MARKETING SKILL - Marketing Strategy vs. Marketing Plan > What's the Difference?

By Laura Lake

It's not uncommon for people to confuse the difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing plan. I've found the easiest way to explain the difference is like this:

Marketing Strategy - Your marketing strategy is an explanation of the goals you need to achieve with your marketing efforts. (What) Your marketing strategy is shaped by your business goals. Your business goals and your marketing strategy should go hand-in-hand.

Marketing Plan - Your marketing plan is how you are going to achieve those marketing goals. (How) it's the application of your strategy a roadmap that will guide you from one point to another.

The issue is that most people try to set out to achieve the "how" without first knowing the "what." This can end up wasting resources for a company, both time and money.

When it comes to marketing, we must always identify the what and then dig into the how. If you remember one sentence from this article, it's this one:

Strategy is the thinking and planning is the doing. Here is an example of how the two work together:

Example:

Objective: To gain broader market adoption.

Marketing Strategy: Introduce into new market segments.

Marketing Plan: Develop marketing campaign that reaches out, identifies with and focuses on that specific segment.

A successful formula that can be used to further explain the importance on marketing strategy and marketing planning looks like this:

Marketing Strategy ---> Marketing Plan ---> Implementation = Success

• Your marketing strategy consists of:

  The "what" has to be done.

  Inform consumers about the product or service being offered.

  Inform consumers of differentiation factors.

• Your marketing plan consists of:

  The "how" to do it.

  Construct marketing campaigns and promotions that will achieve the "what" in your strategy.

• Your implementation consists of:

  Taking action to achieve items identified in marketing strategy and marketing plan. 

If you are preparing your marketing strategy and your marketing plan to go into your business plan these are the components that must go into each section:

Components of Your Marketing Strategy

• External Marketing Message
• Internal Positioning Goal
• Short Term Goals and Objectives
• Long Term Goals and Objectives

Components of Your Marketing Plan

Executive Summary - High level summary of your marketing plan.

Your Challenge - Brief description of products / services to be marketed and a recap of goals identified in your marketing strategy.

Situation Analysis - This section should identify the following:

• Goals
• Focus
• Culture
• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Market Share

Analysis of Your Customer - How many customers would you like to strive for? What type of customers are they? What are the values that drive them? What does their decision process look like? What customers will you focus on for the products or services that you offer?

Analysis of Your Competitors - What's your marketing position? What's their market position? What are your strengths when it comes to your competitors? What are your weaknesses? What market share are you going after? What market share has your competitor already tapped?

Identification of your 4 P's (Product / Price / Distribution / Place)

Summary - Summary of above and how you will use this information to achieve the goals you have identified in your marketing strategy. Be specific - the more specific actions you have the easier it will to follow through on the last step which is implementation.

As you can see your marketing strategy goes hand-in-hand in with your marketing plan. Without both you will find that you not only waste resources, but that you could also end up stuck without an idea of where to go.

Another key point is don't forget to measure any marketing campaigns that you launch in order to see what works and what doesn't. You can use this information to guide you in the future.

Source: http://marketing.about.com

MARKETING - Understanding the difference between Marketing and Promotion

The most successful artists have at least some basic understanding of a few core business concepts.  This is because those artists are more like to focus their attention on the activities that enhance their business and chances for success, and they’re less likely to be taken advantage of.  That’s why, at Two Plus Media, we like to make sure that all of our clients have some understanding of a few basic business concepts.

One of those concepts is the difference between marketing and promotion.  Most people use these terms interchangeably to describe a variety of different activities.  That would be a mistake.  It is especially a mistake in the music business, when different goals require different mixes of marketing and promotion.

Breaking Down Marketing vs. Promotion

There is an easy way to think about the difference between marketing and promotion– promotion answers  the question what?; marketing answers the question why?

When you are promoting something, you are merely telling people that it exists.  You are telling them what.

When you are marketing something, you are showing people its value.  You are telling them why.

Examples of Marketing vs. Promotion in Music

Here are some simple examples of the difference between marketing and promotion in the music business:

• Sending a tweet with a link to your new single/video is promotion; writing a series of tweets that tells what your song/video is about, and why people should watch/listen is marketing.
• Posting a link to your upcoming show on Facebook is promotion; sending an email to your email list that describes your upcoming shows, builds anticipation, and makes people want to attend is marketing.
• Announcing a sale on your merch is promotion; developing a comprehensive online store platform that integrates with your website and brand, so that people have a good buying experience is marketing.

