Marketing 101
| Marketing - all business activity involved in the moving of goods or
services from a producer to a consumer. It includes selling, advertising,
and packaging.
If you have any kind of business activity, marketing is an essential
part of this activity. Even a non-profit organization such as a political
organization or a benevolent organization is still involved with "marketing" in
its own way. Learn from These Two Marketing ExamplesOne lady in Portland, Oregon went through a bitter divorce and decided she either had to get counseling or a dog. She got the dog. After the divorce she was 1 million dollars in debt. After four years of serious business she had a Web site that moved over $50 million a year in witty greeting cards. (http://www.zeldawisdom.com).She dresses the dog up in any of 300 costumes and puts the dog on the cards with some type of witty saying. She had a Christmas card showing the dog dressed in a Santa hat and a caption "For Christmas I got a dog for my husband. Good trade, huh?" She's been on "Good Morning America" twice and "Oprah" once. An elderly lady does the dog's costumes, and a friend does the photography. The dog loves it and is a real ham with the camera. The dog has an honorary degree from Harvard as a certified therapist.(2) One important point here is that the web site is a tool, or vehicle. It is not the end goal in itself. A few businesses have survived when the Internet was the goal. For most of us, the Internet is a vehicle for leveraging a creative idea in a new way. For instance, years ago someone had a dream of selling flowers on the Internet. Now there are lots of on-line flower shops and lots of flower shops within easy driving distance of my house. How would they be different? They figured out a way to get specialty flowers to you fresh - something your nearby floral store may not match. When you place an order, they pick the flowers at that special time when the flowers are just ready for blooming. Then they ship FedEx in a special way and you get the flowers just as they are reaching their full beauty. I tried them - the recipient loved them. I also saved a lot of time – only ten minutes to order them. The site is still there at http://www.proflowers.com. Aim for ConversionApple Computer is famous for pioneering the concept of marketing evangelism. Guy Kawasaki, often referred to as the father of evangelism marketing, says he didn’t invent the concept (after all, he says he ripped it from the Bible). The job title was already at Apple when Guy got there. It’s just that the early concept was intellectual sales and business hype. Guy led in pioneering a new concept of marketing evangelism – getting people to believe, and these people getting more people to believe.(3) There is a passion. People don’t buy the Apple computer; they buy a dream. Then they go sell the dream to others.Web marketing evangelism as a concept came later. Your web site is selling a dream, a passion. Your goal is to draw others into this dream and passion. They, in turn, share the dream with others. When they do and act on this, you have conversion. Now here is the hard question. What is your dream? Do you believe in it? You won’t evangelize unless you believe in it. How do you define conversion for your web site? You are trying to move the user from A to B. What is B? How will you measure this? You may have multiple ways to define it on your site or you may have multiple sites for multiple audiences. Do these focus to a central definition? The conversion step may be on-line or off-line. For example, someone may extensively research a purchase decision for a product on-line (car, television, etc.), then go off-line to a local store to make the final conversion step of purchasing. Others may extensively research the product at multiple stores (to the frustration of the salespeople), then go on-line for the conversion step where they can get a cheaper price. Your web site has to motivate the user not only to take the conversion step, but do it on-line at your site. The Unique Selling PropositionYou need to identify why your business is unique compared with other businesses with which you compete. This is your USP, or unique selling proposition. Then you need to build a short motto line around this. This is your lead line for business cards, stationary, web site, and any other advertising. The USP should relate to the wants of the audience. Try to write a USP for each of the two examples of the examples section – now write your own USP!Example: “Building Web Sites that Work…” If you have trouble with this step, check out some of your competitors on the Web. You will probably find their USP on their home page. Then try to figure out their vision and mission from that USP. You should also take a look at the web sites of some major corporations that aren’t necessarily competition. Do they have a USP on their site? What is it? Here are some ideas of how your product or service is unique in comparison with your competitors. Identify this in your USP: • Your product or service costs less. • You have a higher quality. • You have special knowledge others don’t have. • You have a better guarantee. • You are targeting a generation or industry or social-economic cluster better. • You have a better incentive (free bonus). • You have better customer support.
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