and the formula was soon copied by all titles. Around 1840, Volney Palmer established a predecessor to advertising agencies in Boston.^[7] Around the same time, in France, Charles-Louis Havas extended the services of his news agency, Havas to include advertisement brokerage, making it the first French group to organize. At first, agencies were brokers for advertisement space in newspapers. N. W. Ayer & Son was the first full-service agency to assume responsibility for advertising content. N.W. Ayer opened in 1869, and was located in Philadelphia.^[7]

An 1895 advertisement for a weight gain product.

At the turn of the century, there were few career choices for women in business; however, advertising was one of the few. Since women were responsible for most of the purchasing done in their household, advertisers and agencies recognized the value of women’s insight during the creative process. In fact, the first American advertising to use a sexual sell was created by a woman – for a soap product. Although tame by today’s standards, the advertisement featured a couple with the message “The skin you love to touch”.^[8]

In the early 1920s, the first radio stations were established by radio equipment manufacturers and retailers who offered programs in order to sell more radios to consumers. As time passed, many non-profit organizations followed suit in setting up their own radio stations, and included: schools, clubs and civic groups.^[9] When the practice of sponsoring programs was popularised, each individual radio program was usually sponsored by a single business in exchange for a brief mention of the business’ name at the beginning and end of the sponsored shows. However, radio station owners soon realised they could earn more money by selling sponsorship rights in small time allocations to multiple businesses throughout their radio station’s broadcasts, rather than selling the sponsorship rights to single businesses per show.

A print advertisement for the 1913 issue of the Encyclopædia Britannica

This practice was carried over to television in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A fierce battle was fought between those seeking to commercialise the radio and people who argued that the radio spectrum should be considered a part of the commons – to be used only non-commercially and for the public good. The United Kingdom pursued a public funding model for the BBC, originally a private company, the British Broadcasting Company, but incorporated as a public body by Royal Charter in 1927. In Canada, advocates like Graham Spry were likewise able to persuade the federal government to adopt a public funding model, creating the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. However, in the United States, the capitalist model prevailed with the passage of the Communications Act of 1934 which created the Federal Communications Commission.^[9] To placate the socialists, the U.S. Congress did require commercial broadcasters to operate in the “public interest, convenience, and necessity”.^[10] Public broadcasting now exists in the United States due to the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act which led to the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio.

In the early 1950s, the DuMont Television Network began the modern trend of selling advertisement time to multiple sponsors. Previously, DuMont had trouble finding sponsors for many of their programs and compensated by selling smaller blocks of advertising time to several businesses. This eventually became the standard for the commercial television industry in the United States. However, it was still a common practice to have single sponsor shows, such as The United States Steel Hour. In some instances the sponsors exercised great control over the content of the show – up to and including having one’s advertising agency actually writing the show. The single sponsor model is much less prevalent now, a notable exception being the Hallmark Hall of Fame.

The 1960s saw advertising transform into a modern approach in which creativity was allowed to shine, producing unexpected messages that made advertisements more tempting to consumers’ eyes. The Volkswagen ad campaign—featuring such headlines as “Think Small” and “Lemon” (which were used to describe the appearance of the car)—ushered in the era of modern advertising by promoting a “position” or “unique selling proposition” designed to associate each brand with a specific idea in the reader or viewer’s mind. This period of American advertising is called the Creative Revolution and its archetype was William Bernbach who helped create the revolutionary Volkswagen ads among others. Some of the most creative and long-standing American advertising dates to this period.

The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the introduction of cable television and particularly MTV. Pioneering the concept of the music video, MTV ushered in a new type of advertising: the consumer tunes in for the advertising message, rather than it being a by-product or afterthought. As cable and satellite television became increasingly prevalent, specialty channels emerged, including channels entirely devoted to advertising, such as QVC, Home Shopping Network, and ShopTV Canada.

Marketing through the Internet opened new frontiers for advertisers and contributed to the “dot-com” boom of the 1990s. Entire corporations operated solely on advertising revenue, offering everything from coupons to free Internet access. At the turn of the 21st century, a number of websites including the search engine Google, started a change in online advertising by emphasizing contextually relevant, unobtrusive ads intended to help, rather than inundate, users. This has led to a plethora of similar efforts and an increasing trend of interactive advertising.

The share of advertising spending relative to GDP has changed little across large changes in media. For example, in the U.S. in 1925, the main advertising media were newspapers, magazines, signs on streetcars, and outdoor posters. Advertising spending as a share of GDP was about 2.9 percent. By 1998, television and radio had become major advertising media. Nonetheless, advertising spending as a share of GDP was slightly lower—about 2.4 percent.^[11]

A recent advertising innovation is “guerrilla marketing“, which involve unusual approaches such as staged encounters in public places, giveaways of products such as cars that are covered with brand messages, and interactive advertising where the viewer can respond to become part of the advertising message. This reflects an increasing trend of interactive and “embedded” ads, such as via product placement, having consumers vote through text messages, and various innovations utilizing social network services such as MySpace.

