|
Unit 1
1) Defining market segment 
- Market segment (also called a target group) is a group of people with similar characteristics such as age, hobbies, lifestyle, values (what is important for them in life)
- Will the segment that receives our message be also a user of our product / service? (e.g. our campaign targets mums, but user of the product will be their children)
- Is our product / service perceived positively or negatively by the segment? This is important to realise in order to be prepared for possible resistance by the customer segment, e.g. a father to a family will likely need a life insurance, but very likely will be resisting to listen to information about such a product from a salesperson.
- Does the customer segment have a stereotype that could possibly be used in marketing communication?
- What stage of technology life cycle is our segment in? (Innovators, Early adopters, Early majority, Late majority, Laggards) – Innovators usually are eager to try new products and services and dispose rather with higher income (they don’t mind losing the money), Early adopters ten to be opinion leaders to the Early & Late majority, which is a group that Leeds social proof and recommendation that the product is good. The laggards are usually ten to have risk aversion in regards to purchasing something and dispose with lower income. As an example we can take elderly people who buy smartphones.
2) Defining the brand
- Having well defined brand is important to differentiate our products from competitors. Also, brand helps entrepreneurs to manage associations that customers have created with our business.
- If a competition to our product / service already exists we can ask people from our target group what brand do they recall when they hear about that particular product / service. This is so called “top of mind” brand and this simple test is used to measure the strength of a brand within a target group.
- What associations do we want the customers to have connected to our brand?
- Is our brand name well defined?
- Unique
- Memorable
- Easily pronounced
- Without negative connotations
- With relation to the target group or industry
- Is there a free domain to be registered? (.com, .net, .cz, .sk, .it, etc.)
- Is it possible to register a trademark?
- This can be usually verified via online databases of trademarks
- Trademark can be purchased on national level or international level and for different industries
- Do we have a claim ?
- A claim is a written sentence that compliments a brand and helps the brand to become easily memorable
- Claim should reflect company’s mission
- Helps to establish brand presence
- E.g. Toyota’s „Today. Tomorrow. Toyota.“ reflects the company’s focus on future of the automotive industry and innovation. Nokia’s „Connecting people“ in a very simplistic way says what the company does – their mission is to connect people.
- Do we have a logo?
- Logo should be
- Relevant – should describe what the business does
- Iconic – unique, easily recognized and memorable
- Versatile – it should be possible to use the logo on different materials (both offline and online), in different sizes and colour schemes (at least black & white version)
- What other components of Corporate Identity can we use to communicate desired values and association to our brand?
- What fonts will we use? Is it enough to use a free font? Or should we purchase a unique one that stands out?
- What colours will we use? Luxury products typically use combination of black, white and gold. Companies that operate in health industry use white, green and blue.
- What icons / illustrations and photographies can we use to enforce desired emotions? For start-ups it is useful to employ images and graphics that can be used for free also for commercial purposes. These can be found e.g. at Pixabay.com or Pexels.com
3) Setting goals for the communication
- What is the goal of our marketing communication? What should the effort achieve?
- To create awareness of need for a particular product or service
- To create or stimulate demand
- To create or improve brand awareness
- To form attitudes and associations to the brand
- Stimulate intention to buy
- Are the goals for our campaign well defined? It is possible to use the “SMART” method.
- Specific – what exactly do we want to achieve with the campaign?
- Measurable – what will we measure? Amount of sales, number of website visitors, ...
- Achievable – is it possible to achieve the goal within given time and with given resources?
- Relevant – is the goal truly relevant for the business development? Is this the priority we should focus on?
- Targeted and timed – what is our target group (segment) and when will we reach them? Is there a right time and place for such a campaign?
4) Preparing the creative strategy – what and how will be communicated to the customer segment
- Creative strategy is determined from the brand positioning (i.e. what our brand represents and how it differs in comparison with competition)
- It is important to keep in mind that the customer “does not buy the drill but a hole in their wall” – why do customers really need our product or service?
- Should we communicate through rational mind or emotions?
- Will we use a brand ambassador? (This is usually a person generally recognised by our target group and is able to influence their perception of our brand or product. Typically this person is a famous artist or an athlete, but it is possible to find a person who is recognised just by our specifically defined segment).