There is nothing wrong with anything in any of these examples.  One thing you need to understand is that marketing and promotion are not in competition with each other.  One isn’t better than the other.  In fact, you need them both.

Knowing how to use Marketing and Promotion

In reality, promotion is actually a subset of your marketing activities.  Promotion is critical to executing a successful marketing strategy.  The issue, however, is that some people make the mistake of thinking that promotion can stand alone.  It can’t.   If you do promotion by itself, you’re really just yelling at people, and likely annoying them to death.

The reason you need marketing and promotion is that they work together.  Marketing provides the why for people to react to your promotion.  People won’t buy your music just because you told them that it is available on iTunes.  Marketing provides the critical answer to why people should buy your music.

If your marketing effectively answers the why, people will react positively to your promotion when you tell them what you are offering.

Source: http://twoplusmedia.com

MARKETING - What Makes Digital Marketing Fundamentally Different?

What Makes Digital Marketing Fundamentally Different?

Greg Satell, Contributor

The marketing world, in large part, can be split into two camps.  The traditionalists believe that nothing has really changed except the tools.  Digital advocates, on the other hand, are sure that the realm of communication has changed so completely that the old rules have lost relevance.  Who’s right?

Having spent ample time in both camps, I’m somewhere in the middle.  I’m equally frustrated with those who try to fit new media into old models and those who are sure every shiny object represents a new paradigm.

Nevertheless, it’s clear that something fundamental has changed and, in my view at least, it starts with one of the most primary assumptions in the marketing world. 

The Purchase Funnel

The purchase funnel should be familiar to anyone involved in sales and marketing.  It has been a staple for decades and many different iterations have arisen, but here’s the most basic version from Wikipedia:

The funnel is a graphical representation of the AIDA model that’s been in use for at least a century and appeals to our basic common sense.  You get a prospect’s attention, inspire their interest, overcome their objections and get them to act.  The implicit assumption is that the more people you put into the front of the funnel, the more sales you’ll get out the end.

This led to marketers to focus on building brand awareness, mainly through TV campaigns. While some energy went into tactics farther down the line, the thinking was that awareness was a tide that lifted all boats.  I think that everybody knew that the notion wasn’t 100% accurate, but it was true enough that it worked and played a crucial role in building our most beloved brands.

That model is now broken because 60% of TV viewers are surfing the Internet while they watch, so the action that a TV ad is most likely to elicit is not a trip to the store, but an Internet search.  That’s what’s fundamentally changed and it means we need an entirely new model.

The Three Pillars of Digital Brands

Once a consumer begins to research a category purchase online, their data trail will alert your competitors, who will retarget those same consumers with new offers based on their surfing behavior.   In effect, by building brand awareness you are also building category awareness and allowing your rivals to line their coffers.

To respond to the new challenges many marketers have developed path-to-purchase models.  Like purchase funnels, there are multiple versions, but here’s the one that I favor:

 

At first glance, the contrast may seem mostly cosmetic.  After all, you still have the same major elements, simply rearranged.  However, what used to be a linear process has been replaced by a continuum and that makes all the difference in the world.

In short, marketers need to shift from grabbing attention to holding attention and that will require a change in skills, mindset and organizational integration.

From Big Ideas to Pervasive Brand Experiences

In contrast to the old model, where marketers strove to come up with a “big idea” which they could promote with massive ad spending on TV, now marketers need to create pervasive brand experiences that keep consumers engaged even after they have made the sale.

Case in point is the Nike’+program, which has developed an entire ecosystem that helps consumers track their own training programs through a fuelband that monitors their activity, devices implanted in basketball shoes that can record how high they jump and interfaces with both the Apple iPod and Microsoft Kinect platforms.  They can even link their profiles with friends and compete with them.

To succeed in this new environment, marketers need to move away from one-way communication and towards a true value exchange, where consumers interact with the brand continuously because they are getting more than just a slogan, but an experience that transcends the product itself.

However, the shift requires tight integration of a much wider set of skills than in the old “big idea” era.  Beyond making ads, todays marketing effort requires technologists, usability experts community managers, retail specialists and sometimes even a mathematician or two.

My question is this:  If marketing practice has changed so fundamentally, why do our marketing organizations look so much the same?

It boggles the mind.

- Greg

MARKETING - 4 Principles of Marketing Strategy In The Digital Age

Life for marketers used to be simpler.  We had just a few TV channels, some radio stations, a handful of top magazines and a newspaper or two in each market.  Reaching consumers was easy, if you were able craft a compelling message, you could move product.

