Communicating and Promoting the Right Way!!

Imagine this.. You’re hungry and have two restaurants to choose from. One of them looks chic and classy while the other one looks decrepit and almost ready to bite the dust with the next gust of wind. Which restaurant do you think you’ll go to?

This part of marketing is called communication. It could be planned or unplanned. Everything from the architecture of a building to the work atmosphere at a company communicates with a prospect client. Companies need to be wary of what messages are received by its audience in order to create a lasting impression.

Different from Communication is the concept of promotion, where the marketers make an effort to make their product known. Using different mediums like signboards, advertisements, print media and what not. Promotion is a very important skill and needs to be understood well in order for it to be useful. Companies often end up spending more money promoting the product than creating it. Companies use sales promotion and even celebrities to attract attention.

Companies may use the above mentioned techniques but they need to make sure what would create a lasting impression. Customers today are so overwhelmed by all the information about various products that they don’t have time to read all. They end up throwing the pamphlets in the bin without even reading. All unread mails about different offerings are simply sent to the trash folder. The excess of information has given rise to a situation where it has become almost impossible to get the customer’s attention.

Because of the above mentioned reasons, marketers need to spend time studying how people in their segment allocate their attention time. Marketers may use different strategies to draw attention like shocking stories, free offers and various other methods, but still the question of effectiveness remains. It is one thing to draw attention, but another to make people buy your product. Promotion thus should target not on how to get the attention, but on how to make people buy products!!

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Utility Marketing: Usefulness Creates Connections

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Utility marketing certainly isn’t a new idea. In fact, André Michelin launched the first Michelin Guide in 1900, less then 10 years after the inflatable tire was patented. What began as a simple marketing ploy to get Parisians driving more (thus buying more Michelin tires) has grown into a global business, spanning more than a century.

But in the last couple of years branded utility has truly come of age. More and more, we see brands providing useful tools and services to forge connections with consumers. Additionally, the penetration of web enabled devices and the massive popularity of iPhone apps are playing substantial role in this new maturation – elegantly illustrating how branded utility can foster an ongoing relationship with people.

By providing frequent, helpful interactions with consumers, these applications can quickly become a meaningful part of their daily lives. This regular contact can be a supremely potent way to establish trust and build brand loyalty.

The mindshare these often small, simple utilities garner can offer a tremendous return on investment. This is not lost on deft marketers with increasingly tight budgets.

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Marketing Your Business from the Loo

Ya that's right, this post is about Washroom Marketing.

As the name suggests, it’s advertising in the washroom, literally. Something like putting the advertisement and pamphlet about a product in the loo. This is a place our eyes can never miss.
9 out of 10 times its gender specific, and when you are in the loo, you might as well read it. Most of us have taken newspapers to the loo, which infact is filled with ads. There have been questions about the privacy issues in the washroom, but I can’t figure out how privacy comes into picture here. There is no camera there in the washroom, unless and until the advertisement is hiding a cam under it. I don’t think just placing something for you to read there doesn’t lead to invasion of privacy.

Admedia's Gowen stresses that the advertising has to be appropriate for the venue, not the immediate context of the washroom itself. He cites the Lucozade campaign, and recent work with T-Mobile that targeted washrooms in clubs and bars. "The washroom panels aimed to target young adults when they were out socializing and in a venue when they were likely to be with their friends and texting.

"We would never say that washrooms would not be right for a brand. I don't think there's anything special about them—people don't see them as an inappropriate environment."

If you are one of the few for whom privacy is important, then prepare for disappointment. According to IBAA's Turner, the market is picking up. "Washroom advertising is hardly new, but it is emerging as an important player. We are finally getting the national buys that the medium deserves."

So public toilets will no longer be such a safe haven. But a trip there might be more fun.

Moreover it’s a sure shot method of reaching the customer. He/she will read it without any disturbance. And ya for everyone’s information there are companies too for washroom marketing like Positive Media of UK, IN YOUR FACE media corp.Cintas Corp. and many more.

When it comes to marketing it really does pay to think outside the box. I'm telling you, the marketing communication world is getting weirder by the day…

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Direct Marketing vs Mass Marketing

IT can be argued that much consumer dissatisfaction with marketing strategies arises from an inability to aim advertising at onlythe likely buyers of a given product.

The marketing process affects three different groups of consumers. First, there is the "Segment" i.e. people who need the commodity in question. Second, the "Target" i.e people in the market segment with "the best fit", characteristics for a specific product. Lots of people want to buy shirts, but only a few qualify as buyers of expensive designer shirts. Third is the "audience" all people who are actually exposed to marketing without regard to whether they need the product or not.

The three afore mentioned groups are rarely identical. The only exception being cases where customers for a particular industrial product may be few and easily identifiable. Such customers all share a particular need and in these cases "Direct Marketing" is like to be economically justifiable. Direct Selling/Marketing caters to only the limited target audience.

Most consumer goods markets are significantly different. Typically there are many rather than few potential customers. Each represents a relatively small percentage of potential sales.

Unfortunately, there are few media that allow the marketer to direct a marketing program exclusively to the "Target". Inevitably, people get exposed to a great deal of marketing for products in which they have no interest and so they get annoyed.

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