ADVICE: In addition to referrals, make sure your marketing program attracts inquiries directly from prospects. This allows you to manage your marketing program, rather than relying on third parties over which you have little or no control.

MISTAKE #2: Depending on media exposure. Without question, articles in the print media and inter-views on radio and television can help you attract new clients. But many lawyers rely on publicity as their entire marketing program. True, exposure can increase your credibility. But, often, exposure by itself isn’t enough. Lawyers routinely report, “We were very happy with the number of articles about our firm, but we didn’t get a single new client!” In addition to exposure, you need to interact with prospects.

ADVICE: Make sure your marketing program brings about interactions between you and your prospects, such as over the telephone or in person. Interaction is a critical step in the marketing process — and the step most law marketing programs overlook.

MISTAKE #3: Relying on networking groups as a primary source of new business. Networking is a time-consuming exercise in meeting prospects and cultivating referrals. And while networking may bear fruit, lawyers often underestimate the time required.

ADVICE: Pursue opportunities to meet and talk with genuine prospects, but don’t put networking above other marketing strategies.

MISTAKE #4: Competing on low price. When you lower your fee to attract new clients, (1) you undermine your credibility because clients conclude your services were not worth what they previously paid, (2) you attract clients who will leave you when competing lawyers offer fees lower than yours, (Clients who are loyal to the dollar are never loyal to you!) and (3) you’ll probably lose money because the cost of attracting a volume of new clients is often greater than the profit you can earn from those clients.

ADVICE: Instead of competing on price, compete on value. You’re better off being the most expensive lawyer in town and having prospects appreciate your knowledge than being the cheapest lawyer and having prospects question your skill.

MISTAKE #5: Delivering an incomplete marketing message. Many lawyers believe common marketing methods don’t work because those lawyers didn’t get the results they wanted. But usually the problem isn’t the marketing method, it’s the message. If your message lacks even one essential element, your efforts could fail.

An estate planning lawyer delivered a seminar to 84 prospective clients, yet no one came into his office for a free consultation. After I reviewed his presentation, we added less than five minutes of information to his program. At his next seminar, 10 of the 11 couples in attendance requested appointments.

ADVICE: Before you implement your marketing program, make sure you create a complete, competent marketing message. Without a powerful message, your marketing program is doomed.

MISTAKE #6: Not effectively reaching your target audience. A tax attorney who represents doctors before the IRS advertised his services in a weekly shopper newspaper distributed free to homes. Not surprisingly, he was disappointed with the response. Before running the ad, the lawyer could have saved his $2000 investment had he asked himself, “Will doctors look for a tax attorney in a free weekly newspaper?” I don’t know about doctors, but that’s certainly not where I would look.

ADVICE: Choose different methods that you believe will reach your prospects. Then test each method on a small scale before you invest serious dollars. This way you’ll know which method most effectively reaches your target audience and how well it attracts the clients you want.

MISTAKE #7: Making decisions by committee. The quality of a marketing decision is based on how long it takes to make the decision and how much the decision has been watered down by compromise. One person working alone has the potential to make good decisions. When two people work together things begin to bog down. And if you’re waiting for three people to agree — well, don’t hold your breath. Marketing is like football. Can you imagine how long it would take if the entire team offered their ideas and everyone had to agree before they could make the next play?

ADVICE: Choose one quarterback to direct your program. If you don’t get the results you want, change strategies or change quarterbacks. But don’t compound your quarterback’s problems by bringing in more people to help make decisions.

MISTAKE #8: Not taking the leadership position in your market. When prospects perceive you as the leader in your field, you have a substantial advantage over other lawyers. Yet, many marketing programs aren’t designed to seize this powerful, profitable position.

ADVICE: Look at your position in the marketplace. From your prospects’ point of view, is any lawyer clearly the leader in that category? If not, design your marketing program so you take control of your niche. If that niche is already dominated by other lawyers, create a new category for yourself. Then promote the category so prospects see you as first in that new area. One of my clients created a new category and successfully dominated his niche for five and one-half years, when he decided to pursue another area of law. You gain an extraordinary advantage when prospects perceive you as the leader.

MISTAKE #9: Not delivering your marketing message until prospects come into your office. Lawyers usually have no problem persuading prospects to hire their services once the prospect is in their office. But getting prospects through the door is another matter.

ADVICE: Develop materials you can send to prospective clients. Then create a marketing program that uses the print and broadcast media to attract inquiries from prospects who ask to receive your information. When prospects call your office, you respond by mailing your packet and adding their names to your mailing list. This allows you to put your marketing message into their hands regardless of their location, rather than waiting for them to come to your office. If your materials are powerful and persuasive, you’ll find that prospects call you and request appointments.

One of my lawyer clients received 426 calls from prospects after offering his materials on a radio talk show, over 500 calls after a mid-day television news interview, and another 400 calls after an article appeared in a local newspaper.

MISTAKE #10: Not marketing to your practice mailing list. Your mailing list is your own personal area of influence. It should contain the names of all your past clients, current clients, prospective clients and referral sources.

ADVICE: Make sure you mail your newsletter at least monthly. And don’t think that you must make your newsletter an 8- or 16-page treatise. A simple educational letter of even one or two pages works fine. Your newsletter’s size is not nearly as important as how often you mail it and the value of the information you present.

MISTAKE #11: Taking marketing shortcuts. Lawyers who achieve success often trim back their marketing programs hoping to save money by eliminating the bells and whistles. What they often don’t realize is that many of the so-called “bells and whistles” are not bells and whistles at all. They are the essential components that make their programs work.

An attorney hired me to refresh his marketing message, which had grown stale. When we kicked off his new program, he attracted 247 prospects to five seminars, an average of 49 people at each program. His calendar filled up almost overnight. After six months, he took his marketing in house and started cutting corners. Within 90 days, his results were as dismal as they had been before he called me.