Types of advertising

Media

Paying people to hold signs is one of the oldest forms of advertising, as with this Human directional pictured above

A bus with an advertisement for GAP in Singapore. Buses and other vehicles are popular mediums for advertisers.

A DBAG Class 101 with UNICEF ads at Ingolstadt main railway station

Commercial advertising media can include wall paintings, billboards, street furniture components, printed flyers and rack cards, radio, cinema and television adverts, web banners, mobile telephone screens, shopping carts, web popups, skywriting, bus stop benches, human billboards, magazines, newspapers, town criers, sides of buses, banners attached to or sides of airplanes (“logojets“), in-flight advertisements on seatback tray tables or overhead storage bins, taxicab doors, roof mounts and passenger screens, musical stage shows, subway platforms and trains, elastic bands on disposable diapers, stickers on apples in supermarkets, shopping cart handles (grabertising), the opening section of streaming audio and video, posters, and the backs of event tickets and supermarket receipts. Any place an “identified” sponsor pays to deliver their message through a medium is advertising.

One way to measure advertising effectiveness is known as Ad Tracking. This advertising research methodology measures shifts in target market perceptions about the brand and product or service. These shifts in perception are plotted against the consumers’ levels of exposure to the company’s advertisements and promotions. The purpose of Ad Tracking is generally to provide a measure of the combined effect of the media weight or spending level, the effectiveness of the media buy or targeting, and the quality of the advertising executions or creative.^[12]

Covert advertising

Covert advertising, also known as guerrilla advertising, is when a product or brand is embedded in entertainment and media. For example, in a film, the main character can use an item or other of a definite brand, as in the movie Minority Report, where Tom Cruise‘s character John Anderton owns a phone with the Nokia logo clearly written in the top corner, or his watch engraved with the Bulgari logo. Another example of advertising in film is in I, Robot, where main character played by Will Smith mentions his Converse shoes several times, calling them “classics,” because the film is set far in the future. I, Robot and Spaceballs also showcase futuristic cars with the Audi and Mercedes-Benz logos clearly displayed on the front of the vehicles. Cadillac chose to advertise in the movie The Matrix Reloaded, which as a result contained many scenes in which Cadillac cars were used. Similarly, product placement for Omega Watches, Ford, VAIO, BMW and Aston Martin cars are featured in recent James Bond films, most notably Casino Royale. Blade Runner includes some of the most obvious product placement; the whole film stops to show a Coca-Cola billboard.

Television commercials

The TV commercial is generally considered the most effective mass-market advertising format, as is reflected by the high prices TV networks charge for commercial airtime during popular TV events. The annual Super Bowl football game in the United States is known as the most prominent advertising event on television. The average cost of a single thirty-second TV spot during this game has reached US$3 million (as of 2009).

The majority of television commercials feature a song or jingle that listeners soon relate to the product.

Virtual advertisements may be inserted into regular television programming through computer graphics. It is typically inserted into otherwise blank backdrops^[13] or used to replace local billboards that are not relevant to the remote broadcast audience.^[14] More controversially, virtual billboards may be inserted into the background^[15] where none exist in real-life. Virtual product placement is also possible.^[16][17]

Infomercials

There are two types of infomercials, described as long form and short form. Long form infomercials have a time length of 30 minutes. Short form infomercials are 30 seconds to two minutes long. Infomercials are also known as direct response television (DRTV) commercials or direct response marketing.

The main objective in an infomercial is to create an impulse purchase, so that the consumer sees the presentation and then immediately buys the product through the advertised toll-free telephone number or website. Infomercials describe, display, and often demonstrate products and their features, and commonly have testimonials from consumers and industry professionals.

Celebrities

This type of advertising focuses upon using celebrity power, fame, money, popularity to gain recognition for their products and promote specific stores or products. Advertisers often advertise their products, for example, when celebrities share their favourite products or wear clothes by specific brands or designers. Celebrities are often involved in advertising campaigns such as television or print adverts to advertise specific or general products.

Media and advertising approaches

Increasingly, other media are overtaking many of the “traditional” media such as television, radio and newspaper because of a shift toward consumer’s usage of the Internet for news and music as well as devices like digital video recorders (DVR’s) such as TiVo.

Advertising on the World Wide Web is a recent phenomenon. Prices of Web-based advertising space are dependent on the “relevance” of the surrounding web content and the traffic that the website receives.

Digital signage is poised to become a major mass media because of its ability to reach larger audiences for less money. Digital signage also offer the unique ability to see the target audience where they are reached by the medium. Technology advances has also made it possible to control the message on digital signage with much precision, enabling the messages to be relevant to the target audience at any given time and location which in turn, gets more response from the advertising. Digital signage is being successfully employed in supermarkets.^[18] Another successful use of digital signage is in hospitality locations such as restaurants.^[19] and malls.^[20]

E-mail advertising is another recent phenomenon. Unsolicited bulk E-mail advertising is known as “spam”. Spam has been a problem for email users for many years. But more efficient filters are now available making it relatively easy to control what email you get.

