The Most Popular Marketing Strategies and Tools - Assignment Example

 Marketing is a process of creating, communicating, and delivering something that have some value to the customers or clients or society in a broader sense. Literally the term ‘marketing’ refers to the act of going to a market for shopping or going to a market to sell something. The practice of marketing is increasingly being seen as a creative industry. A complete marketing activity includes several stages like advertising, distributing and selling. Marketing is basically concerned with anticipation of what the customers or the clients need or want in future. Customers’ or client’s needs are often discovered through market researches. The act of marketing is influenced by different fields of social sciences, such as psychology, economics, sociology, etc. (Ryans, et al, 2000) To increase customer base companies use different kinds of marketing strategies. The present paper seeks to describe and critically analyze some of the newly invented marketing strategies, such as viral, social marketing, guerilla marketing and mobile marketing, and along with these the paper will also make an attempt to compare and contrast these strategies to traditional marketing strategy. Viral marketing strategy: Viral marketing can be described as a strategy that provides an impetus to the individuals to pass on messages regarding the advertisement of some product to others and thereby creates the potential for significant growth in the message’s exposure and effectiveness. A very interesting feature of this viral strategy is that just like viruses, this strategy adopt the path of rapid multiplication of the message to explode the message to millions of people. When this kind of marketing strategy did not started to widely use internet for the rapid multiplication of message, it was used to be known as a strategy of ‘creating a buzz’ regarding some product, or the strategy of leveraging media for the marketing of any particular good or service, or simply as ‘network marketing’. However this strategy started to be called as ‘viral marketing’ strategy once it has started to use internet to spread the message to millions through websites just like the way viruses get spread through internet. (Wilson, 2005) One of the classic examples of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, which is considered to be the first web-based email services at free of cost. An effective Viral marketing strategy contains six simple stages as follows- giving away goods or services to a number of people at free of costs, such as free email services, free soft wares, free information regarding the products etc; providing easy and effortless means for transfer of those goods or services to hundreds or thousands of others; scaling up rapidly their reach to the customers or clients from small base to very large base; exploiting common motivations to induce the customers to get attracted to the goods or services; utilizing existing communication networks like several social networking sites on internet; and taking advantage of the resources of others, like placing text on others’ websites. (Wilson, 2005) One advantage of viral marketing strategy is that as delivering of messages to others can be done at free of costs, it creates huge interest among people to deliver the message to thousands or millions and the process of circulating the messages takes place at a very fast pace. However, one problem with viral marketing is that it does not result in quick profit. In case of viral marketing, realization of profit takes some time, so the company which employs viral marketing strategy has to keep some patience. (Wilson, 2005) Strategy of guerrilla marketing: Guerrilla marketing system is newly invented and very unconventional. This kind of marketing strategy involves the system of promotions which is completely dependent on time, energy and imagination of the people who are involved in the process of marketing activity. As the name suggests, Guerrilla marketing strategy is very much unexpected as well as unconventional. Under this unconventional system of marketing customers or clients are targeted in some unexpected places in an effort to make the idea that is being marketed unforgettable. This kind of strategy actually attempts to generate a buzz regarding the goods or services for which the marketing strategy has been planned. The term of Guerrilla marketing was first introduced by Jay Conrad Levinson in his book ‘Guerilla Marketing’, which was published in the year of 1984. (Levinson, 1984) According to the suggestions made by Levinson, the marketers who are involved in guerrilla marketing system are required to be creative in order to invent unconventional marketing strategies that will be very much effective but at the same time inexpensive. Guerilla marketers are generally found to utilize all of their contacts, professional as well as personal, conduct a thorough research of the company he belongs to and the product he is marketing for. Levinson suggested some principles which are supposed to make the foundation of guerrilla marketing. These principles are as follows: 1. Guerrilla marketing strategy is particularly apt for the small sized firms. 2. It is required to be based on some important psychological aspects of human rather than any kind of guessing, experience, or judgment. 