ADVICE: When you shortcut your marketing on the front end, you slash the number of new clients on the back end. If you want to streamline your marketing and determine if any steps might not be needed, start slowly and track results. Be careful not to cut away steps responsible for your success.

MISTAKE #12: Not making marketing a priority. For most lawyers, practicing law is their highest priority. When they get busy, they often reduce their marketing efforts because they need that time to work on their clients’ behalf. They operate under the false hope that their momentum will attract new business long into the future. But when they cut their marketing efforts, they actually shift their marketing into neutral. As a result, inertia takes over and things slowly coast to a standstill.

ADVICE: Make marketing a priority for you or someone in your office. Or hire an outside consultant so you make sure the work gets done. Don’t turn your marketing on and off like a light switch. Keep your program in gear so you always attract an ongoing flow of new clients.

MISTAKE #13: Writing an intricate marketing plan that becomes impossible to carry out. Many marketing plans look like jigsaw puzzles with dozens — or even hundreds — of pieces. And while the plans might work, most lawyers and their staffs don’t have the hours needed to carry out the plans.

ADVICE: Make sure your marketing plan is built on simple steps that have proved to be effective and efficient. In my 33 years in marketing, the most profitable, efficient and effective method I’ve found is my method of Education-Based Marketing.

MISTAKE #14: Never completing — and therefore never implementing — your marketing plan. Many lawyers get so caught up in gathering facts that they never stop designing their plan. They collect data, add more steps, collect more data, revise their plan, collect more data….

ADVICE: Implement your plan at the earliest possible moment. A poor marketing plan that is up and running is far more profitable than the “perfect plan” that never gets off your hard drive.

MISTAKE #15: Delaying your marketing program until your cash flow improves. More often than not, lawyers who use this reason never start marketing because they aren’t aware that their logic is backwards: Their cash flow won’t improve until they start their marketing program.

ADVICE: Maintaining an effective marketing program is the most important investment you can make. Why pay for an office and staff if you don’t have enough business to justify the overhead? Start your marketing program now so you have an ongoing flow of new clients.

MISTAKE #16: Carrying out a marketing program that does not achieve the five essential steps for success. Your marketing program must (1) establish your credibility, (2) identify how you’re different from other lawyers, (3) generate interactions between you and your prospects, (4) gain your prospect’s commitment, and (5) maintain your client’s loyalty. Programs that don’t achieve all five steps will fail.

ADVICE: Any time you evaluate a marketing opportunity, consider how well that method will accomplish these steps.

MISTAKE #17: Promoting your services. When you promote your services, you take on the role of a salesperson hawking his wares. This method, called selling-based marketing, undermines your credibility and causes prospects to question whether they can trust you.

ADVICE: Instead of promoting your services, promote your knowledge by educating prospects. Education-Based Marketing gives prospects what they want, information and advice, and removes what they don’t want, a sales pitch. It attracts prospects who come to you because of your knowledge, skill, judgment and experience.

Trey Ryder specializes in Education-Based Marketing For Lawyers. The American Marketing Association featured his Ryder Method of Education-Based Marketing on the front page of its national publication, Marketing News. He offers lawyers three free articles by e-mail: 17 Fatal Marketing Mistakes Lawyers Make, 7 Secrets of Dignified Marketing for Lawyers, and 11 Brochure Mistakes Lawyers Make. To receive these articles, send your name and e-mail address to trey@treyryder.com and ask for his free e-mail packet of articles. Also, you’re invited to visit his Lawyer Marketing Advisor at http://www.treyryder.com.

1. Know what you need.

Marketing’s main job is to feed the sales force with nice, warm leads. Step one towards better marketing is to understand how much and what kind of food they need.

The “how much” is easily answered using basic math. Start with your sales goals and work backward. You’ll need to answer the following questions:

* What is our annual new business revenue goal?
* How many new customers does this represent?
* What percentage of qualified opportunities do we actually close?
* What percentage of leads actually become qualified opportunities?

Using this information, you can determine how many new inquiries your marketing must generate in order for the sales team to meet their goals. For example, let’s say your annual new business revenue goal is $10M; your average deal size is $100,000; your sales people generally close 50% of the qualified opportunities presented to them; and 5% of your inquiries become qualified opportunities. A quick run around the calculator tells us that your marketing efforts need to generate 4000 leads for the sales team.

With this information in hand, marketing planning becomes much more focused. Every activity in the plan should in some way contribute to generating inquiries and developing leads. If you can’t trace a program or activity to this result, don’t spend the money.

2. Match your marketing process to the buying process.

Unless you are selling an impulse item, the decision to purchase your product or service is based on a series of small decisions. Marketing helps to facilitate, and hopefully accelerate, the decision process by making the right information available to the prospect at the right time and from the right source.

It is critical to understand the entire process your customers go through while deciding to buy your product or service. Typically companies have a good understanding of what goes on after an opportunity has been identified, but few spend the time to understand the front end of the process.

A typical buying process could go something like this. The prospect:

a) Becomes aware that he or she has a need
b) Identifies options – often a list of vendors that offer a solution
c) Researches the various solutions
d) Creates a “long list” and issues an RFP
e) Creates a “shortlist”
f) Invites vendors for demos
g) Checks references
h) Negotiates
i) Purchases

Information needs are different at each point in the process. A successful marketing program matches these needs. It allows the company to create awareness among the target prospects by engaging them in a flow of communication that helps navigate their way through the buying process. A marketing program that fails to meet the buyer’s needs at each step of the process won’t deliver as many qualified leads.

3. Get your sales and marketing people on the same page

It is truly astonishing how many companies suffer from a fundamental disconnection between sales and marketing. Here’s a sure sign that your company has that problem. Ask the question “which marketing programs result in revenue?” You’ll likely hear marketing people complain that the sales team doesn’t follow up on leads and won’t track them. And, you’ll hear sales people say that marketing’s leads are worthless. You can’t get an answer because no one knows.