- Will the communication be personal or impersonal?
- Personal – helps to get immediate feedback, uses also non-verbal communication, can support (or destroy) credibility of our brand
- Impersonal – reaches high amount of people in a short time span, has relatively lower variable costs, we cannot control the effect of mass communication (we can only plan and estimate it ahead)
- How will we finance the campaigns? Do we have a fix budget? Or will the amount of money for marketing be determined by % of revenue? Or do we need to invest the same or similar money as our competitors?
- When thinking about the delivery of our message it is recommended to use the AIDA scheme; this means getting / creating ATTENTION -> INTEREST -> DESIRE -> ACTION
5) Choosing the proper tools
-
- Advertising
- A form of paid impersonal (mass) communication.
- Print advertising – paid presence in newspapers and magazines that are being consumed by our marketing segment. In newspapers, this type of advertising is suitable to sell simple products without precise targeting (think about FMCG goods) or events related to the particular region (concerts, sports competitions, farmer markets, etc.). Magazines, on the other hand, offer precise targeting of the customer segment and lot of times one can find titles that specialize in a specific niche (fashion, sports, fishing, cars, etc.)
- Online advertising
- Big advantage of online advertising is its variable cost and investment can be adjusted according to the current situation.
- Focused on performance
- PPC advertisements in search engines, on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube
- These advertisements usually have text or graphical form
- Advertisements are paid for 1 click
- Advertisements placed within search engines usually have higher conversion rate because the customers are in advanced stage of the purchase life cycle (they are searching for that particular product). This type of advertising expects the customers to know our product or service already (they should be aware it exists). Therefore we talk about “pull marketing”. People who search for certain products are also likely to make a purchase as they already show interest. Search engine advertising is suitable for all products and services that are already existent in the market and the customers are able to type in the search query, e.g. “cheap restaurant in Prague”, “go-pro camera with accessories”.
- Affiliate marketing can be also employed to increase sales performance– in this case the company’s affiliate partners are getting a commission according to the amount of sales they brought. Affiliate marketing is highly efficient on websites that are based around certain topic (cooking, fashion, sports) and therefore aggregate audience that has high affinity to the advertisements related to that particular topic. However, network of affiliate partners takes time to build and for this reason affiliate marketing should be considered only if we expect our company to be operating for years.
- Focused on brand building
- PPC advertisements in form of graphical banners on variety of websites
- Usually for this purpose Google AdWords and its display network can be used, but there are also other networks and some countries have even local ones; also on Facebook and Instagram
- Advertisements can be bought for 1 click (CPC, cost per click) or 1 000 impressions (CPM, cost per mile)
- Advertising is suitable for those products and services which are not known by the customer segments or for those products that need to be reminded to the customers.
- Facebook advertising can be targeted by demographics and interests of people who use this social network – therefore one can use this channel to market exclusive sunglasses from the latest collection to people from cities with population above 100 000 inhabitants who also like fashion. With this precise targeting we increase probability of getting a purchase when advertising on Facebook.
- On average the costs of 1 sale (= 1 conversion) should not be higher than the margin that we have on such a glasses. This means that if we have 100 EUR revenue on such a sunglasses and we need 10 clicks on average to get 1 sale we can affords to pay 10 EUR per 1 click at most. The lower the cost per one click the higher the revenue for the advertiser.
- It is also vital to have a set of several advertisements (including copywriting and photos / visuals) ready to test and have only the best performing advertisements running.
-
- Public relations
- In general the term Public relations (PR) means how we present our company or products without directly paying for it.
- Typically journalists are willing to write for free if a start-up has an interesting story behind them or comes with an interesting product or service.
- Press release is a very simple way to get attention – in case of indroduction of a new product / service, send your press release to journalists / bloggers and they might pick up your information and write an article about it; this is also a good way to get backlinks (see Inbound marketing)
- Attendance at public events and conferences – by providing your knowledge / expertise / experience you can get use of the public events to increase your brand awareness
- Social Media - communication with general public can be also managed e.g. via Facebook page where a company actively communicates with its customers.
