Differences between Marketing and Advertising
shiva | General | 26 July 2007, 11:27pm
Marketing and Advertising, although they sound similar but in reality they are not. Advertising is only a part of the bigger game called Marketing. Marketing encompasses complete conceptualization of a brand right from research to designing to advertising to sale. Advertising, on the other hand is a component of the marketing process which is nothing but conveying the message through variety of mediums to promote the product.
Advertising is one of the most important component of a marketing strategy and also the most expensive. Advertising constitutes sending the message across the public about your company, product or services. It also constitutes behind the scenes work like the process involving formation of various strategies and coming up with a right one to target the viewers. The strategy consists of planning things like placing ads, deciding what media to use, what time, frequency etc. The advertisements are generally placed via mediums like television, snail mail, newspapers, internet, emails, radio, magazines, mobile messaging, flyers, billboards etc. The most popular one is of course television although advertising on internet is becoming increasingly popular too.
Easiest way to differentiate advertising from marketing is to consider marketing as a cake and if you cut the cake, advertising as one of the pieces of that cake. The other pieces of cake are market research of the product, product designing, media planning, PR, product pricing, customer satisfaction, customer support, sales and many more. All these components or pieces of cake should work independently but collectively in achieving the bigger goal i.e. sell product and build company’s reputation in the market. Marketing is a marathon process involving many tasks that involve hours sometimes days of research. The research part of marketing takes the longest duration as it involves thoroughly understanding the behavior of people towards a product. Designing the product and developing advertising strategy is also a time consuming process. Only components that take less time are executing advertisements and sales. Marketing can also be perceived as a medium between consumers and the company.
But many companies often make mistake of confusing advertising with marketing. They try to ape big companies like Coke and Pepsi in advertising but they simply ignore the work that goes behind that. The classical example of this is, take the case of logo for instance. Many business owners are so hysterical about the logo of their company in their advertisements that they think that it will simply bring in the sales. But what makes a logo works is none other than the reputation of the company and the logo must have a feeling to it and should truly reflect company’s values. One should also remember that these companies spend fortunes on advertising which a new start up business can’t. Rather than spending unnecessary money on branding your product one should invest money and time in communicating to the consumers that they can address their expectations. After building reputation and growing to a big size company one can think of these lavish ideas. Educating the consumers also helps as it will give them an understanding that you know what you do and are best at doing that.
Smart marketers are aggressive in approach rather than passive. They provoke reader’s minds by prompting them to do something rather than just making them knowledgeable of the product. Smart marketers also bring home the names, addresses and contact numbers of people who are really interested in hiring your company by employing aggressive marketing. Thus having a good marketing campaign speaks a lot about the company and their products and advertising gives that finishing touch to the hard work done by the marketing people in selling a product.
Shiva
Current Mood: Cheerful
Current Music: Cool
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Differences between Marketing and Advertising
shiva | General | 26 July 2007, 11:27pm
Marketing and Advertising, although they sound similar but in reality they are not. Advertising is only a part of the bigger game called Marketing. Marketing encompasses complete conceptualization of a brand right from research to designing to advertising to sale. Advertising, on the other hand is a component of the marketing process which is nothing but conveying the message through variety of mediums to promote the product.
Advertising is one of the most important component of a marketing strategy and also the most expensive. Advertising constitutes sending the message across the public about your company, product or services. It also constitutes behind the scenes work like the process involving formation of various strategies and coming up with a right one to target the viewers. The strategy consists of planning things like placing ads, deciding what media to use, what time, frequency etc. The advertisements are generally placed via mediums like television, snail mail, newspapers, internet, emails, radio, magazines, mobile messaging, flyers, billboards etc. The most popular one is of course television although advertising on internet is becoming increasingly popular too. When done online the same marketing is called Internet Marketing.
Easiest way to differentiate advertising from marketing is to consider marketing as a cake and if you cut the cake, advertising as one of the pieces of that cake. The other pieces of cake are market research of the product, product designing, media planning, PR, product pricing, customer satisfaction, customer support, sales and many more. All these components or pieces of cake should work independently but collectively in achieving the bigger goal i.e. sell product and build company’s reputation in the market. Marketing is a marathon process involving many tasks that involve hours sometimes days of research. The research part of marketing takes the longest duration as it involves thoroughly understanding the behavior of people towards a product. Designing the product and developing advertising strategy is also a time consuming process. Only components that take less time are executing advertisements and sales. Marketing can also be perceived as a medium between consumers and the company.
But many companies often make mistake of confusing advertising with marketing. They try to ape big companies like Coke and Pepsi in advertising but they simply ignore the work that goes behind that. The classical example of this is, take the case of logo for instance. Many business owners are so hysterical about the logo of their company in their advertisements that they think that it will simply bring in the sales. But what makes a logo works is none other than the reputation of the company and the logo must have a feeling to it and should truly reflect company’s values. One should also remember that these companies spend fortunes on advertising which a new start up business can’t. Rather than spending unnecessary money on branding your product one should invest money and time in communicating to the consumers that they can address their expectations. After building reputation and growing to a big size company one can think of these lavish ideas. Educating the consumers also helps as it will give them an understanding that you know what you do and are best at doing that.