Disconnected sales and marketing efforts result in burned leads, wasted efforts, lengthy sales cycles, and low revenue. It is well worth the effort to develop a cross-functional team.

One of the easiest and most effective places to start with is to develop a common definition of the word “lead”. If you gathered your sales and marketing teams together and ask everyone for their definition, you’ll likely find the sales team has a very different view than your marketing team. (Don’t be surprised if you get different answers within the sales and marketing staffs as well.) Now work together to establish a common definition. Use this definition to guide marketing in developing leads before handing them off to sales.

These steps are a good start toward making your marketing initiatives more effective. Of course, there is much more you can do to tighten the process so that your efforts produce greater results; but by taking these three steps you’ll be well on your way.

© Tatum Marketing 2007

Susan Pascal Tatum, co-founder and president of Tatum Marketing, is a recognized expert in business-to-business internet marketing [http://tatummarketing.com/services/]. She helps software, information technology and BtoB firms achieve greater online marketing results. She is a popular author and speaker, regularly publishes internet marketing strategies and actionable tips on the site’s blog. Visit for a copy Technology Marketing 2008.

This white paper introduces the fundamentals of running marketing programs efficiently and with the highest possible ROI, using not only a creative, but also an analytical approach to direct response marketing that is impossible without marketing automation – a primary support system for any successful marketing campaign. The technology-driven process, in conjunction with a preferred-by-marketers intuitive process, will enable you to tightly interweave your marketing and sales programs and, as a result, realize a positive return from your limited marketing resources.

Nurturing customer loyalty

Your current customers can be your best future customers, as well as your best sales reps. Satisfied customers will bring you many referrals, and as you might well know, a lead that comes from a customer referral is the one that your sales team will close faster and with higher a rate of probability, because your customer already made a great deal of effort to pre-sell the referred prospects.

Growing through referrals

If you have not developed a well-managed referral program for your customers – and any other partners that want do get into business with you and become a free agent that is paid commissions for referrals – you are losing a great opportunity for organic growth.

Consider this example:

Company ABC is a B2B service company with about 500 current customers, and the average annual sales per customer is $20,000, which generates $10,000,000 in annual sales.
Your annual advertising budget is 1% of the revenue ($100,000). As we all know, the majority of it is usually spent on campaigns that bring modest results, in the hope of discovering winning advertising venues – which become even harder with competition trying to get over the hump in this economical downturn.

Your company has been growing at a 10% rate annually, slowly but surely, but now the growth starts declining, and it is forecasted to be down 5% this year, with the same marketing expenditure (and even more hassling that your marketing and sales team has to get through).

Now imagine that you decided to monetize the connections of your customers. You can ask for a favor and a few will return. But you don’t want random single referrals – you want to get bombarded with pre-sold prospects who will take less than average time to close. Wouldn’t that be a marketing and sales paradise?

Welcome to paradise

Let’s imagine that you designed a customer referral program and offered a 10% commission to be paid as a result of each referral that converted into a paid customer.

Let’s assume that 50% of your customers signed up for your referral program, but only 50% of those customers actually refer paying prospects on a regular basis – that brings you 125 new sales a month.

Now do the math:

500 customers x 50% x50% = 125 customer referrals per month
125 referrals/month x 12 months x $20,000 per sale = $30,000,000/yr
$30M – 10% commission = $27M in new business

As you can see, your next year’s revenue will be $37,000,000 instead of $10,000,000, and your company growth rate now is 370% versus the forecasted -5%.

Developing the strategy and the process management system

You liked the math, and now you are ready to jump in and get it done, right?

Do you have a system to manage hundreds of referral partners? You probably don’t have the tools in place for a successful execution of the program. Are you planning to do it intuitively and manually?

Unless you have a proper structure, along with the necessary processes and technology to measure your success, you cannot execute your partnership programs properly.

That’s why you need to automate your marketing processes, and ideally you need to hire a marketing company that will design, automate, and market the program for you – and charge affordable rates.

Costs of marketing automation and campaign execution

How much do you think it would cost you to invest in a program that brings you millions of dollars of additional sales? Would $100,000 be the right number? Maybe, but it drastically exceeds the limits of
your existing marketing budget.

But the good news is that right now a direct response marketing company with established processes, a proven framework, and the right automation tools can get it all done for you in few weeks – for $10,000, or less.

Integrated marketing versus task-based marketing

Prior to using our solutions, for many of our clients, “marketing” was a series of isolated tasks – but from a sales point of view, selling is a coherent process. Task-based marketing can often fail because, at its core, it doesn’t help to commence a dialogue that a salesperson can bring to closure.

Test before investing

With the proper tools in place, now you can conduct formal tests of each marketing idea, collateral piece, and message to get the best performing tactics. No tests should be done manually because the necessary sampling size is prohibitively large.

The numbers game

Without proper metrics, marketers that rely blindly on an intuitive approach don’t have the tools to measure their success, and duplicate it in other programs.

Creativity and analysis have to go hand in hand. But proper analysis of a number of variables cannot be done manually. Tracking systems for both success and failure, and easy tools to analyze the elements that affected the result, have to be integrated and reflect the company’s objectives. Therefore few out-of-the box software packages for different purposes (such as campaign management, affiliate scripts, Google Adwords integration, and others) might not necessarily be the best solution for your company because it will require quite a bit of integration effort and maintenance resources.

A credible marketing service provider will not only be able to consult with you on the most suitable solution, but also implement it and run the campaigns on your behalf, during the learning phase while your marketing team is getting familiarized with the program.

The benefits of overall marketing automation

Through the use of a database, marketing automation enables you to learn – in depth – about your prospects’ and partners’ behavior, along with the decision making process and variables that influence it. It allows you to automate communication processes and maintain relationships electronically.

