Simply Marketing

Hi everyone,

I am writing a blog after a long long time. Actually, I started blogging again during my internship when my the then boss wanted me to do so (before that I just had an account with one blog which gave my introduction). Never became a good blogger, but I thought that I might be able to give my insight on various marketing related topics. So the blog which started as something (I don't even remember the name) became thinking life and than thinking marketing.

I wasn't ab;e to write from past few months because was busy with new job and new environment and couldn't really think about the marketing aspects of life.

But today suddenly while doing something else I realized that I have some good marketing to do and I thought of writing again.

So lets start, what is a good marketing if you are already in market. There are a hundred definitions for that and a hundred thousand ways of doing that but I would mention a few:

• A good marketing is one that is relevant to the purpose, it might be cheaper and bad or it might be costlier and amazing but until and unless it addresses the purpose it is useless.
• If you are already in market, product extension is a very good strategy, use your current brand name and introduce new products, there are chances that people might try your products.
• It is always good to keep current customers, rather than searching for new one. As one figure says that it cost 7 times more to sell to a new customer as compared to an existing customer.

These are some of the points that I believe are important for good marketing. So what, most of you already know much much more than that. Than why did I write this blog.

Well as my first point says that marketing must be relevant to the purpose/ objective... So????

Well guys I have started writing a new blog and while I was writing that I thought that my existing blog will be a very good way to market my new blog.

So read me @ http://ajaykalwani.blogspot.com/ and post your comments both here and there.

Thank you for reading.

Adios Amigos...

HASTA LA VISTA.....

Internet: Did anything 'CHANGE' because of it.

Today when I opened my mail, I had a mail from Infomedia Yellow pages, and the first thing that came to my mind was, " Did internet actually CHANGE anything?"

You can see that the stress here is on the word change, why is it, will be explained later in the post.

So let me tell everything from the beginning. First of all, what is Infomedia. Infomedia is an online yellow pages co. They have various listings for different services, for eg. you can find the nearest mall, cab services etc. Nothing unique, right, there are many such services viz. just dial, ask laila, sulekha.

Now let me explain what did I mean when I said CHANGE.

Well what would you say, are the 2 biggest changes happened due to internet. If you asked me an hour before writing the post, I would have said that

1. It has reduced the information asymmetry, which was so dominant in our society that poor became poorer and rich became richer, and
2. It removed the middlemen, the person who ate a big chunk of your profit and made things dearer for your customer.

But did it really happen, if you are saying yes, than think again. Which is the website you visit the most or which others visit the most. Is it your mail, your blog, your picture and video sharing website. I don't think so, according to me the most visited website on world wide web is Google.com. And it is a search engine. So how is Google being the search engine is related to the two problems.

Well, if you look again you will find that on one hand Google is helping people to reduce information asymmetry but on the other hand it itself is becoming rich and richer day by day because it has the highest amount of information, so who is becoming poor? Those who are paying Google and other such search engines for listing their product and services.

Also, in this whole process of people searching things and products on these search engines, don't these search engines work as a middlemen. They do and they still charge a heavy amount for it, the only thing that has been MODIFIED and not CHANGED is that earlier the middlemen use to earn without giving information but now they earn by giving it.

Hence we can see that nothing has CHANGED here, it is the same as it was in pre-internet era. But why talk about it, yes it has happened and we can't change it, we are so ADDICTED to search engines and yellow pages that whenever we need anything we simply go to a search engine.

Well it is simple, those who thought that the time of middlemen is over because of internet wake up, the middlemen is still here and he is more powerful than ever before. So why lose the opportunity, information is the new power and if you have it, being a middlemen can be the best profession one can ever have.

Celebrity Endorsements

Today, while reading Warren Buffett's letters to his shareholders, the first thing that struck my mind was the characteristics of a celebrity endorser.

Read the letters @ http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2009ltr.pdf

Who would be a better endorser than the CEO of the company himself. He is the most credible person in the company. He has highest knowledge about the company's products and knows the needs that those products fulfill.

Now this brings us to the question, that if such a celebrity is already present than why do companies go for actors and players.

Well, there can be many reasons, but the two most important reasons I can think of are:

Product characteristics and Awareness in general public.

By product characteristic I mean that, if you want Celebrity for a sport shoe ad, it will definitely be a sport person and not a fat CEO. Similarly for a beauty product it would be a good looking model and not a person with big, fat glasses.

Another important point here is awareness in public, this is important because we believe only them whom we know. If we don't know someone how can we believe him, what will be the basis of credibility.

But, the second problem can be solved; by giving more and better exposure to the CEO a company's PR department can have a potent tool. This can be done in many ways, depending on the business again and this will increase the credibility of business as a whole which might positively effect the perception towards products.

Its not a completely new idea. Many CEOs are doing it, unknowingly though.

For eg. can't a person say that Kingfisher's products will fall in premium category just by knowing about Vijay Mallya or Virgin's products will attract the younger audiences by knowing about Richard Branson. Or can't people just invest in the stocks Warren Buffet invests in, they can and they do.

But still there are only very few examples, the reason being, CEOs are infamous for filling their pockets and leaving shareholders and customers empty handed.

This is perfectly described in the famous joke :

there were 3 CEOs in a plane. To test them, they were told that the engine in this plane was made by their company. 2 of them immediately got down out of fear, but one didn't. When he was appreciated about his confidence in his company's products, he said: Well, yes I have full confidence in my company's products, I knew if it was from my company, it would never have started.

