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.