The results:
Better-organized sales and marketing processes.
Superior customer retention.
A consolidated view of your customer and lead base.
Better lead qualification and retention.
Higher return on sales force and customer support technology investment.
Higher marketing ROI.
Better tracking capability.
A better platform for making marketing and sales decisions.

Which translates to:
Reduced operational costs.
Reduced marketing expenditure.
Increased revenue.

Marketing automation doesn’t just link marketing with sales – it helps marketing drive sales.

What you can achieve with the right marketing automation technology

SalesAnual will help you to improve your response rates and boost the revenues from your marketing efforts. We offer you the ability to easily manage sophisticated, timely, personalized customer communication strategies. Built specifically to meet the needs of key members of the marketing process, our product will provide comprehensive data management, campaign management, and advanced customer analytics in one integrated, easy-to-use solution.

Marketing campaign management

Marketing campaign management is easy with with our product. Through a single application, you can effectively plan your marketing spend, manage all your initiatives and campaigns, and analyze performance and results.

Market segmentation

Our product helps you create targeted campaigns by segmenting your audience based on attributes such as demographics or product interest, and then send specific messages and offers for each group. You will have the ability to easily add contacts and leads to lists right from within campaigns.

Campaign analysis

Our system is designed to simplify ABC (split) testing. You can track, analyze, and optimize multiple campaigns such as on-line marketing and telemarketing. It will also allow you to analyze and optimize other campaigns such as trade shows, direct mail, advertising, and promotions, so that all marketing efforts are focused on the most effective campaigns.

Campaign testing

ABC tests are typically conducted to determine which version or elements of advertising materials are helping the performance of the campaign. ABC tests dramatically challenge the assumptions that marketers and company executives may have about the best way to design a campaign or collateral piece. The automated functionality also enables you to solve conflicts between marketing and management.

While ABC testing typically applies to on-line adverting, we can build your system around a repetitive test process for all media, so it enables you to test Web pages, advertising copy, telemarketing scripts, e-mail messages, newsletter content and layout, and so on.

Testing yields the most valuable results only when the tests are conducted repeatedly; therefore efficient ABC testing is impossible without full automation of the test process. This is a key advantage of the SalesAnnual system.

Our software can create an “ABC test winners” table where all of the best advertising items will be stored. Each record provides statistics, upon which every new marketing effort in the same category will be measured.

Revenue tracking

Our product will help you identify the marketing activities that generate the most sales revenue by directly tying every sales dollar back to its campaign source. Campaign managers can analyze detailed analytics to track revenue, and measure campaign success.

Express follow-ups

Our product helps you to easily determine which prospects require follow-up contact after a campaign, and define the appropriate actions.

List management

You can import and export campaign lists in multiple data formats from and to various marketing vendors. With SalesAnnual List Management, you can also create targeted, effective marketing campaigns with list management tools for segmenting, exporting, and analyzing lead lists.

List creation

This module enables you to create customer or prospect lists by selecting any combination of contact and customer information.

Data exporting

This module helps you to easily export your lists to outside suppliers and manage the results with SalesAnnual’s campaign management features.

Data importing

The module allows you to quickly import sales leads from offline sources such as trade shows, seminars, and direct mail; matching group and campaign; eliminating manual data entry.
It also enables you to import leads provided in bulk by a specific referral partner as a result of a specific campaign. You can also map and segment any information you need to manage.

Detailed reporting

This module allows you to analyze lists and contacts to identify trends, and to optimize marketing campaigns.

Lead management

This module allows you to track incoming prospect inquiries that respond to particular campaigns, and automatically route qualified leads to the right people, enabling sales reps to get instant access to the latest prospects – and business opportunities are never lost.

Online lead capture

This module allows you to automate lead generation by capturing leads from your customers’ website, directly into our system, and automatically send a personalized response based on information supplied by the customer.

Lead search and merge

This module ensures that reps can easily identify prior interactions with a lead before following up. You can easily merge leads, contacts, and accounts – and remove duplicates – for efficient lead management.

Lead tracking

This module monitors leads end-to-end – from creation to conversion – with capabilities that include automatic date/time stamping, campaign or lead source tracking (vendor, campaign, and partner), lead status changes, and lead activity management.

Channel partner program management

With our system you can easily manage various channel partner categories such as affiliates, referral partners, and resellers – and create efficient, automated relationships with them.

Affiliate program management

Our affiliate program management functionality is designed to manage your channel partners who mostly operate on the Web, and therefore the tracking system reflects the way traffic is sent to you website. Affiliates typically use your on-line marketing tools, such as text links, ad banners, video clips, podcasts, webcasts, as well as text documents such as articles, press-releases, white papers, and case studies.

Referral program management

Our referral program management functionality is designed to manage your channel partners that deliver leads in a less organized manner – in a verbal or written form for example.

Reseller program management

Our reseller program management functionality is designed to manage your Value Added Resellers (VARs), that engage in the sales and marketing of your product. Typically they bundle your product and services with those of their own company, and market to their existing client base.

Channel partner compensation management

Our lead tracking and payment management solution gives you an extensive reporting system that will put you at ease, because your team – and your partners – can always access the latest data about their account and lead performance.

Contract management

Our system allows you to store the contracts signed with each partner and see the compensation due to each partner. The numbers are presented in % and $ value accordingly the agreement with a particular partner, as well as revenue generated to date since the partner signed up.

Reporting

Our flexible reporting solution gives you the ability to choose a report template or to customize reports according to your partners’ needs. The status of leads is reported as qualified, unqualified, dead, and so on, and you can easily send reports to your partners on a regular schedule.

Security controls

Our security controls and permissions capability allows your partners to access the sales leads in their own territories, or those provided by them. You can also manually share specific sales leads with any user you choose.