3. To make this marketing strategy effective investment need to be made in time, energy and imagination rather than in money. 4. To perform a correct research on the company the marketer belongs to, he needs to measure the performance of the company by the amount of profit that the business has made, not by the amount of sale. 5. Under guerrilla marketing strategy it is essential for the marketer to create an excellent standard for a particular product rather than making an effort to diversify through providing many diversified products. 6. Emphasis needs to be placed on maintaining the existing customer base and increasing transaction level with the existing clients by fulfilling their need adequately rather than adopting the methods of attracting new customers. 7. Competitive mentality should be dropped and cooperative environment should be created as far as relationship with other companies selling similar products is concerned. 8. Current technology should be utilized to enhance the power of the marketing system. (Levinson, 1984) According to the principles suggested by Levinson, Guerilla marketing appears to be suitable for small businesses, and initially it was actually utilized by small firms only. Guerrilla marketing strategy has been proved to be successful for many small firms as its provide cheap but effective ways of advertising in unconventional ways, like intercept encounters in public places, giving away of products in the streets etc. But with the progression of time use of guerilla marketing system has no longer been restricted to small firms only. Presently is widely used by large businesses too. Extreme use and abuse of this strategy, particularly by big firms, have ultimately resulted in a huge loss of effectiveness. (Levinson, 1984) An example of the application of guerilla marketing strategy is when a famous magazine whose targeted readers are mainly male, portrayed an image of Gail Porter onto the Parliament house. It caught everyone’s eyes. This stunt was made to gather people’s vote in a poll on world’s sexiest women. The results were brilliant. Another example could be the marketing strategy employed by a computer game company, Acclaim, during 2002. In the month of August in 2002, Acclaim made an offer of 500 pound plus gaming console at free of cost with a condition that their names had to be changed to ‘Turok’, which was the title of the forthcoming game to be released by the company. This advertising strategy got a huge response. (Levinson, 1984) Social networking: In the marketing arena, the strategy of social network marketing is very new. But what is interesting is that, within a short span of time social network marketing has been spread widely. It has become one of the most famous marketing strategies at the present time. The marketing strategy involved extensive use of internet. One important thing is required to be kept in mind by the marketer while applying social networking strategy that every social networking websites on the internet has their unique features, and therefore utilization of every social networking site requires its own marketing techniques for achieving best possible outcome. Same marketing techniques can not be applied for all the social networking sites. However, one thing is common to all social networking websites and that is that marketing through social networking websites is always free. But the problem is that marketing through social networking takes more time. (Skul, n.d.) Social networking websites are actually like communities. Therefore, for marketing successfully on social networking sites, marketer needs to make some valid and legitimate contribution to these communities through making friends in huge numbers and helping them out. In case of social networking, any kind of transparent marketing process will not bring positive outcome. Some of the widely used social network websites are FaceBook, MySpace etc. FaceBook is already huge and with time it is getting bigger and bigger. This site primarily aimed at teenagers, but now it has extended its reach to a all ages with a wide variety of professions and locations. Hence, no matter whatever be the product the company is trying to sell through FaceBook, it is quite likely that there will be a market or that product. As far as MySpace is concerned, it is another huge social networking site. It has million of users. Both in cases of FaceBook and MySpace, the marketer need to build his/her profile and a network of friends through the profile for the purpose of promoting certain thing. Once, a network of friends or contacts is built up, marketer has to maintain that for the purpose of continuous and successful promotion of his/her products. Some of the basic rules that need to be followed to make a successful promotion of products through social networking websites are as follows: 1. For the purpose of promotion of products one can maintain or make use of one or many sites. But one important thing should be kept in mind while using many sites that maintaining presence on several social networking sites can take up huge time as well as staffs. Hence, before joining more than one sites, companies need to determine the amount of time that it is capable of spending on updating its profile on each site and maintaining its network of contacts in each side. It is often suggested that it is more effective to spend additional time and energy in maintaining an excellent profile on one site rather than spending lot of time on too many different sites. 