So, if companies are able to develop trust in public for their CEOs, they can be an effective and efficient tool to not only attract customers but also shareholders.

Internet, services bundling and Google

When my professor said that in order to succeed on internet you must have a different name from your offline name, I couldn't agree with it. Why go through all the pains of choosing a new name and branding your service again when you already have a successful brand. And why wouldn't any customer accept the offline name, which is synonymous to quality and good service, and want the retailer to have a different name.

Today, while talking about a new networking site, I got the answer. And the answer is Internet, as any other service, is intangible and thus it is all about the experience it provides. Well in that case a firm that provides good service can keep the same name offline.

The answer is NO. Because the parameters of experience on internet are different.

Some of these parameters are ease of communication and ease of navigation i.e. how easily the pages load, how easily you can move from one page to other, is there any chance of posting of user generated content, the graphics of the site, no. of features on that site for eg. chat, picture and video sharing etc.

Another parameter is the experience associated with brand. And this is where it all makes the difference. on internet, if you are established as an e-mail site you tend to remain as one. If you help user share content or if you are a micro blogging website you remain one. And that is the reason that e-bay is the first name that comes to mind when you have to shop and not Yahoo! shopping.

This brings us to subject of today....BUZZ. Yet another extension by Google to compete with Twitter and Facebook. Many are optimistic that Buzz will surely take away the market from Facebook and Twitter; the reason being: it is integrated with g-mail so now people do not need to go on other sites for social networking.

But I feel it will not affect Facebook and Twitter in any ways apart from introducing some more members to the world of micro-blogging. It will help in growing the market but it will not take away the share of Twitter and Facebook. The reason being it simply doesn't provide the experience of Twitter and Facebook. When you Buzz you still are on g-mail and that is the experience you get there, while on Twitter, Facebook and even Orkut, the experience is completely different.

So, I think if Google really wants to fight in the micro-blogging space it should develop Buzz as a completely different platform and not just as a add-on to g-mail.

The best examples will be, people use you tube for watching videos and not Google videos and the writer here is using Blogger for writing this post and not Buzz, though the features are combined.

So, Buzz has the potential to be successful but it should come out of the shadow of G-mail and Google and develop itself as a different brand.

Marketing research as a tool for promotion and selling

When my friend told me to join his group for promoting his event I was very happy. There was somebody who thought that I can help him, I can make a difference.

First, let me tell you what the problem was. My friend is organizing a Video- game competition in our college and though there are many people who love playing games the registration for the contests were very less and the reasons were unknown.

When I thought about this I was really confused as I could understand only one reason for people not registering, the lack personalized approach. Now what is that; well that means that they were not contacting any one, they had their posters, e- mails and a small counter in the mess, which led to the big mess that they were in.

So, I had only one conclusion in mind, they needed a personalized approach but were there any other problems or not, I had no idea.

And this is when the idea clicked; a survey for promotion and selling.

The initial idea was of a survey to identify what types of games people wanted and the reasons why people were not interested. There were 2 possible approaches i.e. online research i.e. online form and Personalized research. The latter seemed costly and more time consuming initially but gradually the advantages were clear.

Personalized research gave the advantage of contacting more people and getting their attention while in online research there was a chance that many wont even look at the content of mail.

Hence a personalized approach was necessary. Also this approach would help in generating curiosity in mind of respondent. Now this can be understood by need for closure.

According to the theory of consumer behavior every person has a need for closure i.e. they want to see the ending. Do you remember when u started a book and you wanted to know what happens in the end of story or climax of a movie. Similarly we all have the need for closure.

So, when someone knows about an event that is going to happen they would like to know more about it. when they know more about it they will talk more about it and this gives you a good word of mouth. Which might help in getting more registrations.

A good way to generate a positive word-of-mouth.

And I always thought the sole reason that products with a prior research done, perform well coz they know what people want.

May be the reason is just that people want to know what the product is all about.

Ps of Marketing

Today in class when we were talking about the Ps of marketing, one of my friend said that experts say that the 4Ps can sufficiently describe the Marketing strategy. So true isn't it.

Than why did the 11Ps or 10Ps came in, and what are these.

The 11Ps of Marketing are: Product, Price, Place, Promotion (original 4Ps), People, Process, Physical Evidence (Added 3 for services), Positioning, Packaging, Persuasion and Performance.

The 10Ps are : Original 7+ Purpose, Profit and Potential

Having a keen look at these we find that most of these Ps are unnecessarily inserted.

Talk about Packaging: one can say that it is an important part for marketing. So lets see what is packaging. Packaging is important as it helps in determining how a product looks, it is important part of a product's safety and helps in pricing of a product i.e. better packaging projects elite look and thus commands greater price.

So by this we can see that Packaging is a part of product, promotion and helps in determining the 3rd P i.e. Price.

Similarly Positioning comes from all 4Ps i.e. a good product, A high priced product, a product available only on internet or a highly promoted product. All the 4Ps help determine the positioning.

Persuasion is done by Promotion, Performance is a Product attribute and Profit comes from better Pricing.

So, why did these extra Ps came into being.

The reason is simple, people view anything too narrowly and do not combine the dots i.e. when people talk about Product in 4Ps they forget about the attribute of product and how product affects performance etc.

So in order to remove the complexity and design a better marketing strategy we need only 4Ps but we need to look at these in a more holistic way than ever before.