marketing

marketing

strategic communication designed to influence beliefs and drive behavior of target markets through deliberate action & messages

marketing strategy

roadmap for a business to communicate a message to its customers and build a sustainable competitive advantage

What does the marketing strategy include?

long-term goals, target market, competitive advantage, and marketing mix (4 Ps)

Competitive advantage

sustainable competitive advantage

advantage over the competition that is not easily copied and can be maintained over a long period of time; you want to leverage as much as possible, limited to competitors, happens on a competitive level

unique value proposition

the unique benefit that a product or service provides the target customer; what is the value you are bringing to the market that other’s don’t have

segmentation

the act of dividing a large, diverse population into smaller homogeneous groups like demographics (age/gender), geographics (country.climate), psychographics (attitudes.values/beliefs), behavioral (usage/purchase history)

why is behavioral segmentation popular?

it helps define a segment through past purchase history, the best way to judge future behavior is past behavior

target market

specific group of potential customers that a business focuses its marketing efforts on; should use diverse criteria and be as specific as possible

why is targeting important?

it tailors the message to a specific group, helps develop new products (what features to add), helps choose the right channel, and creates a unique value proposition

customer persona

detailed profile of your ideal customer; includes demographics, goals/motivations, behaviors/interests, needs/pain points (unfilled needs that your product will fill). It is often presented as a narrative bio

positioning

act of creating a clear, distinctive, nd desirable impage of your brand or product in the minds of your customers, realtive to the competition; includes price, quality, key benefit, convenience, and lifestyle; should match UVP

perceptual maps

tool used to depict graphically the positioning of competing products/brands

reasons to believe

the pieces of evidence that support the claims of the marketing message; includes: characteristics/features of the product or its packaging, testimonials and reviews, certifications and warranties, heritage and pedigree

positioning statement

explains what the product and desired market is

positioning statement outline

for [target market], (brand) is the only [category/frame of reference] that [UVP] because [reason to believe]

why should we conduct research instead of using intuition?

helps us be more persuasive, higher chance of bias occuring

Scientific method

helps overcome biases (overconfidence and confirmation), is systematic and objective (there are structured steps to follow); reproductive and verification (better at addressing why)

when should we follow intuition instead of conducting research?

when there is a small population or resource constraints, highly innovative projects

what are the fundamental elements to marketing research?

question, method, and implication

question

what do you want to know? information-oriented and focused on what the researcher needs to find out, often leads to changes in the business

problems

challenges or obstacles; is the “symptom” to the research question’s determined “disease”

elements of a good research question

specific:addresses a concrete problem; actionable: the answer to the questions in order to lead to specfic decisions; focused: avoid asking more than one thing at once

method

the how, involves creating a plan for collecting and analyzing data; the specificity of the research question will determine which method should be used; uses primary or secondary data

sample

subset of the population you will collect data from

implication

uses data, insights and actionable recommendations

insights

interpretations of the data that help answer the original question

actionable recommendations

key insights must be translated into specific recommendations

qualitative research

open and interpretive, depth > breadth, used to identify or reframe problems; pros: allows for richer exploration of consumer experiences, deeper insights; cons: fairly subjective, unstructured (can be inefficient)

quantitative research

concrete and objective, breadth > depth, used to identify a solution; pros: statistically validated, data is independent and objective, best test hypotheses and allows for replications; cons: answers may be restrictive (pre-set list of options), must address specific problem first

common methods of qualitative research

focus group, in-depth interviews, ethnographic (observing and interacting with consumers in their natural environment to understand their actual behavior

quantitative research common methods

surveys, secondary data (statistical analysis of pre-existing numerical data to find new patterns and insights; ex. google trends, statista, pew research, gallup), experiments (must manipulate a variable)

product

anything that can be offered to a market that satisfies a want of a need either tangible (physical items) or intangible (services, digital, experiences)

product mix

complete set of all products and services offered by a firm

product lines

the groups of associated items that consumers use together or think of as part of a group

product mix’s breadth

number of product lines offered by a company

product line’s breadth

the number of products within a product line

total value concept equation

value = perceived benefits / perceived costs

total value concept

the individual basis of whether or not a person would use a certain product

what are the 3 ways to identify needs

observation, job-to-be-done, latent needs

job-to-be-done

focusing on the desired outcome of product usage to uncover the true need, customers don’t just hire products they “hire”

them to do a job

latent needs

uncovering needs that customers can’t easily articulate; looking for contradictions in behavior, moments of frustration, watchng lead users, 5 whys

price

captures value, the right product offered at the right price

what are the different pricing strategies

profit-oriented, sales-oriented, competitor oriented

profit oriented

focuses on achieving specific profit targets, often expressed as a percentage return on sales, assets, or investmetns, main goal is to maximizes financial performance; used in mature companies like apple

sales-oriented

prioritizes increasing revenue, sales voume, or market share, even if this comes at the expense of short-term profitability. Success is measured by growth in sales rather than margins, younger companies favor this

competitor-oriented

bases pricing decisions on the actions, strategies, and market positions of competitors. the objective is to match, beat, or differentiate from rivals prices to maintain or improve market standing

loss leader

pricing strategy wherea business intentionally sells a product below market cost to attract new customers or encourage existing customers to purchase more profitable items (ex costco hot dogs)

buyer surplus

differnce between the actual price a consumer pays and the maximum price they were willing to pay

price discrimination

pricing strategy where a seller prices the same differently product across markets based on consumers willingness to pay