What is marketing?
Marketing is all about the business of promoting and selling products or services. It covers many areas, such as finance (budgeting), networking (liaise), communications, stock control, public relations, and advertising. Not only does marketing cover all those, it also identifies the needs of the audience and the product/service. It does this by researching the market and taking the audience's needs into consideration along side the awareness of other competitions.
What is involved in a marketing campaign?
There are two sides to a marketing campaign; communications and research. The communications are how it relates to the audience, this could be via social media, print, radio, TV, street marketing, emails etc.
Before going ahead with the marketing campaign, you must define the image you want to portray. Your image is defined by colour choices, font choices, and other factors. For example, McDonald's is a very successful offline company and wherever you go in the world, you will find the same look. Many free advertising tools and techniques are involved in a marketing campaign. For instance, flyers, posters, value additions, referral networks, follow-up, cold calling, and the Internet. Flyers are a great way for cheap advertising, as are posters. Value additions are one of the most powerful selling points for any product or service. They are very similar to coupons and free appraisals but are different by being aimed at increasing customer satisfaction and widening the gap between the competition.
What is PR?
PR stands for Public Relations. This is all about managing the message. Managing the message involves having a positive reputation and getting exposure. A good example of this would be the launch of the film Kick Ass, starring Jim Carrey. Before the film is shown in screens, it has promotional events to create the hype and excitement for the launch date. However, Jim Carrey stated that he did not want to be part of any of the promotional events as he believed the film was too violent. Although he did not do any events, the statement was enough to get the audience curious enough to see why he thought this. Therefore, Jim Carrey had used the media to his own advantage.
How has marketing strategy/technique evolved over the past 10 years?
Social media has had a huge impact on marketing strategies and techniques. Technology is constantly improving and updating which increases the audience to even being global. Everything is much cheaper now than it was before, everything is done online nowadays which is easier to generate with better methods. Marketing needs to be able to target individuals and have more of an appeal. It has certainly done this over the past 10 years by evolving all the time. The media industry will always be evolving and that will result in much better/easier marketing techniques. The audience have changed over the years by constantly developing new needs and wants. Media has a huge influence in this and marketing strategy are having to keep evolving so that they keep up with the audiences wants, as well as creating their needs to suit them.
How has our understanding of marketing audiences changed in the 21st Century?
We have much higher expectations nowadays than ever before. We are more savvy and have more needs which may have been influenced by marketing itself. As times have changed and technology has developed, everyone begins to question adverts and what they're told, we're much more opinionated and open minded as we constantly have our say. Whilst technology is developing in to phones, online media, Internet, gadgets, magazines, and overall access to different sources, it is increasing the 'wants' of the audience much more than providing their needs.
What is more important, the product or the marketing?
Both the product and the marketing are important. There are arguments for either of them having the most importance. For instance, you buy a product based on the marketing, although without the product there would be nothing to market. I believe that the marketing is more important because it's selling the product and researching the audiences needs as well as the products'.If the marketing is not up to standard for the audience, the product will lose sales. Therefore, it's all down to the marketing to promote and sell the product.
Task 3 - The Marketing Mix and Case Study
Marketing Mix
The marketing mix is a recipe of 4 ingredients: product, price, promotion, and place. These are the 4p's that are an effect of marketing. Decisions are made about the 4p's based on market research.
Product:
Marketing is about providing the correct bundle of benefits to the customer/ audience/ consumer.
Price:
Price must reflect, supply and demand relationship with the customer/ audience/ consumer.
There are many types of pricing:
Cost Plus Pricing - This is aimed at ensuring the business covers its costs and makes an acceptable profit. To get the selling price, the total costs of producing one unit of the product are calculated to which is added the required profit margin. This is known as the simplest pricing strategy.
Example: Bottle of water (standard pricing)
Competitive Pricing - When there is a strong amount of competition in the market so customers have a wide choice of suppliers to buy from. Businesses must set their prices close to the prices of the competitors, whilst taking consideration of the quality of the product and any USPs.