Automatic lead routing

Our product makes lead management easy by setting up queues and assignment rules to automatically route qualified leads to the right distributor (sales organization that is located in a country where a company has no inside sales capabilities) based on customized business rules, and track the status of every lead in your partner marketing channel. Your referral partners will get instant access to the latest prospects, and leads are never dropped or lost.

Email prospecting and tracking

Our system empowers your resellers and referral partners to send personalized, template-based, e-mail messages to prospects in large numbers, and to easily track all responses from one centralized lead management system.

Lead acceptance

Our system enables comprehensive tracking and accountability so you always know your lead status, in real time.

Targeted messages

Our system allows you to create specific messages and publish them to each individual channel partner.

Document management system

Our system provides a central repository of all the documents and communications your channel partners will need to support their sales and marketing efforts. Your partners will have continuous access to all of your up-to-date documents (product brochures, presentations, and support documents) from anywhere in the world, so they can respond to customer information requests quickly and easily.

Search

Our comprehensive search capability allows your partners to quickly find relevant information, view documents, and even send them as attachments to their prospects, directly from the search results.

Secure records management

Our security rules and custom folders allow managers to organize documents and communications based on partner type, department, or any other criteria with limited access for the intended viewer only. Document management is secure and customized.

Second-tier referral program

Our system enables you to track not only every sale from each of your 1st-tier partners, but also each sale made by the partners that were acquired through your first-tier affiliates or referral partners.
Compensation is calculated according to your agreements.

Co-marketing program management

Our system enables your partners to submit marketing requests for co-marketing programs, if you choose. Requests are automatically compared and deducted from the partner budget. You can manage partner claims for funds requests by analyzing each claim compared to the allocated budget for each partner. Claims can be documented with a proof of performance.
For all financial and non-financial transactions, partners submit claims with proof of performance. Documents and uploaded materials are integrated with the marketing programs.

Special promotion for partners

With our system, you can make your partner Web portal “stickier” and increase partner adoption, by creating and communicating rebates and promotions for the partners. We provide rebate guidelines and best practices to help channel managers design and launch winning programs.
Your partners will have the ability to submit special pricing requests for the competitive deals on which they are working.

Search marketing management

Our system enables you to gain complete visibility and control over your search engine marketing campaigns-from keyword selection to closed deal. It allows you to put your marketing dollars to work with keywords that deliver the best results. You will can see exactly which leads were generated by each search engine marketing program.

Email marketing management

Our product has feature-rich functionality that helps you use a wide range of professionally designed templates for e-mailers and newsletters. One of our unique features gives you an easy way of creating landing page templates that match customized e-mail template and content.

Email tracking

Our system makes it easy to evaluate the success of e-mail campaigns with integrated response tracking and easy monitoring of key campaign metrics. You can easily identify which e-mail campaign generates the most:

Open emails (what recipients, when, how many times)
Bouncebacks
Click throughs
Leads
Closed deals
Unsubscribes

Our system gives you the ability to assign a specific identification to each affiliate or referral partners’ outbound email or telemarketing campaign sent via your system. Every incoming lead will be assigned to the appropriate partner and will be reported in the statistics on partners’ performance, accumulated compensation, and payment schedules.

Personalization

Key features include:
Content editing supports a high degree of reusability and easy customization – push a button to insert a variable, “IF” statement, HTML template, and more.
Personalize messages using conditional content and data.
Default to standard content (such as “Dear Customer”) when conditions are not met.
Personalize subject lines.
Embed redirect URLs and attachments into e-mail messages.
Integrate with your favorite content editor, easily.
Flexible opt-in/opt-out support.
Viral marketing support – track and understand the value of customers who forward your messages, extending the return of those communications.
Rich re-marketing and wave campaign support via easy-to-create follow-up communications based on an individual’s response or lack of response.
CAN-SPAM compliant.

New dashboards and reporting functionality

With our new dashboard and customizable reporting functionality you will have instant access to the real-time data and analysis you need to run your business. Dashboards pull it all together, providing instant access to a consolidated, real-time view of your sales data.

Real-time dashboards

Dashboards give you an at-a-glance overview of the current status of your business, with benchmarks and critical metrics from sales, marketing, service, and more. One-click data refreshment ensures that your marketers are always working with the most up-to-date information.

Custom report formulas and highlighting
Multiple mathematical formulas are preprogrammed into the system to aggregate and perform calculations on raw data within the system. You no longer need to export your data to spreadsheets for detailed calculations.

Outbound sales campaign management

The module makes it easy for your telemarketers to create and test telemarketing scripts, as well as ABC test e-mail follow-ups that are automatically sent to the leads generated by each outbound sales campaign.

By default, unless customized, our system automatically sends three follow-ups to “non-responding” leads after which the system can automatically move them to the Dead category, which eliminates manual work.

Media buying and production management

We deliver a fast, powerful, and complete system that includes media buying, production, and result tracking, all designed with direct marketers in mind. Our system provides quick and easy access to information, and lets you track each campaign down to its tiniest details, because marketers and users need all the answers:

Which spots ads are profitable?
Which media is the most profitable?
Which creative is the best suitable for each particular media?
Which URL works best?
Which days of the week, month, and parts of the day work better for each media?
What is the cost per order for each media?
What is the cost per inquiry for each media?
What is the cost per lead for each media?
What is the ROI for each media?
Which call centers are the most effective?

Our system keeps everyone in sync and up-to-date because direct marketing is a complex process involving media buyers, scriptwriters, copywriters, designers, producers, call centers, accounting,
budgets… as well as innumerable sign-offs by clients and management.

Media buying

Print ads in newspapers, 30-second spots on prime-time television, banner ads on websites – each can be considered a media buy. Managing your media is easy with our fully automated system.

Features:
Short-form.
Long-form.
Spot and network buys.
Direct mail.
E-mail.
Inserts and circulars.
Display advertisements.
Cable and broadcast.

Production management

Our system helps you traffic and manage jobs, work orders, and schedules.