Some companies have proposed placing messages or corporate logos on the side of booster rockets and the International Space Station. Controversy exists on the effectiveness of subliminal advertising (see mind control), and the pervasiveness of mass messages (see propaganda).

Unpaid advertising (also called “publicity advertising”), can provide good exposure at minimal cost. Personal recommendations (“bring a friend”, “sell it”), spreading buzz, or achieving the feat of equating a brand with a common noun (in the United States, “Xerox” = “photocopier“, “Kleenex” = tissue, “Vaseline” = petroleum jelly, “Hoover” = vacuum cleaner, “Nintendo” (often used by those exposed to many video games) = video games, and “Band-Aid” = adhesive bandage) — these can be seen as the pinnacle of any advertising campaign. However, some companies oppose the use of their brand name to label an object. Equating a brand with a common noun also risks turning that brand into a genericized trademark – turning it into a generic term which means that its legal protection as a trademark is lost.

As the mobile phone became a new mass media in 1998 when the first paid downloadable content appeared on mobile phones in Finland, it was only a matter of time until mobile advertising followed, also first launched in Finland in 2000. By 2007 the value of mobile advertising had reached $2.2 billion and providers such as Admob delivered billions of mobile ads.

More advanced mobile ads include banner ads, coupons, Multimedia Messaging Service picture and video messages, advergames and various engagement marketing campaigns. A particular feature driving mobile ads is the 2D Barcode, which replaces the need to do any typing of web addresses, and uses the camera feature of modern phones to gain immediate access to web content. 83 percent of Japanese mobile phone users already are active users of 2D barcodes.

A new form of advertising that is growing rapidly is social network advertising. It is online advertising with a focus on social networking sites. This is a relatively immature market, but it has shown a lot of promise as advertisers are able to take advantage of the demographic information the user has provided to the social networking site. Friendertising is a more precise advertising term in which people are able to direct advertisements toward others directly using social network service.

From time to time, The CW Television Network airs short programming breaks called “Content Wraps,” to advertise one company’s product during an entire commercial break. The CW pioneered “content wraps” and some products featured were Herbal Essences, Crest, Guitar Hero II, CoverGirl, and recently Toyota.

Recently, there appeared a new promotion concept, “ARvertising“; its supported on Augmented Reality technology.

Content marketing is an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation or sharing of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential consumer bases. In contrast to traditional marketing methods that aim to increase sales or awareness through interruption techniques, content marketing subscribes to the notion that delivering high-quality, relevant and valuable information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action. Content marketing has benefits in terms of retaining reader attention and improving brand loyalty better than traditional marketing techniques.

The idea of sharing content as a means of persuading decision-making has driven content marketers to make their once-proprietary informational assets available to selected audiences. Alternatively, many content marketers choose to create new information and share it via any and all media. Content marketing products frequently take the form of custom magazines, print or online newsletters, digital content, websites or microsites, white papers, webcasts/webinars, podcasts, video portals or series, in-person roadshows, roundtables, interactive online, email, events. The purpose of this information is not to spout the virtues of the marketer’s own products or services, but to inform target customers and prospects about key industry issues, sometimes involving the marketer’s products. The motivation behind content marketing is the belief that educating the customer results in the brand’s recognition as a thought leader and industry expert.

Marketers may use content marketing as a means of achieving a variety of business goals, such as thought leadership, lead generation, increasing direct sales, improving retention and more.

Content marketing is the underlying philosophy driving techniques such as custom media, custom publishing, database marketing, brand marketing, branded entertainment and branded content.

Brand management is the application of marketing techniques to a specific product, product line, or brand. It seeks to increase the product’s perceived value to the customer and thereby increase brand franchise and brand equity. Marketers see a brand as an implied promise that the level of quality people have come to expect from a brand will continue with future purchases of the same product. This may increase sales by making a comparison with competing products more favorable. It may also enable the manufacturer to charge more for the product. The value of the brand is determined by the amount of profit it generates for the manufacturer. This can result from a combination of increased sales and increased price, and/or reduced COGS (cost of goods sold), and/or reduced or more efficient marketing investment. All of these enhancements may improve the profitability of a brand, and thus, “Brand Managers” often carry line-management accountability for a brand’s P&L (Profit and Loss) profitability, in contrast to marketing staff manager roles, which are allocated budgets from above, to manage and execute. In this regard, Brand Management is often viewed in organizations as a broader and more strategic role than Marketing alone.

The annual list of the world’s most valuable brands, published by Interbrand and Business Week, indicates that the market value of companies often consists largely of brand equity. Research by McKinsey & Company, a global consulting firm, in 2000 suggested that strong, well-leveraged brands produce higher returns to shareholders than weaker, narrower brands. Taken together, this means that brands seriously impact shareholder value, which ultimately makes branding a CEO responsibility.