- Exhibitions and hosting parties – if you have budget for these activities you can invest finances into hosting a nice evening party, where journalists can be invited; it is also vital to prepare a press kit for them (i.e. a package with small gifts and information about your company)
- In case of crisis (e.g. our product caused some harm) it is necessary for a company to react to that situation accordingly to prevent negative association to a brand. Think about how Enron or BP (British Petroleum) lied about not having problems only to have this backfire and damage their public image.
- Donations and charity can be also used to improve company’s public image
- Sales promotion
- Its aim is to support sales.
- Usually is used in combination with advertising.
- Usually sales promotion includes
- Discounts – e.g. flat 50 % off, seasonal discounts, bulk discounts
- Purchase of 1 item and getting 1 item for free, so called 1+1
- Competitions
- Coupons
- Product samples
- Point of sale displays
-
- Direct marketing
- A form of communication that addresses members of the target group individually via e-mail, postal service and sometimes in person
- Start-ups can make use of e-mailing to increase sales and also to build relationship with customers
- It is vital to serve useful information to our target group without obvious commercial intent (the e-mails can be educational, entertaining, etc.) – e.g. marketing agencies can provide news within that industry, fitness instructors can provide their opinions on certain workouts etc.
- E-mail addresses should be collected through so called opt-in forms to prevent spamming users (by opting in they give us a permission to send them our messages)
- It is possible to encourage willingness to opt-in by providing so called “lead magnet” – an e-book, brochure or a video, which can be accessed only after providing an e-mail address – e.g. a real estate agent can provide a brochure with tips on how to buy a flat.
- Personal sales
- In comparison to other communication tools personal sales can be realised without any budget by entrepreneurs themselves
- The goal of this tool is to close the sale in person which demands some preparation time
- To start with personal sales, it is necessary to prepare a collection of leads. Leads can be found on the internet in company listings or through network of one’s acquaintances.
- A lead is a contact (a phone number, e-mail address) with a probability to arrange a sales meeting
- During business meeting the sales person should rather ask the customer with an aim to discover what they need or what problem they try to solve and provide them with solution in form of a product or a service.
- The interaction should be win-win, which means that the sales person should not be too pushy.
- Every sales meeting should have clearly defined outcome (closing the deal or not) and arranged following steps to prevent “radio silence” after the deal is closed.
- It is usually cheaper to sell again to a customer that already purchased from us than to try to sell something to a new customer, because trust within the business relationship is already established.
- Personal sales is usually good for B2B products that require complicated decision making process and also have high margin (think about software licences, equipment for restaurants, office supplies in bulk)
6) Inbound marketing
- Inbound marketing does not belong in the traditional tools of marketing communication as stated above, but is essential to consider especially for start-ups because the costs are typically very low.
- This type of marketing is very suitable if we have a difficult product or a service (e.g. an application that serves other businesses, B2B service). Since the product is of complicated nature, it is essential to explain how it works and how the customer can benefit from such a product using tools as listed below. They can help to demonstrate the added value of our product to the customer segments.
- Inbound marketing exploits “free” sources of traffic
- Internet discussions
- Comments (on blogs, YouTube, Facebook)
- Webinars, podcasts
- Replying on question and answers (Q+A) websites
- Document sharing
- Production of Infographics
7) Measuring the Return on Investment
- Did the campaign reach the goals we set-up in the beginning?
- We can have a look on the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to determine that.
- Number of sales
- Amount of sales
- Number of visitors to a website
- Number of impressions of an advertisement
- Reach of a Facebook ad or a YouTube video
- Number of comments from our customers
- Amount of participants in our competition
- What can we take as an investment?
- Credit for a PPC campaign
- Creation of campaign’s idea and concept
- Technical resources (website coding, e-mailing tool)
- Salary for the salesmen
- ROI can be calculated as ROI = (Return - Investment) / Investment x 100
- The higher the number the better
- Campaigns can have negative ROI – e.g. building a brand in early stage
- For online businesses it is vital to measure their ROI in Google Analytics
- We talk about „conversion“
- Conversion can be represented by a purchase, filling in a form or other desired action
- We can calculate how much money we had to invest in order to reach that one particular conversion
|
+ 34 951 16 49 00