Note: Please note, some functionality is not available with the basic package and is only sold to clients that order 50+ seats, or is included as part of customization consulting. Please specify your requirements and we will provide you with a quick quote.

Conclusion

In the new state of the economy, your motto as a marketer should be “efficient marketing made simple with less;” at least ours is. Our programs and technologies will give your marketing department the ability to take greater ownership of leads, as well as customer and partner relationships, which keeps the cost per interaction as low as possible while guaranteeing greater marketing performance.

This means you can continually improve the effectiveness of your marketing efforts rather than potentially repeat what hasn’t worked. Marketing automation – and a well-selected marketing firm – will make your marketing programs more successful and remove discrepancies between your marketing objectives and your execution capabilities.

The result… your company generates more qualified leads at a lower cost per sale, and this helps your sales team achieve a higher closing ratio.

About SalesAnnual

SalesAnnual is the premier provider of marketing campaign development and automation programs for advertisers, marketers, and publishers, specializing in delivering high-quality leads and maximizing the results of customer acquisition.

Contact us to get started: salesannual.com/contact-us/

Adam Smith.
Business Development Manager at SalesAnnual (http://www.SalesAnnual.com), a leader in referral program design, automation and promotion. It’s a direct response marketing company that will double your sales in no time. We’ll bombard you with referrals and new sales leads and sell for you while you sleep.

One- Computer literacy to capitalize on the vast potential of e-marketing and e-commerce . In addition, mobile marketing knowledge and application are important because currently there are growing importance for these tools. Specially thorough knowledge about the online world is also important because now the market competition goes to the online world as well.

Two -Excellent presentation and communication are integral areas for a successful marketing career. Marketers are called upon to make presentations to varied audiences and stakeholders. The way they perform will bring them more leads. Further, marketers are also required to conduct media briefings as well.

Three- Taxation and legal aspects relevant to marketing are very important. Laws Related to patents, trade marks, copyrights, media and marketing communication are important to understand.

Four- Contemporary marketing has emerged with a lot of new thinking and theories that marketers must absorb and be well versed in, such as Social Marketing g, Permission Marketing, e-Marketing, Mobile Marketing and Hospitality Marketing.

Five- Marketing research and application techniques are important parts for marketers and required to be skillful in research methods and techniques. The capability to undertake research studies, evaluate research proposals and interpret research findings are vital requirement.

Six- Project management knowledge and application of concept and theories in managing marketing projects are other vital area. Many marketing activities can be thought of as a major or minor project.

Seven -Human Resource Management is important to marketers, as marketing is all about fulfilling internal and external customers’ needs and wants. Hence, the ability to manage people and get the best from the team is also essential

Eight- Financial literacy and understanding of financial implications of marketing decisions is critical. In general, marketers are not finance-savvy and make recommendations without regard for financial consequences. Marketers need to also appreciate the concept of shareholder value.Marketers also need to be capable to apply marketing knowledge across different industries

T.Ragulan
http://www.ragulan.wordpress.com

Well, I’m just enough of a skeptic to believe that many of these books were designed more to make money for their publishers and authors than to make marketing planning simple and understandable.

I spent more than 30 years working with very successful small business people who never wrote a single marketing plan. Why didn’t they need complex, 100-page marketing plans chock full of statistics, charts and graphs like the experts recommend? It’s because they knew exactly where they wanted to take their companies and how to get them there and they were universally successful.

The fact is they basically carried their product “marketing plans” around in their heads. That’s how simple marketing planning can be. In fact, if you strip marketing planning down to its most basic elements, you could just about write your plan on the back of a napkin.

Okay, that might be a bit of an oversimplification, but let’s look at the six basic things you need to know for successful marketing planning.

1. The situation. Is this a new or existing product or service? If it has competition, how is it better than the competition? Bigger? Lasts longer? Easier to use? Offers more features? Priced better? You should be able to sum up your situation in a couple of sentences. If not, maybe you don’t really understand the situation.

2. The market. How big is the market for your product or service? This can be defined in terms of total dollars, number of units sold or any other quantifiable number. The important thing is to know the size of your market because only by knowing this can you define a marketing objective. You also need to define what the market looks like — Males, age 25-45? Soccer Moms? Working mothers? Seniors? Childless couples? A market isn’t just numbers, it’s people. And it’s important to understand where they are economically, what’s important to them, and what problems you can help them solve.

3. Strategy. Now that you have defined your situation and your market, it should be easy to develop a marketing strategy. For example, if your product is footless, control top panty hose, your strategy might be to “focus sales efforts on figure-conscience women age 34-45 during the spring and summer months.”

4. Tactics. If “strategy” is what you intend to do, “tactics” is what you need to do to accomplish it. In the case of the strategy example above, the tactics might be:

- Begin sales efforts against distributors by Feb. 1

- Have products in distribution pipeline by March 1 for delivery to retailers no later than April 1.

- Begin concentrated radio advertising in 12 key markets by April 15 …and so on

5. Objective(s). You can frame your objectives any way you want but you have to assign a number and a date. It’s no enough to say, “Successfully introduce the new product by year’s end.” In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up somewhere else.” If you don’t include a number and a time, you will never know whether or not you were really successful. Write objectives like “sell 5,000 units by December 31.” Then, on January 1, you can count sales and determine how successful you were. Best case, you will find you sold 5,000 or more units and will know your marketing planning was right on. And if you didn’t meet the objective? You should be able to at least learn a lesson and do better next time.

6. Budgeting. The final thing you need to consider is how much money you can spend to meet your objective. The best way to do this is break down your budgeting by tactics. If you need to reach 100,000 women to sell 10,000 units of your product, do you have the money to do this – in terms or radio, newspaper, TV or direct mail? Do you need collateral materials such as brochures or in-store displays? How much will these things cost? Depending on your product or service, you may also have to hire a PR firm or an advertising agency. Be sure to budget for this expense.