The discipline of brand management was started at Procter & Gamble PLC as a result of a famous memo by Neil H. McElroy.^[1]

Principles

A good brand name should:

• be protected (or at least protectable) under trademark law.
• be easy to pronounce.
• be easy to remember.
• be easy to recognize.
• be easy to translate into all languages in the markets where the brand will be used.
• attract attention.
• suggest product benefits (e.g.: Easy-Off) or suggest usage (note the tradeoff with strong trademark protection.)
• suggest the company or product image.
• distinguish the product’s positioning relative to the competition.
• be attractive.
• stand out among a group of other brands.

Types of brands

A number of different types of brands are recognized. A “premium brand” typically costs more than other products in the same category. These are sometimes referred to as ‘top-shelf’ products. An “economy brand” is a brand targeted to a high price elasticity market segment. They generally position themselves as offering all the same benefits as a premium product, for an ‘economic’ price. A “fighting brand” is a brand created specifically to counter a competitive threat. When a company’s name is used as a product brand name, this is referred to as corporate branding. When one brand name is used for several related products, this is referred to as family branding. When all a company’s products are given different brand names, this is referred to as individual branding. When a company uses the brand equity associated with an existing brand name to introduce a new product or product line, this is referred to as “brand extension.” ^[2]When large retailers buy products in bulk from manufacturers and put their own brand name on them, this is called private branding, store brand, white labelling, private label or own brand (UK). Private brands can be differentiated from “manufacturers’ brands” (also referred to as “national brands”). When different brands work together to market their products, this is referred to as “co-branding”. When a company sells the rights to use a brand name to another company for use on a non-competing product or in another geographical area, this is referred to as “brand licensing.” An “employment brand” is created when a company wants to build awareness with potential candidates. In many cases, such as Google, this brand is an integrated extension of their customer.

Brand Architecture

The different brands owned by a company are related to each other via brand architecture. In “product brand architecture”, the company supports many different product brands with each having its own name and style of expression while the company itself remains invisible to consumers. Procter & Gamble, considered by many to have created product branding, is a choice example with its many unrelated consumer brands such as Tide, Pampers, Abunda, Ivory and Pantene.

With “endorsed brand architecture”, a mother brand is tied to product brands, such as The Courtyard Hotels (product brand name) by Marriott (mother brand name). Endorsed brands benefit from the standing of their mother brand and thus save a company some marketing expense by virtue promoting all the linked brands whenever the mother brand is advertised.

The third model of brand architecture is most commonly referred to as “corporate branding”. The mother brand is used and all products carry this name and all advertising speaks with the same voice. A good example of this brand architecture is the UK-based conglomerate Virgin. Virgin brands all its businesses with its name (e.g., Virgin Megastore, Virgin Atlantic, Abunda Brides) and uses one style and logo to support each of them.

Techniques

Companies sometimes want to reduce the number of brands that they market. This process is known as “Brand rationalization.” Some companies tend to create more brands and product variations within a brand than economies of scale would indicate. Sometimes, they will create a specific service or product brand for each market that they target. In the case of product branding, this may be to gain retail shelf space (and reduce the amount of shelf space allocated to competing brands). A company may decide to rationalize their portfolio of brands from time to time to gain production and marketing efficiency, or to rationalize a brand portfolio as part of corporate restructuring.

A recurring challenge for brand managers is to build a consistent brand while keeping its message fresh and relevant. An older brand identity may be misaligned to a redefined target market, a restated corporate vision statement, revisited mission statement or values of a company. Brand identities may also lose resonance with their target market through demographic evolution. Repositioning a brand (sometimes called rebranding), may cost some brand equity, and can confuse the target market, but ideally, a brand can be repositioned while retaining existing brand equity for leverage.

Brand orientation is a deliberate approach to working with brands, both internally and externally. The most important driving force behind this increased interest in strong brands is the accelerating pace of globalization. This has resulted in an ever-tougher competitive situation on many markets. A product’s superiority is in itself no longer sufficient to guarantee its success. The fast pace of technological development and the increased speed with which imitations turn up on the market have dramatically shortened product lifecycles. The consequence is that product-related competitive advantages soon risk being transformed into competitive prerequisites. For this reason, increasing numbers of companies are looking for other, more enduring, competitive tools – such as brands. Brand Orientation refers to “the degree to which the organization values brands and its practices are oriented towards building brand capabilities” (Bridson & Evans, 2004).

Marketing is an integrated communications-based process through which individuals and communities discover that the products and services of others may satisfy existing and newly identified needs and wants.

Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. ^[1] The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market, as in shopping, or going to a market to buy or sell goods or services.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing defines marketing as “The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.”^[2]

Marketing practice tended to be seen as a creative industry in the past, which included advertising, distribution and selling. However, because the academic study of marketing makes extensive use of social sciences, psychology, sociology, mathematics, economics, anthropology and neuroscience, the profession is now widely recognized as a science, allowing numerous universities to offer Master-of-Science (MSc) programmes. The overall process starts with marketing research and goes through market segmentation, business planning and execution, ending with pre and post-sales promotional activities. It is also related to many of the creative arts. The marketing literature is also infamous for re-inventing itself and its vocabulary according to the times and the culture.