Ugh!  Now we’ve got a whole slew of TV channels, millions of web sites and hundreds of thousands of “Apps” along with an alphabet soup of DMP’s, API’s and SDK’s. Marketing was never easy, but technology has made it a whole lot tougher.

What used to be a matter of identifying needs and communicating benefits now requires us to build immersive experiences that engage consumers.  That means we have to seamlessly integrate a whole new range of skills and capabilities.   It’s easy to get lost among a sea of buzzwords and false gurusselling snake oil. Here are 4 principles to guide you:

 1. Clarify Business Objectives

There’s so much going on in the marketing arena today, everybody is struggling to keep up.   At the same time, every marketing professional feels pressure to be “progressive” and actively integrate emerging media into their marketing program.

However, the mark of a good marketing strategy is not how many gadgets and neologisms are crammed into it, but how effectively it achieves worthy goals. Therefore, how you define your intent will have a profound impact on whether you succeed or fail.

Unfortunately, there is a tendency for marketers to try to create a “one size fits all” approach for a portfolio of brands or, alternatively, to want to create complicated models to formulate marketing objectives.  However, most businesses can be adequately captured by evaluating just three metrics: awareness, sales and advocacy (i.e. customer referral).

Some brands are not widely known, others are have trouble converting awareness to sales and still others need to encourage consumer advocacy. While every business needs all three, it is important to focus on one primary objective or your strategy will degrade into a muddled hodgepodge.

2. Use Innovation Teams to Identify, Evaluate and Activate Emerging Opportunities

Marketing executives are busy people.  They need to actively monitor the marketplace, identify business opportunities, collaborate with product people and run promotional campaigns.  It is unreasonable to expect them to keep up with the vast array of emerging technology and tactics, especially since most of it won’t pan out anyway.

Therefore, it is essential to have a team dedicated to identifying emerging opportunities, meeting with start-ups and running test-and-learn programs to evaluate their true potential.  Of course, most of these will fail, but the few winners will more than make up for the losers.

Once an emerging opportunity has performed successfully in a pilot program, it can then be scaled up and become integrated into the normal strategic process as a viable tactic to achieve an awareness, sales or advocacy objective.

3. Decouple Strategy and Innovation

Unfortunately, in many organizations, strategy and innovation are often grouped together because they are both perceived as things that “smart people” do.  Consequently, when firms approach innovation, they tend to put their best people on it, those who have shown a knack for getting results.

That’s why, all too often, innovation teams are populated by senior executives.  Because innovation is considered crucial to the future of the enterprise (and also due to the institutional clout of the senior executives) they also tend to have ample resources at their disposal.  They are set up to succeed.  Failure, all too often, isn’t an option.

However, strategy is fundamentally different from innovation.  As noted above, a good strategy is one that achieves specific objectives.  Innovation, however, focuses on creating something completely new and new things, unfortunately, tend to not work as well as standard solutions (at least at first).  The truth is that innovation is a messy business.

So failure must be an option, which is why technologically focused venture capital firms expect the vast majority of their investments to fail.  However, failure must be done cheaply, so resources (and therefore senior executives) must be kept to a minimum.

4. Build Open Assets in the Marketplace

The primary focus of marketing promotion used to be to create compelling advertising campaigns that would get the consumer’s attention and drive awareness.  Once potential customers were aware of the product, direct sales and retail promotions could then close the deal.

That model is now broken.  Today, effective promotional campaigns are less likely to lead to a sale and more likely to result in an Internet search, where consumers’ behavior can be tracked and then retargeted by competitors. Simply building awareness and walking away is more likely to enrich your competition than yourself.

Successful brands are becoming platforms and need to do more than just drive consumers to a purchase, they have to inspire them to participate.  That means marketers have to think less in terms of USP’s, and GRP’s and more in terms of API’s and SDK’s.  Focus groups are giving way to accelerators andcreation to co-creation.

In the digital age, brands are no longer mere corporate assets to be leveraged, but communities of belief and purpose.

- Greg

MARKETING - What Are the Five Principles of Marketing?

What Are the Five Principles of Marketing?

By Kimberly Offord, eHow Contributor

The five principles of marketing include what are commonly known as the four Ps, plus a more recent fifth principle: product, price, promotion, place and people. The marketing industry dictates that without these elements, an effective and complete marketing plan is impossible. To ensure the success of any business, a mix of these five principles must be understood and executed properly.

Background

• Defined by the American Marketing Association, "Marketing is the activity, set of institutions and processes for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large."