Can you add more elements to your planning? Of course. Just go buy one of these marketing textbooks and you’ll find pages and pages of information that could be incorporated into your plan. The point here is that maybe you don’t have to make your marketing planning a huge and laborious project. Do what many of my clients have done – keep it simple, something you can just carry around in your head if that’s your style. The important things are your situation, your market, your strategy and tactics, your objective and your budget. Know these things and you’re well on your way to success.

Have you heard about HD radio technology? It makes AM sound as good as FM and FM sound almost like you were listening to a CD … and its free! To learn more about this amazing new technology, just go my Web site, http://www.hd-radio-home.com, to get all the buzz. Douglas Hanna is a retired marketing executive and the author of numerous articles on HD radio and family finances.

And the problem with episodic or promotional chiropractic marketing, marketing that’s done every now and then, that’s inconsistently done, is that it produces inconsistent results. It produces inconsistencies in cash flow, inconsistencies in new patient leads and new patients, inconsistencies in referral generation and it holds doctors back from ever achieving consistent practice growth.

Instead of episodic or promotional chiropractic marketing, the right way to grow your practice, grow it consistently and quickly, is to use a marketing SYSTEM, or always operating marketing. And a chiropractic marketing system is a system that works for you continually, that produces consistent results.

In other words, to simplify the explanation of an always operating marketing system for your practice, it’s a system that works for you 24/7. It doesn’t stop working for you. It’s a system that is working to generate new patient leads and new patients and referrals all of the time.

It’s not something that requires you to take action. It’s not something that requires your thought. It’s not something that requires a new meeting with the staff or your CA. It’s a system that continues to work for you, to consistently bring you new patient leads. So you need to take a step back and you need to ask yourself if you have an ‘always operating’ marketing system right now, or if you are doing episodic marketing.

There’s a number of tremendous benefits for you when you have a system in place that continues to get you new patient leads. When you have a system in place to acquire new patient leads, to bring new prospective patients into your office for a report of findings or whatever your conversion strategy is, the influx of new patients or new patient leads will be more consistent.

When you have a system, you’re consistently replenishing lost patients. Let’s face it. In any chiropractic practice, no matter how good you are at patient retention, at creating value and exceeding patient expectations and over delivering value, you’re going to lose patients. Some for financial reasons, others because they move, others because they don’t see the need.

You need a system in place to consistently replenish the lost patients. If you’re losing two or three new patients a month, you need a system in place to consistently replace those two or three, and add more if you’re ever going to experience growth within your practice.

Other additional benefits are that you get more predictable cash flow and continual practice growth. When you have a system that continually and consistently brings you new patient leads. When you have something that’s working for you all the time. When you know every day, seven days a week, 24/7, you’ve got a system or systems out there working for you, you’re going to experience continual growth.

Compare that to episodic chiropractic marketing or promotional marketing, and there is no continual growth. Maybe you’ll experience, in that case, new patients coming into your practice whenever you do marketing, but whenever you don’t do chiropractic marketing, you don’t experience that influx of new patients. And therefore, you don’t experience continual growth.

And when you do that, when you’re able to consistently replenish lost patients and introduce new patients into your practice on a weekly and monthly basis with a system, your cash flow becomes more predictable. You can feel comfortable knowing that you’re going to be introducing “x” number of new patients, and therefore “x” amount of dollars into your practice every week as you continue to use your marketing system.

The other thing that is so crucial is having a chiropractic marketing system that is leveraging the internet. Why? Because the fortune is in the follow-up.

When a chiropractor does a one-step marketing campaign, they are leaving a majority of new patients and cash flow on the table. The money is in the follow-up. In some cases it will take two, three, maybe even four or five steps. Now when you don’t have a system in place to do that, you’re leaving a tremendous amount of money on the table.

When you have a system, an automated system, you avoid that follow-up failure. And you’re able to actually plug holes in your episodic chiropractic marketing campaign or marketing funnel. Consistent, continual follow-up, which is part of an ‘always operating’ marketing system, plugs those holes.

And, when you have automated follow-up as something that happens all the time, continuously-for every lead that you generate, what happens is you actually force your chiropractic marketing dollars to work harder. You’re actually able to generate a larger return on your investment, because you’re actually converting more leads.

A simple way to explain it is, if an episodic chiropractic marketing campaign converts three out of ten leads into paying patients, a marketing system with consistent follow-up could legitimately convert five or six out of ten. That’s giving you a substantial addition to your return on investment.

It’s forcing your money to work harder for you. It’s forcing the chiropractic marketing that you’re doing already to produce better results for you. And frankly, this is why you need to have a marketing system with all of the key growth areas in your practice.

You need to have a marketing system that generates new leads for you. You should have a marketing system that takes care of the conversion of those leads. You should have a report of findings system, a system that you use over and over again to convert those leads into paying patients.

You should have a chiropractic marketing system to reactivate inactive patients. You should have a marketing system to follow-up with unconverted leads. You should have a chiropractic marketing system to follow up with leads in general. You should have a chiropractic marketing system to do networking, to establish networking relationships for you in your local community. And you should certainly have a marketing system to generate referrals.

Now, what do I mean by a marketing system? Well, a chiropractic marketing system is something that works consistently for you. It’s operating out there. It’s working for you continually. It’s not stop and go. It’s not episodic. It’s not promotional. It’s not based on budget. It’s not based on timing. It’s not based on an idea. It’s a system that works to continually grow your practice, attract new patient leads, convert those leads and make you more money.

So again, the way you want to go about building your practice and marketing chiropractic, is with an ‘always operating’ chiropractic marketing system.