Seen from a systems point of view, sales process engineering views marketing as a set of processes that are

interconnected and interdependent with other functions^[3], whose methods can be improved using a variety of relatively new approaches.

The marketing concept

The term marketing concept pertains to the fundamental premise of modern marketing. This can be laid out as recognising consumer needs/wants, then designing products and services that correlate with consumer desires.

Marketing orientations

An orientation, in the marketing context, relates to a perception or attitude a firm holds towards its product or service, essentially concerning consumers and end-users. There exist several common orientations:

Product orientation

A firm employing a product orientation is chiefly concerned with the quality of its own product. A firm would also assume that as long as its product was of a high standard, people would buy and consume the product.

This works most effectively when the firm has good insights about customers and their needs and desires, as for example in the case of Sony Walkman or Apple iPod, whether these derive from intuitions or research.

Sales orientation

A firm using a sales orientation focuses primarily on the selling/promotion of a particular product, and not determining new consumer desires as such. Consequently, this entails simply selling an already existing product, and using promotion techniques to attain the highest sales possible.

Such an orientation may suit scenarios in which a firm holds dead stock, or otherwise sells a good that is in high demand, with little likelihood of changes in consumer tastes diminishing demand.

Production orientation

A firm focusing on a production orientation specializes in producing as much as possible of a given good. Thus, this signifies a firm exploiting economies of scale, until the minimum efficient scale is reached.

A production orientation may be deployed when a high demand for a good exists, coupled with a good certainty that consumer tastes do not rapidly alter (similar to the sales orientation).

Marketing orientation

The marketing orientation is perhaps the most common orientation used in contemporary marketing. It involves a firm essentially basing its marketing plans around the marketing concept, and thus forging products to suit new consumer tastes.

As an example, a firm would employ market research to gauge consumer desires, use R&D to develop a good attuned to the revealed information, and then utilise promotion techniques to ensure persons know the good exists. The marketing orientation often has three prime facets, which are:

Customer orientation

A firm in the market economy survives by producing goods that persons are willing and able to buy. Consequently, ascertaining consumer demand is vital for a firm‘s future viability and even existence as a going concern.

Organizational orientation

All departments of a firm should be geared to satisfying consumer wants/needs. In this sense, a firm’s marketing department is often seen as of prime importance within the functional level of an organisation.

Information from an organisation’s marketing department would be used to guide the actions of other department’s within the firm. As an example, a marketing department could ascertain (via marketing research) that consumers desired a new type of product, or a new usage for an existing product. With this in mind, the marketing department would inform the R&D department to create a prototype of a good/service based on consumers’ new desires.

The production department would then start to manufacture the good, while the marketing department would focus on the promotion, distribution, pricing, etc. of the product. Additionally, a firm’s finance department would be consulted, with respect to securing appropriate funding for the development, production and promotion of the product.

Inter-departmental conflicts are possible to occur, should a firm adhere to the marketing orientation. Production may oppose the installation, support and servicing of new capital stock, which may be needed to manufacture a new product. Finance may oppose the required capital expenditure, since it could undermine a healthy cash flow for the organisation.

Mutually beneficial exchange

In a transaction in the market economy, a firm gains revenue, which thus leads to more profits/market share/sales. A consumer on the other hand gains a need/want that is satisfied, utility, reliability and value for money from the purchase of a good. As no one has to buy goods from any one supplier in the market economy, firms must entice consumers to buy goods with contemporary marketing ideals.

The Four Ps

Main article: Marketing mix

In the early 1960s, Professor Neil Borden at Harvard Business School identified a number of company performance actions that can influence the consumer decision to purchase goods or services. Borden suggested that all those actions of the company represented a “Marketing Mix”. Professor E. Jerome McCarthy, at the Michigan State University in the early 1960s, suggested that the Marketing Mix contained 4 elements: product, price, place and promotion.

• Product: The product aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual goods or services, and how it relates to the end-user‘s needs and wants. The scope of a product generally includes supporting elements such as warranties, guarantees, and support.
• Pricing: This refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts. The price need not be monetary; it can simply be what is exchanged for the product or services, e.g. time, energy, or attention. Methods of setting prices optimally are in the domain of pricing science.
• Placement (or distribution): refers to how the product gets to the customer; for example, point-of-sale placement or retailing. This third P has also sometimes been called Place, referring to the channel by which a product or service is sold (e.g. online vs. retail), which geographic region or industry, to which segment (young adults, families, business people), etc. also referring to how the environment in which the product is sold in can affect sales.
• Promotion: This includes advertising, sales promotion, including promotional education, publicity, and personal selling. Branding refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company.

These four elements are often referred to as the marketing mix,^[4] which a marketer can use to craft a marketing plan.

The four Ps model is most useful when marketing low value consumer products. Industrial products, services, high value consumer products require adjustments to this model. Services marketing must account for the unique nature of services.

Industrial or B2B marketing must account for the long term contractual agreements that are typical in supply chain transactions. Relationship marketing attempts to do this by looking at marketing from a long term relationship perspective rather than individual transactions.