Smart marketers are aggressive in approach rather than passive. They provoke reader’s minds by prompting them to do something rather than just making them knowledgeable of the product. Smart marketers also bring home the names, addresses and contact numbers of people who are really interested in hiring your company by employing aggressive marketing. Thus having a good marketing campaign speaks a lot about the company and their products and advertising gives that finishing touch to the hard work done by the marketing people in selling a product.
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Shiva
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Current Music: Cool
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Creating a Corporate Image
shiva | General | 26 July 2007, 11:25pm
For any corporation it is very important to create a distinct image in the market. This is known as Corporate Image which distinguishes the corporation from its competitors and provides a picture of it to the general public. It depicts the principles, beliefs, productivity of the company. This image is responsible for increasing the sales of the product and to achieve brand equity. Corporate image creation is a strenuous and time consuming process and is carried out by experts qualifying in perception management. Basically, the creation involves marketing experts who used various kinds of promotion methods and public relations. Since this image is targeted to attract the customers it should be highly appealing. Besides the marketing experts critics play an important role too.
The name of the corporation and its catch line should reflect its belief like Wal-Mart, which says that it sells for less. A logo should also be designed accordingly. Like the corporation FedEx has an arrow incorporated in its logo which depicts its fast and efficient service. Once the image is created by the corporation the next step is advertising and product distribution in the market. Like if the corporation creates luxury products, they should rope in big names in the advertising experts and the models to be featured in these ads should be super stars. Likewise, they should not distribute their products to every other store; instead they should target more hi-fi malls. Time to time, advertising and branding budget should be reviewed to cut down on cost and to be in-sync with the technology. This also helps in revamping the corporate image according to the fast changing demands of the consumer.
Testimonies of news papers, magazines, and labor union can deteriorate a well-created corporate image. Simplest of controversies can be exaggerated by the media and spoil the name of the company. Controversies are born by the interference of organizations related to environment, religion, crime, politics, education and charity. Government, too, is another powerful and influential organization by itself.
Once the corporate image is created, it should be retained. It should not be like here today and gone tomorrow. This image should be reflected in all the brands and product line of the corporation. Even if one of the products isn’t up to the mark, it will lead to confusion among the consumers and will hit the sales of the company. Like recently there was controversy about a particular contact lens solution of a company. It was supposed to be infecting the users with a rare disease. This not only affected the sales revenue of that particular product but also made the customers think and raise question about the authenticity of other products of that particular company.
Another company’s products had hidden non-vegetarian ingredient in a vegetarian product. This led to the decrease of trust among the customers. In such a case the company should either advertise itself as a company selling non-vegetarian food or it should invest in promoting the company as vegetarian by introducing more vegetarian products. So the image of each individual product of the company makes up for the complete image of the corporation. And last but not the least, the image should be very realistic, truly representing its values and should leave a personal touch with the consumers.
Shiva
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Attributes of a Successful Selling Strategy
shiva | General | 26 July 2007, 11:24pm
The first attribute of a successful selling strategy is a website that provides information about the products and the service they are providing. The advantage of that is we can sell those products and services online. Selling is a talent to be cultivated. It requires a lot of understanding to find what the customer is looking for and then fulfilling his needs.
It is very important to get the complete attention of reader. The content of the message should be make reader think. This can be achieved by using power words, along with color and visuals. Once the attention is grabbed, it should be retained till the end of the message. The customer should be prompted to take some action and their involvement should be sought. They can be made to sign up for newsletters or can be made to take the survey by visiting the company’s website.
The consumer should be convinced to buy the product. All the features of the company should be specified, with the more relevant ones on the top. They should be explained logically through these points how the products will fulfill their needs or solve their problems. It does only by convincing the customer about this will motivate them to buy the product. They should be made to understand what wonders the product can do to him. Strong emotional words should be included in the sentence. The customer should either fear the loss of the product if he doesn’t buy it in time or he should be given the greed of the advantages the product can provide. These reasons will create an emotional impulse and will make them think that they have no other option to buy it. They will have a logical reason to make the purchase. The emotions of the buyer should be manipulated with words.
Something like ‘limited edition’ or ‘limited period offer’ will create a sense of urgency. The customer thinks that he should get this product somehow. It’s nice to have sales often, especially to clear out old inventory in the name of some offer. The products which have an obvious damage should be sold out at a special price. But the damage should be mentioned to the customer. If it’s not mentioned, the first time the customer will be tricked into buying something, but he will loose trust and won’t come back again.
Always hold seasonal sales and offers. Since all the competitors will be giving out different offers to attract customers, it’s a good point to have one, too. But it should be remembered to not to imitate anyone. Only a unique offer will make the customers not go to the competitors’. Once in a while offer free shipping offer also works. A condition like if a customer spends particular amount of money, all items will be shipped for free. This is another attractive deal which will surely tempt the customer. Thanks to search engines and online stores anything can be purchased from the comfort of the home. Give away free sample to the customers or keep a pre-sale price for introductory products. The customers won’t think twice to spend a little money to try something new.
