Benefits of Internet Marketing - Essay Example

Direct and Internet Marketing For Guinness Guinness established in the eighteenth century is a dry stout that has maintained its market dominance for the years. Roasted un-malted barley has been used over the years to maintain the burnt flavour of the product, maintaining its rich heritage. Originating from Ireland, the brand is still very popular with the Irish people; in fact, it is the best selling and grossing alcoholic drink in Ireland, with annual earnings of around two billion pounds. The success of the brand has been attributed to its vigorous and extensive marketing campaigns. Its marketing planning has entailed successively identifying the target groups, then making sure the target group is appropriately catered for. In its marketing, Guinness has applied successive marketing segmentation. The segment of a market is the part of the broad market that can be singled out as having convergent needs, wants and represents a certain age category. This is done by studying the spectrum of the area to be covered, the distance to be covered. Age bracket of the people to be catered for at any given period has also to be critically assessed. Male and female are not in the same par when it comes to particular needs and wants so one has to be very sensitive of gender when segmenting. Maslow argues in a kind of a pyramid how needs are prioritized and grouped in the same way basic needs are grouped. His system is useful in identifying the most crucial commodity a given group in the society needs and must be fulfilled before any other (Cateora & Graham 210). People in a given society engage in different professions. Different professions have different demands and thus the targeted group’s profession cannot be overlooked to efficiently cater for it. The income of targeted group has also to be put into careful consideration so as to process a product that the target group can easily afford and hence ensure good returns to the company. In other cases, the race of the target group is important since there are different cultures associated with different races. The environment, climate, and weather of the region have also to be studied carefully. This enables the company to produce the most suitable commodity for the given section of the market. In most of its campaigns, Guinness has targeted the young generation and sports lovers. Most of its advertisements are carried out during sporting events like the English Premier League and the European champions’ league. With globalization, the internet has become one of the most essential tools of communication and relating with the rest of the world. In its marketing strategy, Guinness has used the internet marketing to reach to its customers at the same time sticking to the traditional method of direct marketing. Through the internet, customers can be reached cheaply but very effectively. Both the internet and the direct marketing strategies have the same goal of generating leads and orders. With internet users, a company has to be trusted and well established to generate confidence with visitors visiting its site without fear of their computers contracting computer virus. The very first phrase in the advertisement has to be very catchy and simplified as online users have little patience of reading large volumes of information. With a successful marketing segmentation, the target group is identified and singled out, once this has been done, the next step involves the subjection of the market segment to positioning. With position, the companies go direct to the field to interact with the actual consumers to ascertain how the product of the company is perceived in the minds of the various diverse consumers. One of the strategies employed by the company is organizing social events like sporting events. Guinness is a major sponsor of various sporting events like football. Sporting events like football are very popular in some parts of the globe, they bring many fans together, and in the process of holding the event, the Guinness marketers are accorded the chance of meeting with the consumers. From these consumers they are able to get the various feed backs on which they act upon singling the successive part of their market campaigns and the flopping side that need to be addressed. In their research work, the company employs the various research methods like filling of written questionnaire. They are able to obtain crucial information that can help them in improving their brands. With the internet marketing strategy, they have established the various blogs that enables the consumers to participate actively by posting various comments. Blogs enables them to address the various raised concerns directly. Producer-consumer relationship is also improved which makes there to be established a more concrete relationship between the two. They have also turned to the social networking advertisement. In the contemporary setting, social networks are the trending and most fashionable tools of interacting with the majority of the outside world. Networks such as face book have more than half a billion subscribers, which makes them very appropriate for marketing. With Guinness targeting the youth and sports lovers, it becomes a suitable venue for advertisement as young people dominate the social networks. With the various sporting events being used as the suitable grounds for advertisement, prominent sporting personalities have also been used in the advertisement process where Guinness is depicted as bringing the best out of a person. They have this advertisement that there is a drop of greatness in every individual. In so doing, many individual want to try the product as they feel they could also be as good as the individual used in the advertisement. With internet advertisement, additional information is given on the product for those willing to read further. The internet acts as big library for storing and preserving information. All details of a company, products, brands, owners, traditions, among others are provided. Through the internet, it is also possible for customers to shop for products directly making the internet very convenient and effective. In ensuring they maintain a good account of the events in the outside world there is the employment of research strategies like field research to keep in touch with what is going on in the outside world. There is also the use of data mining procedure to avail new information that was not known. In safeguarding their data from misuse and from hackers, some of their sites have the requirements of signing in and signing out, or are protected and can only be accessed by authorized persons. They also protect their files by establishing a high security mechanism. Guinness is a company that was established many years ago in an era that computers were not known. However, through proper and vigorous marketing strategies, the company has continued to being relevant in the alcoholic drink industry, being even dominant in some places. The deployment of both direct and internet marketing strategies have enabled the company to have a wide and diverse consumer base, something that has been very beneficial to the company. Marketing is a very important tool in establishing successive business as it is the major method of selling the manufactured goods to the consumer. With both the direct and internet marketing methods, people from different generations and geographical locations are catered for. Work Cited Cateora, Philip and Graham, John. International Marketing. New York: McGraw- Hill/Irwin, 2005 Read More