Example: Large food stores such as Asda and Tesco's
Penetration Pricing - The product's price is set significantly lower than any competitors' prices.
Example: Sky, phones, Netflix
Price Skimming - Where a new product is likely to generate a high volume of initial sales, a high price may be charged in order to maximise profits. The price will then be reduced when the high demand for the product has decreased.
Example: Games (GTA), Greggs
Destroyer Pricing - Setting a price so low that competitors cannot match it. By doing this, they will lose customers and be driven out of the market. The prise can then be raised without any threat of competition.
Example: Status/reputation pricing
Promotion:
There are 4 main objectives to promoting a product:
- to inform customers of product/business
- to show benefits of product
- to persuade potential customers to buy the product
- to present a good image
Place (also known as 'distribution'):
This stage is all about insuring the product is in the right 'place'. There are two types of distribution, direct and indirect. Direct distribution has a shorter process than indirect distribution as the product goes from the manufacturer straight the consumer, whereas with indirect distribution is goes from the manufacturer to the retailer before it reaches the consumer.
The importance of the Marketing Mix
The marketing mix is to make businesses or organisations meet the needs of customers and to satisfy them. It is made up of the 4p's and without the marketing mix you will have no product. For a successful marketing strategy, each 4p's must be balance. This means the goods should be taken to the correct places, the goods should be promoted in order to be known, the products should satisfy customer needs and they should have the correct prices.
Coca-Cola
The Product:
Coca-Cola has been successfully dominating its target market for years. Its targeted at young adults to middle-aged people, although younger kids still can't resist the soda intake.
USPs:
- having names on the bottles - share your coke with...
- packaging - different themes, e.g. christmas
- adverts - happy, funny, fun, memorable, bold colours, celebs
- global organisation
- well branded
- WWF
Pricing Strategy:
Coca-Cola have to keep their prices in line to compete with such strong competitors, although this has never proved to be an issue or threat to them because they have always been very consistent with their price strategy and managed to keep their target audience. The only time they will reduce the price of their products is when entering a new market, this will raise brand awareness and face the competition. Once they are known, they will move the prices back up to position themselves as a premium product.
Place:
It is a multinational company and has its market around the entire world. As soon as people enter the Coca-Cola website, it asks them to select the place of their choice.
Promotional Methods:
They are well known for their viral advertisements because of their recognisable colour scheme and use of celebs. They also have support from other organisations and events, for instance, when the Olympics were on, Coca-Cola were advertised by many of these athletes. These methods are very effective because by using celebs, it will make their fans want the refreshment just because the person they idolise has it.
Task 4 - Public Relations & Branding
What is 'public relations'?
Public relations is all about having a reputation - the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you. It is the discipline which looks after reputation, and is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.
What is branding?
Branding is the company logo and also trying to create an idea or image of a specific product or service that consumers connect with. The role of PR is to ideally create a 'positive image'.
What could harm a brand's image?
- corruption - avoid paying tax (e.g. Starbucks)
- criminal activity (e.g. Phone hacking scandal)
- Environmental/economic concerns
- Sex scandals
- Affairs
- advertisement
- charitable donations/activities (e.g. Shell Better Britain Campaign)
- press releases (e.g. Kick Ass film release)
- ecological
- competitive pricing
- using celebs
- sponsorship of events (e.g. arts, sport)
- sponsorship of educations (e.g. computers, books, teaching materials)
Business: World's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 68 million customer daily in 119 countries.
Founded: May 15, 1940
Operations: America (Oak Brook, IL, USA)
Employees: Approx. 85,000 people employed in UK and over 1 million world wide.
Claims/Achievement:
- Eco-friendly, 75% recycled paper (packaging, waste, energy)
- "I'm loving it"
- Lack of real meat - mostly processed foods
- Unhealthy
- Working conditions