As a counter to this, Morgan, in Riding the Waves of Change (Jossey-Bass, 1988), suggests that one of the greatest limitations of the 4 Ps approach “is that it unconsciously emphasizes the inside–out view (looking from the company outwards), whereas the essence of marketing should be the outside–in approach”.

The marketing environment

The term “marketing environment” relates to all of the factors (whether internal, external, direct or indirect) that affects a firm’s marketing decision-making/planning. A firm’s marketing environment consists of three main areas, which are:

• The macro-environment, over which a firm holds little control
• The micro-environment, over which a firm holds a greater amount (though not necessarily total) control
• The internal environment

The macro-environment

A firm’s marketing macro-environment consists of a variety of external factors that manifest on a large (or macro) scale. These are typically economic, social, political or technological phenomena. A common method of assessing a firm’s macro-environment is via a PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Ecological) analysis. Within a PESTLE analysis, a firm would analyse national political issues, culture and climate, key macroeconomic conditions, health and indicators (such as economic growth, inflation, unemployment, etc.), social trends/attitudes, and the nature of technology’s impact on its society and the business processes within the society.

The micro-environment

A firm’s micro-environment comprises factors pertinent to the firm itself, or stakeholders closely connected with the firm.

Marketing research

Marketing research involves conducting research to support marketing activities, and the statistical interpretation of data into information. This information is then used by managers to plan marketing activities, gauge the nature of a firm’s marketing environment, attain information from suppliers, etc.

A distinction should be made between marketing research and market research. Market research pertains to research in a given market. As an example, a firm may conduct research in a target market, after selecting a suitable market segment. In contrast, marketing research relates to all research conducted within marketing. Thus, market research is a subset of marketing research.

Marketing researchers use statistical methods (such as quantitative research, qualitative research, hypothesis tests, Chi-squared tests, linear regression, correlation co-efficients, frequency distributions, Poisson and Binomial distributions, etc.) to interpret their findings and convert data into information.

Product

Main article: New Product Development

Branding

Main article: Brand

A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or other feature that distinguishes products and services from competitive offerings. A brand represents the consumers’ experience with an organization, product, or service. A brand is more than a name, design or symbol. Brand reflects personality of the company which is organizational culture.

A brand has also been defined as an identifiable entity that makes a specific value based on promises made and kept either actively or passively.

Branding means creating reference of certain products in mind.

Co-branding involves marketing activity involving two or more products.

Marketing communications

Marketing communications breaks down the strategies involved with marketing messages into categories based on the goals of each message. There are distinct stages in converting strangers to customers that govern the communication medium that should be used.

Personal sales

Oral presentation given by a salesperson who approaches individuals or a group of potential customers:

• Live, interactive relationship
• Personal interest
• Attention and response
• Interesting presentation
• Clear and thorough.

Sales promotion

Short-term incentives to encourage buying of products:

• Instant appeal
• Anxiety to sell

An example is coupons or a sale. People are given an incentive to buy, but this does not build customer loyalty or encourage future repeat buys. A major drawback of sales promotion is that it is easily copied by competition. It cannot be used as a sustainable source of differentiation.

Customer focus

Many companies today have a customer focus (or market orientation). This implies that the company focuses its activities and products on consumer demands. Generally there are three ways of doing this: the customer-driven approach, the sense of identifying market changes and the product innovation approach.

In the consumer-driven approach, consumer wants are the drivers of all strategic marketing decisions. No strategy is pursued until it passes the test of consumer research. Every aspect of a market offering, including the nature of the product itself, is driven by the needs of potential consumers. The starting point is always the consumer. The rationale for this approach is that there is no point spending R&D funds developing products that people will not buy. History attests to many products that were commercial failures in spite of being technological breakthroughs.^[5]

A formal approach to this customer-focused marketing is known as SIVA^[6] (Solution, Information, Value, Access). This system is basically the four Ps renamed and reworded to provide a customer focus.

The SIVA Model provides a demand/customer centric version alternative to the well-known 4Ps supply side model (product, price, place, promotion) of marketing management.

Product focus

In a product innovation approach, the company pursues product innovation, then tries to develop a market for the product. Product innovation drives the process and marketing research is conducted primarily to ensure that profitable market segment(s) exist for the innovation. The rationale is that customers may not know what options will be available to them in the future so we should not expect them to tell us what they will buy in the future. However, marketers can aggressively over-pursue product innovation and try to overcapitalize on a niche. When pursuing a product innovation approach, marketers must ensure that they have a varied and multi-tiered approach to product innovation. It is claimed that if Thomas Edison depended on marketing research he would have produced larger candles rather than inventing light bulbs. Many firms, such as research and development focused companies, successfully focus on product innovation. Many purists doubt whether this is really a form of marketing orientation at all, because of the ex post status of consumer research. Some even question whether it is marketing.