Product

• The product is the core of any business. If there is no relevant product, good or service, and no need for it, there is no business. The structure and characteristics of the product are important in the marketing mix and must be distinct from the competition.

Promotion

• The second principle is promotion. Having the perfect product is of no significance if no one knows your product exists. Promotion is the process of communicating to a targeted audience a product's benefits and availability. Promotion can also involve creating a perception about the product or service. Advertising, promotional incentives and public relations campaigns are all effective methods of promotion.

Price

• The third principle is price. Pricing the product correctly plays a significant role in the marketing mix. Pricing too high or too low can influence consumer perception of the product as well as its availability. There are many strategies that can be implemented with price. A business may believe that a lower price would attract more consumers. However, if the target market is more concerned about elements such as quality, a higher price may be warranted.

Place

• The next principle is place. Where a consumer can actually get the product is key. If the product or service cannot be conveniently acquired, a consumer may purchase from the competition. For example, a business may find that offering a product online is more effective than opening a physical store.

People

• The fifth principle is people, or consumers. Understanding customer demand can dictate the product. Products are often developed based upon perceived needs of the consumer.

MARKETING - 7 Fundamental Marketing Principles

7 Fundamental Marketing Principles   If you played sports as a kid, you know about practicing the basics.  Your coach probably had you practice basic drills over and over again.  But, learning those basics skills built a solid foundation for you to do great things. The same is true in business; you need to know your basics inside and out.  One of the most important skills you need is marketing. Marketing is defined as a suite of principles and strategies you use in your business  to create awareness of your product and services.  Marketing is beneficial to your business because it: Establishes awareness that your business exists Promotes branding and name recognition Provides general information about your business or your products/services  When done well, it creates trust and credibility  Distinguishes your business from the competition  Communicates new products and services  The key to effective marketing is to send a message that resonates with your target market,  attracts them to your business, communicates the benefits of your product or service and  compels them to contact you. To support and inspire your marketing strategy, here are seven fundamental marketing  principles. The absence of any of these principles can undermine the effectiveness of your  marketing: 1.  Identify what your target wants and needs: The wants and needs of your target       market influence the products and services you offer, and how you go about marketing       to them. 2.  Provide relevant products and services: Position and promote your products and       services so that they are attractive to the target market. 3.  Emphasize solutions and benefits, more than features: Solutions and benefits are       the true value of your offering and will more likely ignite emotion and ultimately move your       target to buy. 4.  Build a relationship with your target market: Demonstrate, through marketing, that       they need you and that they will be better off because of what you can offer them. 5.  Be consistent in how you brand your business: The key here is to demonstrate your       uniqueness, deliver of your promise, and to maintain a consistent branding message. 6.  Start simple and build your strategy over time: Take a phased approach when rolling       out your marketing efforts. Don't do it all at once. You will feel overwhelmed, and it will be       too much to manage.  7.  Marketing is an ongoing process; it never stops: A business that wants to be       sustainable and profitable should continually invest time and energy in marketing.  Source: http://www.thrivebusinesscenter.com

MARKETING - 7 Key Marketing Principles

7 Key Marketing Principles

Here are 7 Key Principles to Answer Questions like “How Do I Get More Customers?” and “What Can I Do to Grow My Business?”

1) Strategy before tactics - Create a marketing strategy first, and THEN build your marketing activities around this core strategy. Your marketing strategy must begin with a narrow definition of your perfect client and then communicating your key points of difference from your competitors. Stop trying to be all things to everyone. Concentrate your efforts on a small, niche market and with a focus on becoming the dominant player.  

2) Narrow market focus – Stop trying to be all things to everyone. Focus your marketing strategy and tactics on a small, niche market and become the dominant player.

3) Differentiate - Find and communicate a hook that allows your prospects to easily see how your firm is different from everyone else in the industry.  

4) Marketing materials should educate - No one likes to be sold to. Create information products, websites and other forms of communications that allow your prospects to fully appreciate your expertise.

5) Orchestrate the lead generation trio - A comprehensive business marketing strategy will have a fully functioning lead generation system in place. A large portion of your leads can originate as referrals, but by adding advertising and public relations to your system, you amplify your efforts in each. When a prospect comes into contact with your advertising message, reads about your new product in a trade journal, and then gets invited to your educational workshop by their accountant, they’ve practically sold themselves.

6) Create a total online presence - Since the majority of purchase decisions made today involve some amount of research online, it’s simply not enough to have just a website. Today’s business must be easily found online, easily engaged, and easy to communicate with. This requires a major focus on search engine optimization and social media participation.  

