The market can be a strange place sometimes. Very cruel to some and over-generous to others. You too must have experienced it and realized sometimes even when two organizations are working in the same industry, selling the same product does not make the same profit. Likewise, some organizations pour in resources, effort, and manpower to fall short to match the success of a small start-up that is not even investing a quarter of the resources.
Truth be told, if you ask a market expert they will tell you in a long complicated way that it’s not the market but the organizations that are at fault. It is not a competition of who has the most resources or who wastes the most time. It’s about who can optimize their product to meet the needs of the customer in the market.
So, how do you explain similar products having different profitability? You may ask.
Well, it is a very simple answer. No matter how good a product is or how many features it has or what ingredients it is made off. What matters is how the customer sees it, if at all you are lucky enough to engage the customer. Most organizations work really hard on creating the product and believe that the product can sell itself on its merits.
It can in the long run, but by the time it starts making profits the company cannot run the risk of shut down. The quality matter little if the product is going to be buried under a pile of other products that were better marketed.
It is important to create a quality product to satisfy the customer and give them their money’s worth. But it is also important for the customers to know about the product in the first place, that is where marketing comes in.
While there are a lot of ways to explain it. For those who do not speak business, let us put is in simpler terms. If the entire organization is a car, the marketing department is its wheels. It is what gets the product out of production and into the hands of the customer. In other words, it is the sum total of all the activities that the business undertakes to get the product to the customer. It may include
Since we are not living in the dark ages anymore. With the coming of the internet, the marketing scenario has also changed and become more digital-oriented. There are many different blends of marketing. Each organization tries to stand out and create a unique process for themselves and to be honest, it is fair too if it works that is.
While most organizations try to go a different way. Many are a slight deviation from the same old formulas that work well in the market.
So what are these marketing formulas for success?
Now the market can be influenced by many factors and change very quickly. Rendering all planning and strategizing to be null and void. But here are some tried and tested strategies that are most commonly used.
Let us just address the most popular one first and get it out of the way. Digital marketing is a strategy to use various electronic, and digital platforms to promote your product. It is super effective to reach a wider audience base in different locations and very cheaply too. Almost everyone on the planet has at some point, if not every day experience the influence of technology. It would be stupid not to use such a powerful channel to get your product out there.
Now it is important to understand that digital marketing is not just one step deal, it is the complete package. As it includes many other forms of marketing, which when done right simultaneously can be very effective.
Search engines are the answer to every question you ever had. It helps the user find anything they have on their minds. Using Search engine optimization helps your organization to get a better rating from the search engine. Getting a good rating is important to have a better rank which would help the organization be more visible when the customers make a search for relative words or keywords. Prioritizing the organization by putting it above others. You can improve your SEO ratings by optimizing your content and images to make it more accessible to the search engine.
One of the most grinding and hard strategies compared to others in the digital marketing list. Email marketing consists of generating leads or a list of potential clients and emailing them about the products. It can be a tiring and unrewarding task to mail multiple people who will never respond but it is not a fruitless endeavor.
Most people sent emails to businesses directly to spam and so email marketing makes more sense when the customer is another business in need of your product. Other organizations have no choice but to read their emails every day and look at your mail as well. Hence it is more relevant in a b2b communication strategy.
There are a lot of people out there who like your product. You want to communicate with them all and give them all the updates about the business but cannot because it is time-consuming. Even if you do manage to pull it off, you are bound to miss out on some.
Newsletter marketing is a simpler easier method of communicating with your customers who are interested in your product. The customers sign themselves up for the newsletter and whenever the business posts an update, the customer can receive an email about it. Keeping them updated with the activities of the organization.
A newsletter is a very important tool to keep your loyal customers in the loop and make them feel important. It forms a connection with the customer and makes them feel like a part of the organization.
As the name suggests, it is the content that is generated by the customer or the user for you. It can be a simple testimonial, review, or even a picture of the customer using your product. The user-generated content is very helpful to advertise your content amongst other users. It stands as a seal of approval from the customer and attracts other users to buy your product.
More the media, the greater the scope of promotion. The internet provides so many unique opportunities to market the product. You can pay websites or platforms to display your ads on their interface. It is like an online billboard that helps you be displayed to anyone who visits their website. Paid ads too have many subtypes and is a separate booming industry of their own. Such as pay per click, in which you only pay for the number of clicks you get on your ad.
As mentioned earlier, this kind of marketing has more layers than you might think. Creating content that customers like regularly is a great way to promote your product. Media such as blogs are a perfect example. You find us about a problem that the community is facing. Something that affects your customers. You write articles and create content to help the community with a subtle hint of how your product can help resolve the problem. If the content is good, the customers will surely be interested in the product and even suggest it to other people they know who require the solution. It is most common in online companies.
Millions of people log in to social media platforms to connect with others. These platforms allow organizations to promote their products on their interface. Effectively helping the brand reach millions of people every day. However, the only drawback it has is, that the platform is a business too and dictates how you and your customers interact with each other, having the right to change the policies to limit or increase the interaction rate. It also records information of everyone accessing the platform. In short, your entire strategies are dependent on the policies of these platforms.
Marketing is a tough business. You have to create an interest in the product and to get people interested you need creativity. Now creativity can mean a lot of things and can cost you a fortune. But sometimes creativity becomes realistic and yields good results. Strategies that use unconventional methods of promotion at a lower cost are the simplest definition of guerrilla marketing strategies. These are methods or techniques that employ the environment or other factors to subtly slide the point across. These are simple hints that blend in perfectly with the situation and may not be relevant to other media.
Everyone out there wants to make the community they live in better. As an organization, it is a moral duty to help the community you function in. when the community feels that you are not here to just take their money. They feel a sense of gratitude towards the organization, which helps in improving the goodwill of the company. The simplest method to do this is by CAUSE MARKETING.
It is something everyone has heard or participated in at some point or the other. It is when the organization promises a portion of the cost to some charity or good cause to help society. The cause marketing strategy helps people feel that their money is helping society and not just finding some organization’s ambitions.
Collaboration with brands in different industries is a great idea to expand your reach. Many businesses out there looking for collaboration with others to improve sales. It is a marketing strategy to target the untapped audience pool for either organization. Both parties come together and invest something to help the other. Some of the ideas for collaboration are as follows:
Using the product as a complimentary gift to attract more customers is another good strategy. Customers get what they require plus an additional bonus or sample of the other product. This can prompt the customer to invest in buying the product in the future.
Organizing a contest with other brands is a simple idea for user-generated content. You can ask the customers to participate and declare a winner at the end of a given time. The time frame helps create a sense of urgency in the customer.
The collaboration is an opportunity for the business to find and target new customers. There are people who can be potential clients but you don't know off because they don't fit the criteria you operate upon. Collaboration is just the opportunity to realize that there are people who you can convert into customers. It indirectly helps you create a demand for your product in a different section of the market. It is also useful to create connections with other brands that might help in the future.
Marketing is just a fancy word for connecting and communicating with people. What most get wrong about marketing is that it is a process and not an end product. It does not stop with the sale of the product or service, but goes on after that as well, in the form of feedback. It is a closed loop that keeps on repeating itself. The reason we say a closed loop is because selling your product to the customer is not just a one-time thing.
You want customers to keep coming back, which would not happen if you don't make them feel wanted by communicating with them. Simultaneously, you want more and more customers to buy your product, which can only happen if they know about the product. So in every scenario no matter which marketing strategy you apply, the key to success is communication. It may be communication with the customer, other businesses or within your own organization. Getting your point across is what determines the success or failure of the business.
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