The ending of the sales message is where most people mess it up. The whole efforts will be wasted if the customer gets a second thought. He should be convinced, by nice words, to buy the product till the very end. The content should be arranged with care. The key is to tell the customer what to do exactly after he finishes reading the matter, like ‘Grab the golden opportunity now’ or ‘pick up the phone and dial the number right now’, etc. Do not include links or short advertisement of other products or services. This will shift the focus of the reader and he might have a second thought. A list of the existing customers should be maintained and from time to time special offers should be mailed to them. So basically the whole idea is to influence the mind of the customer until he buys a product.
Shiva
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Anonymous Visitor Marketing
shiva | General | 26 July 2007, 11:23pm
Anonymous visitor marketing or anonymous user marketing is nothing but changing the content of the website according to the taste of the visitor and thus making the information more relevant. Some kind of data is attached with each user known as metadata or supplemental data that is similar to human sensory nerves and gives an idea about how to react to the approaching person.
Metadata or supplemental data consists of information like the geographic location, IP address, browser languages like English, Chinese, German, etc., and also information about domain extension like .edu, .gov, .mil, etc., internet connection speed, operating system, search keyword or sentence, referring URL and screen resolution.
Graphical location tells about the approximate address of the visitor. By this information, the server can search and display information which is specific for the people of that location. Information like climate, temperature, local happening, and time can be displayed accurately.
IP address or Internet protocol address gives idea of the specific Internet service, company the person is related to. If belonging to an Internet provider the web page displays the speed of the connection and if related to a specific company the website displays the name and logo of the company.
A web page can be formatted in different languages. By analyzing the browser language, the visitor can be can be served with a web page which is easy for him to understand and the visitor is made to feel that the website is centered on his mother tongue which will make him more comfortable.
Different organizations and different sectors have different domain extensions. A website with a .gov extension means that its a government website and a website with .edu extension refers to an educational organization. So the content of the webpage can be changed according to the organization the visitor is related to.
Depending on the Internet connection speed if there are any multimedia downloads the size of downloads can also be managed. There will be different resolution versions of a particular download and if the speed is low, multimedia with the lowest resolution will be downloaded to the visitor’s temporary Internet files. This will not interrupt the normal working of the computer.
Different operating systems have different requirements and their functionality also varies. Some websites provide downloadable software and updates which will not be compatible with all kinds of operating systems. These limitations can be determined without interrupting the user.
Search keyword or sentence can be utilized to apply search engine optimization techniques or SEO techniques to the website to make the matter more relevant. Linking data to a specific keyword, which is displayed automatically making the visitor feel that his query was dealt with effectively, does this.
Referring URL helps the sponsor to compare data with that of the previous page and bring it on the present page. This increases the competition between the websites, the present website will try to prove to be better than the previous website.
If the visitor is surfing the Internet with his hand held device or mobile, the content of the website is trimmed to fit the screen resolution of the device. If the amount of data that is viewed on a normal monitor is displayed over the hand held device, the data will overlap with each other and the content won’t be readable.
Shiva
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Current Music: cool
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Affiliate Marketing
shiva | General | 26 July 2007, 11:21pm
ffiliate Marketing is a derivative of Internet marketing where the advertisement publisher gets paid for every customer or sales provided by him. Affiliate marketing is the basic for all other Internet marketing strategies.
In this type of marketing, affiliate management companies, in-house affiliate managers and third party vendors are effectively utilized to use E-mail Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, RRS Capturing and Display Advertising for the success of the product. The web traffic can be traced with the help of a third party or own affiliate programs. A lot of work is involved in this process. At first marketing by this method involved lots of spamming, false advertising, trademark infringement, etc. But, after the invention of complex algorithms and advance security this has been regularized to make it safer for doing business and shopping online. This even led to the better scrutinizing of the terms and conditions by the merchants. Affiliate marketing became more profiting with the opening of more opportunities but at the same time it also increased the competition in marketing.
Due to this pressure in house affiliate programs for merchants became a thing of the past and were replaced by out-sourced programs. The companies that offered this service have expert affiliate and network program managers who have various affiliate program management techniques. These affiliate networks have publishers associated with them who help them with the advertising part.
Affiliate marketing was started by cdnow.com who had music oriented websites. They placed list of music albums on their site and they paid others if they put those links in their websites when a visitor bought their album through their site. The first company to link with cdnow.com was Geffen Records. Two months later, Amazon was offered by a woman that she would sell Amazon’s books on her website and she should be paid a certain percentage in return if she sold Amazon’s books through her site. They liked the idea and started the Amazon associates program. It was more of a commission program where they received a commission if a visitor clicked their links and banners on other’s site and bought anything through it.
Since its invention, the affiliate network has been adopted by various businesses like travel, education, telecom, mobile, gaming, personal finance, retail, and subscription sites, the most common being adult and gambling sectors. In UK alone, affiliate marketing produced
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A Great Way to Get Free Website Traffic
shiva | Business | 26 July 2007, 4:25pm
Author: Guido Nussbaum
This article shows you a technique of getting a lot of traffic to about any website. It is a simple system that you set up once and will then be 99% automated. Yes, you have heared things like this a thousand times and you might have already found out that most of these techniques don
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