7) Live by a business marketing calendar - The best way to move your marketing strategy forward is to create a calendar and schedule marketing activities every single day, week, and month.

Source: http://strategypeak.com

MARKETING - Types of Marketing Channel

Types of Marketing Channels

There are basically 4 types of marketing channels: direct selling; selling through intermediaries; dual distribution; and reverse channels.

KEY POINTS

• Direct selling is the marketing and selling of products directly to consumers away from a fixed retail location.
• An intermediary (or go-between) is a third party that offers intermediation services between two trading parties.
• Dual distribution describes a wide variety of marketing arrangments by which the manufacturer or wholesalers use more than one channel simultaneously to reachthe end user.
• A reverse channel may go from consumer to intermediary to beneficiary.

TERMS

• marketing channels 
  
  A marketing channel is a set of practices or activities necessary to transfer the ownership of goods, and to move goods, from the point of production to the point of consumption and, as such, which consists of all the institutions and all the marketing activities in the marketing process.
• intermediaries 
  
  An intermediary is a third party that offers an intermediation service between two trading parties.

EXAMPLES

• A reverse channel can be used to refurbish products such as circuit boards and computers.

Introduction

There are basically 4 types of marketing channels:

• Direct selling;
• Selling through intermediaries;
• Dual distribution; and
• Reverse channels.

Here's a bit of information about each one.

Direct Selling

Direct selling is the marketing and selling of products directly to consumers away from a fixed retail location. Peddling is the oldest form of direct selling.

Modern direct selling includes sales made through the party plan, one-on-one demonstrations, personal contact arrangements as well as internet sales.

A textbook definition is: "The direct personal presentation, demonstration, and sale of products and services to consumers, usually in their homes or at their jobs."

Industry representative, the World Federation of Direct Selling Associations (WFDSA), reports that its 59 regional member associations accounted for more than US$114 Billion in retail sales in 2007, through the activities of more than 62 million independent sales representatives.

The United States Direct Selling Association (DSA) reported that in 2000, 55% of adult Americans had at some time purchased goods or services from a direct selling representative and 20% reported that they were currently(6%) or had been in the past(14%) a direct selling representative.

According to the WFDSA, consumers benefit from direct selling because of the convenience and service benefits it provides, including personal demonstration and explanation of products, home delivery, and generous satisfaction guarantees. In contrast to franchising, the cost for an individual to start an independent direct selling business is typically very low, with little or no required inventory or cash commitments to begin.

Most direct selling associations, including the Bundesverband Direktvertrieb Deutschland, the direct selling association of Germany, and the WFDSA and DSA require their members to abide by a code of conduct towards a fair partnership both with customers and salesmen. Most national direct selling associations are represented in the World Federation of Direct Selling Associations (WFDSA).

Direct selling is different from direct marketing in that it is about individual sales agents reaching and dealing directly with clients while direct marketing is about business organizations seeking a relationship with their customers without going through an agent/consultant or retail outlet.

Direct selling often, but not always, uses multi-level marketing (a salesperson is paid for selling and for sales made by people he recruits or sponsors) rather than single-level marketing (salesperson is paid only for the sales he makes himself).

Selling Through Intermediaries

A marketing channel where intermediaries such as wholesalers and retailers are utilized to make a product available to the customer is called an indirect channel.

The most indirect channel you can use (Producer/manufacturer --> agent --> wholesaler --> retailer --> consumer) is used when there are many small manufacturers and many small retailers and an agent is used to help coordinate a large supply of the product.

Dual Distribution

Dual distribution describes a wide variety of marketing arrangements by which the manufacturer or wholesalers uses more than one channel simultaneously to reach the end user. They may sell directly to the end users as well as sell to other companies for resale. Using two or more channels to attract the same target market can sometimes lead to channel conflict.

An example of dual distribution is business format franchising, where the franchisors,license the operation of some of its units to franchisees while simultaneously owning and operating some units themselves.

Reverse Channels

If you've read about the other three channels, you would have noticed that they have one thing in common -- the flow. Each one flows from producer to intermediary (if there is one) to consumer. Third is indeed the traditional role.

Technology, however, has made another flow possible. This one goes in the reverse direction and may go -- from consumer to intermediary to beneficiary. Think of making money from the resale of a product or recycling.Figure 1

There is another distinction between reverse channels and the more traditional ones -- the introduction of a beneficiary. In a reverse flow, you find a producer. You'll only find a User or a Beneficiary.