• An emerging area of study and practice concerns internal marketing, or how employees are trained and managed to deliver the brand in a way that positively impacts the acquisition and retention of customers (employer branding).
• Diffusion of innovations research explores how and why people adopt new products, services and ideas.
• A relatively new form of marketing uses the Internet and is called Internet marketing or more generally e-marketing, affiliate marketing, desktop advertising or online marketing. It tries to perfect the segmentation strategy used in traditional marketing. It targets its audience more precisely, and is sometimes called personalized marketing or one-to-one marketing.
• With consumers’ eroding attention span and willingness to give time to advertising messages, marketers are turning to forms of permission marketing such as branded content, custom media and reality marketing.
• The use of herd behavior in marketing.

The Economist reported a recent conference in Rome on the subject of the simulation of adaptive human behavior.^[7] It shared mechanisms to increase impulse buying and get people “to buy more by playing on the herd instinct.” The basic idea is that people will buy more of products that are seen to be popular, and several feedback mechanisms to get product popularity information to consumers are mentioned, including smart-cart technology and the use of Radio Frequency Identification Tag technology. A “swarm-moves” model was introduced by a Florida Institute of Technology researcher, which is appealing to supermarkets because it can “increase sales without the need to give people discounts.”

Marketing is also used to promote business’ products and is a great way to promote the business.

Other recent studies on the “power of social influence” include an “artificial music market in which some 14,000 people downloaded previously unknown songs” (Columbia University, New York); a Japanese chain of convenience stores which orders its products based on “sales data from department stores and research companies;” a Massachusetts company exploiting knowledge of social networking to improve sales; and online retailers who are increasingly informing consumers about “which products are popular with like-minded consumers” (e.g., Amazon, eBay).

• Significantly increase your sales!
• Receive more leads than you have ever seen!
• Make your company or product a household name!

Heavy Guerrilla? What the heck is a “Heavy Guerrilla? We’re not talking about a large ape here. We are talking about a way to promote a business or product like no other. By definition, Guerrilla marketing is an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy, and imagination rather than a big marketing budget. Typically, guerrilla marketing tactics are unexpected and unconventional; consumers are targeted in unexpected places, which can make the idea more memorable, generate buzz, and even spread virally.

Heavy Guerrilla is a Olympia Washington based marketing consulting and advertising agency that specializes in growing small to medium sized companies through affordable, strategic marketing and sales efforts. We offer affordable, small business marketing strategies, branding, graphic design, web marketing and business consulting to take your business to the next level. Follow our simple system that we will tailor specifically to your company and its needs. We understand that most small to medium sized companies do not have the budget for a dedicated marketing department. That’s where we come in… we are your “Outsourced” marketing department, that will either “Coach” or “Consult” you and your team through our easy system so that you can increase profits and increase sales leads, even in this down economy. And all for a fraction of the cost of an “In-House” marketing staff.

We promote marketing as an integrated system utilizing the “New Method” of marketing strategies and tactics. At the heart of our system is a progression of steps and strategies, in various stages, that any company, despite the size, can utilize to generate dramatic profits from a reliable marketing endeavor. We all understand that the current market conditions are less than favorable. Right? So we challenge you to take another look at you and your company. It’s easy to settle for the status quo and give up. But… even in a down market, you CAN rise above the competition and take your business to new levels. In a down market, you have to work smart. You have to market better than you have in the past. You have to DOMINATE YOUR MARKETPLACE!

That’s where we come in. Results-oriented, in your face, strategic marketing for your small company. A methodical, step-by-step, scientific and innovative approach to making your phone ring.

Overview

Do your clients LOVE YOU?  Love you enough to refer a friend or family?  Referral marketing is a structured and systematic process that maximizes word of mouth potential. Referral marketing does this by encouraging, informing, promoting and rewarding customers and contacts to think and talk as much as possible about their supplier, their company, product and service and the value and benefit the supplier brings to them and people they know.

Referral marketing takes word of mouth from the spontaneous situation to a proactive and highly productive solution, where maximum referrals are generated due to professional customer-focused strategies.

Online referral marketing, using digital marketing as a platform, is the Internet based successor to traditional referral marketing.  Given the advances in tracking customer behavior online through the use of web browser cookies, online referral marketing provides a higher degree of accountability.

To put it in simple terms, referral marketing is a specific set of strategies and tools designed to bring small business new clients, qualified leads, and repeat business without the aid of, or in addition to, other advertising methods such as print, internet, radio or tv.

Many business owners have built great companies entirely upon referrals. Almost all businesses get started this way. The business lands a client, does some good work, and that client tells his/her family and friends. Before you know it, this kind of word-of-mouth marketing creates a steady stream of more customers and prospects.  But what most small business owners don’t understand, is that many of these same companies never understood that they could generate even more business if they actively participated in the generation of referrals.

Some professions, such as lawyers, doctors, and accountants, are very much suited to referral marketing.  Most people simply don’t feel comfortable hiring a doctor based on a doctor’s advertisement in the Yellow Pages. When looking for a professional of this nature, most people will ask someone they trust for a referral, such as a good friend or family member.