2. Before choosing any site for the purpose of marketing the products, one should check out a few sites to find out whether there already exists some individuals or a group discussing the product of the company he or she belongs to. It would be more effective for a marketer to build a profile on that site on which there already exists some people who are talking about the company the person belongs to. 3. Before engaging in the promotion of products, one needs to build his or profile completely. This is essential because first impression always matter. If a market invites his friends to visit his site with an intention to promote his products, an uncompleted profile leaves them unimpressed. Before inviting friends, an appealing title and an aesthetically attractive presentation have to be incorporated in the profile. 4. In case of inviting friends, one has to be very selective initially. At the first place, those people should be invited who have already voiced their support in their profile or in some communities for the products the marketer is intending to promote. So the effective step would be to begin with some definite supporters and forming a loyal following of the products before making himself and his products susceptible to unknown used whose tests have not been tested so far. 5. Social networking site seems to be very effective for the purpose of marketing when content of the profile is being distributed effectively among the readers of the profile. Therefore, profile is required to be updated on a regular basis for incorporating new issues that the marketer is working with. 6. Social networking sites can be used efficiently to test the innovative ideas of the marketer. Marketer can put a questionnaire with an intention of getting feedback from the readers. (Skul, n.d.) Any Social networking site seems to be very effective or the promotion of products because it promotes a product through a network of friends of the marketer. It has been found that a person is more likely to buy a product if his or her friends use and recommend the product. Another advantage of social networking for the purpose of marketing is that it is appropriate for all sorts of businesses, large or small. Mobile marketing: At the present time, like marketing on internet, mobile marketing has also become a very common way of marketing products. Mobile marketing generally refers to two sorts of marketing techniques. The first category of mobile marketing is a relatively new concept and it refers to the strategy of marketing by using a mobile device, like mobile phone. The second category of mobile marketing is however a traditional one referring to a way of marketing which is done in a moving manner, viz. moving billboards or technology road shows etc. (Have et al, 2003) With the huge rise in SMS, mobile marketing has become immensely popular. Over the last few years, marketing through SMS has turned out to be a authentic channel of advertising in a large part of the world. The major reason behind the immense growth in mobile marketing is that sending email through public internet; the carriers of the mobile phones generally police their own networks and have set their own guidelines for the mobile industry. Mobile marketing through SMS has expended rapidly in Europe, America, and Asia. It has become a new channel for reaching to consumers. However, in the initial phase, marketing through SMS got negative responses in many parts of Europe as it became a new form of spam for the reason that some advertisers used purchase list of phone numbers of the consumers and send unwanted content to consumer’s phone. But now with the guidelines of how to use mobile network for marketing being in place, marketing through SMS on mobile phone has become the most popular device of promoting any product. In recent time, mobile marketing through MMS, Bluetooth, and Infrared has also become very popular. A major advantage of mobile marketing is that it can reach to a huge number of consumers within a short span of time and is very much effective also in the sense that response rate is very high. To compare all these newly invented marketing technique with traditional way of marketing and to examine which aspects of tradition marketing strategy are still present in the new marketing techniques, and which components have completely discarded, it is first necessary to precisely discuss traditional marketing strategy. (Have et al, 2003) Traditional marketing system operates on the basis of some particular strategies. One important aspect of traditional marketing is the use of ‘Four Ps’ or the ‘marketing mix’ by every marketer. The ‘Four Ps’ actually implies four important components that a market has to take into account before launching any product in the market or offering any service to the customers. The ‘Four Ps’ is made of Product, Price, Promotion and Placement. The idea of ‘Four Ps’ was actually promoted by Jerome McCarthy. According to him for launching an effective marketing strategy, the factor that comes first is the production and management of the product that is to be marketed; second comes the process of determining an reasonable price for the targeted customers, third important requirement to be met is the promotion of the product through advertising, branding etc, and finally comes the issues of placement and distribution of the product, its retailing and the method that would help the product to reach to the targeted customers. For making an efficient marketing strategy, all these four components are to be decided and planned in a systematic way. Under traditional marketing, total market is used to be segmented into different parts on the basis of geographical conditions, demography, psychographic conditions and some behavioural variables. Segmentation is done in such a way that each segment becomes homogeneous and response in a particular manner to a specific marketing strategy. Small segment are treated as ‘niche’ markets. Under traditional marketing system the marketing strategy of a product is made for a particular segment of the market and the strategy is initiated only after thorough research of that segment. This provides some kind of assurance to the marketer that he is entering into the market by a safe and secured road. Therefore, when traditional marketing strategy is in place a product that is not needed by a particular segment is not produced. A thorough research is conducted regarding the taste and preference of consumers. While studying targeted consumers’ behavioural aspects, markets generally look at nature, lifestyle etc. of the consumers. With taking into account all these factors a marketer makes a marketing plan. Tradition marketing techniques place its main focus on the company and the product itself, rather than the consumer’s taste. Tradition marketing techniques aim at providing company controlled message to the customers. They emphasize on increasing the visibility of company and brand name. Company seems to take the active part in marketing while consumers become inactive and gradually fade into a completely passive zone. A marketer, who uses traditional method, generally makes use of the products USP (Unique Selling Proposition). But this idea was valid at past while there were fewer number of firms. But today with increasing competition USP marketing has lost its effectiveness. (Blackwell, 2006) If traditional marketing strategy is compared with newly innovated marketing strategy, the major difference between the two that would be first visible is that traditional marketing strategy aims at a particular segment of market, while newly invested marketing strategies, like social networking, viral marketing, guerrilla marketing, or mobile marketing etc. make rigorous attempts to make universal appeal of the product. Traditional marketing techniques put its emphasis in a major way on brand equity, but the problem with today’s environment is that at the present time the idea of brand equity does not hold good. With time competition in the market has enhanced in a great way. Under such competition every brand is more or less similar in their quality or attractiveness. Therefore focusing on brand only can not be able to increase customer base to a large extent. Therefore, newly invented internet based or mobile phone based marketing techniques do not put much emphasis on the brand equity of the products, rather they make rigorous efforts to reach as much customers as they can by utilizing existing network of contacts. Newly invented marketing strategies are also more efficient in reaching to the customers faster than the traditional marketing techniques. Apart form these, today’s new marketing strategies are more consumer focused unlike traditional marketing technique. Therefore, newly innovated marketing strategies put much focus on consumer tastes and preferences rather than company and brand name. (Blackwell, 2006) Newly innovated marketing strategy is cheaper than the traditional techniques and more effective in terms of getting feed back in a relatively shorter period. However, some ideas of traditional marketing tactics are still valid in the present environment and therefore are incorporated in the newly innovated strategies too. For example the ideas of ‘Four Ps’ still can not be nullified, therefore, under modern wed-based or mobile phone-based marketing era, emphasis on ‘Four Ps’ is still persisting. Before launching any marketing campaign, huge importance is given on efficient production, setting up of reasonable price, conduction thorough research of markets and consumers preferences, and appealing advertising of the products. References 1. Blackwell, J. 2006. Traditional Marketing - What is the future of traditional marketing? Available at: www.buzzle.com/articles/traditional-marketing-future-traditional-marketing.html accessed on 14th March, 2009. 2. Levinson, J. C. 1984. Guerrilla Marketing: Secrets for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 3. Ryans, More, Barclay and Deutscher (2000) Winning Market Leadership, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. 4. Skul, D.C. n.d. Social Network Marketing-The Wave of the Future. Available at: http://www.relativitycorp.com/socialnetworkmarketing/article27.html accessed on 14th March, 2009. 5. Ten Have, S. 2003, Key Management Models, London: FT Prentice Hall 6. Wilson, R.F. 2005. The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing. Available at: on 14th March, 2009. Read More