As a rule of thumb, the more personal or the more expensive a service is, the more likely it is that a potential client will seek the advice of another. A window washing company, for example, whose crew may spend a great deal of time going from room to room in a client’s house, will benefit greatly from referrals.

Why Referral Marketing Is So Strong

Experience tells us there is typically two things that often hold small business owners back from taking complete advantage of referral marketing:

• No System -They simply don’t have a system for tracking referrals
• Fear – That somehow no one would ever refer a prospect to his or her business

Let’s try to help you get over the fear of making referrals a core part of your marketing.

When we say fear, we mean things like fearing of being rejected, fearing that you will appear to be begging for business or fear that your existing clients don’t really care about helping you build your business.

All we can say to this is – you have got to get past this!  If you provide a product or service that helps people solve problems and meet needs, then you are doing a disservice to your customers and the world in general if you don’t actively seek referrals.

If you think your clients will be put off by your desire to involve them in helping you grow your business, you aren’t thinking about the relationship the way you should.

The entire act of generating a referral comes down to two simple things:

Provide a product or service that people like.

Manage the referral expectation.

Key Points to Remember:

• To get better referrals you need to target your prime referral sources.
• You must educate your referral sources in order to receive qualified leads.
• Make receiving referrals part of your client’s expectation.
• Find strategic partners and create multiple referral sources.
• Follow up with your referral sources.

When creating a formal, written marketing plan, your marketing strategy will become the meat & potatoes from which you will generate new business without wasting precious capital.  Marketing strategy is the process that allows your organization to use its limited resources on the greatest opportunities to increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. While marketing strategy should be centered on the key concept that customer satisfaction is the main goal.

Key to Your General Corporate Strategy

Marketing strategy is a method of focusing your company’s energies and resources on a course of action which will lead to sales growth and dominance of a targeted market niche. A marketing strategy combines product development, promotion, distribution, pricing, relationship management and other elements; identifies the firm’s marketing goals, and explains how they will be achieved, ideally within a given timeframe.

Marketing strategy determines your target market segments, positioning, marketing mix, and allocation of resources whether it be capital or human. It is most effective when it is an integral component of overall company strategy, defining how your organization will successfully engage customers, prospects, and competitors in your particular market.

Corporate business plan strategies, corporate missions, and corporate goals.  As your customer constitutes the source of your firms’ revenue, marketing strategy is closely linked with the entire sales process.

Below is some basic theory to chew on.

• Target Audience
• Proposition/Key Element
• Implementation
• Tactics and actions

A marketing strategy should serve as the foundation of a marketing plan. A marketing plan contains a set of specific actions required to successfully implement a marketing strategy and helps to paint a picture for which your target audience is, and how to communicate a message that they want to hear.

Here’s an example of a marketing strategy: “Use a low cost product to attract prospects. Once our company, via our low cost product, has established a relationship with prospect, our organization will begin to sell additional, higher-margin products and services that enhance the prospect’s interaction with the low-cost product or service.”  Walmart would be a great example of this strategy.  Once they get you in the door with “advertised loss leaders”, they then introduce to the consumer higher margin products.

A strategy consists of a well thought out series of tactics, i.e. advertising, public relations, and referrals to make a marketing plan effective and actually generate results. Marketing strategies serve as the fundamental foundation of marketing plans designed to fill market needs and reach marketing objectives. Plans and objectives are generally tested for measurable results in order to achieve overall goals.

A marketing strategy integrates an company’s marketing goals, policies, and action plans (tactics) into a comprehensive 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 flow a strategy throughout an organization, by creating strategy tactics (advertising, public relations, referrals) that then become strategy goals for the next level. Each level is expected to take that strategy goal and develop a set of tactics to achieve that goal. This is why it is very important to create each strategy goal measurable, utilizing a given set of metrics.

Types of Strategies

Marketing strategies may differ depending on the unique situation of the individual business. However there are a number of ways of categorizing some generic strategies. A brief description of the most common categorizing schemes is presented below:

Strategies based on market dominance – In this scheme, firms are classified based on their market share or dominance of an industry. Typically there are three types of market dominance strategies:

• Leader
• Challenger
• Follower
• Product differentiation
• Market segmentation

Innovation strategies – This deals with the firm’s rate of the new product development and business model innovation.  It asks whether the company is on the cutting edge of technology and business innovation.

There are three types of Innovation Strategies:

• Pioneers
• Close followers
• Late followers

Growth strategies – In this scheme we ask the question, “How should the firm grow?”.  There are a number of different ways of answering that question, but the most common gives four answers:

• Horizontal integration
• Vertical integration
• Diversification
• Intensification

Believe it or not, when it comes to Marketing Strategies we have not even scratched the surface but what we have mentioned are some basics that are most commonly used.  Most of our information was compiled from severals sources including Wikipedia from which you can find a plethora of “college textbook” marketing concepts.

While it is good to read and understand these fundamental concepts, at Heavy Guerrilla we feel that a more practical, easy-to-understand approach actually produces better results.