Todd Brown, the president of MoreChiroPatients, Inc, is now giving away for FREE his popular Online Videos entitled “The Ultimate Chiropractic Patient Attraction System”. To get instant access to these videos go to: http://www.TheChiropracticDashboard.com/indexdefault2.html

Sticking to Marketing Plans

It is always easy to create a marketing plan and forget about it in the future. It is very essential that you device your marketing plan to be as practical and applicable as possible. To do this your marketing plan should be simple and comprehensible. It should outline your marketing goals and the ways by which these goals should be attained. Always remember that a successful operation is an operation that sticks to the plan so be strict when it comes to complying with your formulated plan. However, retain enough flexibility to accommodate improvements.

Market Research and Marketing Plans

Before formulating your marketing plan, good market research should be done. Research is a very important if the validity and effectiveness of marketing plans are to be assured. Take valuable information and analyze it properly.

The main issues that you should research on in formulating your marketing plan are the market, your competitors, your product, and your cost. Understanding the market means seeing your target market,s wants and needs. Once you have this data you would be able to predict your target market,s actions and take advantage of them.

Getting data regarding your would be competitors lets you see their strengths and weakness. Your competitors are your best friends (you can learn from them) as well your greatest challengers. Getting to know them will give you sufficient methods in counteracting their actions properly. This will enable you to see clearly the steps you will have to make to gain competitive advantage.

Marketing Plans: The Need for Product Knowledge

Information on your product will give you the most marketing advantage. Coupled with your knowledge of your target consumers, you can market you product to fit their needs. Marketing plans that aim to create a need for a certain product can also be formulated.

Product success also depends on its uniqueness. New ideas catch the consumers interest. Just make sure that you and your product create a good impression. A bad impression from the start will make competing for your public share harder.

Product knowledge will also give you an idea regarding the cost of your product. Remember that the cost of your product will dictate your return on investment. So it is important that you know the basics in allocating product cost. Your cost should not be solely focused in earning the highest amount possible. It should also be balanced by factors such as purchasing power of your target market and the demand for your product. The simple rules of economics never fail you in this aspect.

Successful marketing plans should be realistic and ideal at the same time. You should put the maximum amount of effort on the factors that you can control. This ensures that the time, effort and money that you invest has a substantial return and is not wasted on superficial matters. At the same time, invest a tiny portion of your resources on uncontrollable factors. Experimentation is the mother of all discoveries. Trying things that have never been tried before lets you take advantage of untapped ideas and methods. New ideas oftentimes become trailblazers for businesses.

Written by Steve Pavis In the last year Steve’s companies have generated over 1.5 million dollars worth of business using different strategies one of them been internet marketing online at http://onlinemarketingelite.com Steve is a leading expert with 25 years experience in the business sector has offices in both the United States and the UK. The most solid advice you will ever hear is “find an easy market” with little competition and research your keywords correctly, research is the key

1. Look not at what you are offering through your business
marketing efforts – look at WHO WILL BUY your
product/service. Make a picture of your ‘typical buyer’ –
who they are, their age, what they like to do, etc.

This is often known as the ‘target market prospect’, yet,
the more detailed you define this ‘target’ in your business
marketing, the better.

I’ve even gone to the point of giving this ‘target market’
person a name and put a picture up on my computer monitor
(find a ‘friendly face’ on the Internet somewhere and ‘tag’
it as your target market prospect) – get your business
marketing centered around every aspect of your target – the
more you know them, the easier it is to chat about what they
need.

2. Develop a list of your target market prospect’s likes and
dislikes as it would relate to a product/service similar to
yours. (You’ll get a ‘third party’ look at your competition,
as well as some inside looks at their business marketing
efforts.)

Consider some questions they would have, or some typical
objections to buying this similar product/service (this may
come from your previous research, or you may have to simply
do some).

One way to personalize the business marketing research of
your ‘target market prospect’ is to ‘role play’ – think
about your prospect as a good friend that you are having a
picnic with (or even a co-worker at the water cooler, etc.)
and in passing, your friend brings up that ‘similar’
product/service.

What do they say about it?

What are their questions/concerns?

Is there a ‘running joke’ about the competition’s
product/service that defines a hole in their business
marketing? (i.e., “Did you hear about the lady that used
X?”)

All these things need to be addressed, and documented.

Let your mind be creative and wander, but keep it to a time
limit – about 15-20 minutes per business marketing ‘play’
session. Think of nothing but this ‘conversation’ during
this creative (often fun) time.

It might even be helpful for you to say everything that
comes to mind out loud during these business marketing
planning sessions(as silly as that sounds, it works…) and
record it, as some of the best business marketing ideas get
overlooked when you are trying to write them down quickly.

Listening back for those ‘nuggets’ might even trigger other
‘bits of business marketing gold’ for you to work with.

3. Figure out how your product/service and business
marketing plan is similar, yet different than the
competition. Just how does your solution overcome all the
questions, concerns and yes, even ‘jokes’ from your target?

If you can’t answer these questions for yourself, how would
you expect to answer them from your prospect?

The beautiful part about this business marketing exercise is
that, if you go through it with commitment, you will already
know the answers to the prospect’s questions BEFORE they ask
them – which quickly eliminates any fears you might have
about talking with them.

4. Continue this simple exercise – every couple days for a
week or so. Giving 15-20 minutes of serious thought to your
business marketing plan and role playing every couple days
will stimulate your conscious mind, as well as keep your
unconscious mind actively thinking about it.

You’ll be surprised at the outcome of taking these steps
seriously.

But be forewarned – you will very likely have a very
different outlook about your prospect after one week of this
simple, yet extremely effective business marketing, ‘target
market’ finding tool!

You will know them as well as you know yourself, so you will
be able to talk with them about things quickly, simply and
with the best, consistent results of your business marketing
efforts.

5. Now, take a look at your product/service and business
marketing plan – through the prospect’s eyes (now that you
can clearly see through them…)

Does it fit your prospect’s needs?

Does it answer their questions and eliminate their fears?

Is it priced right for your target prospect?

Is there a market for your product/service other than your
personalized target market prospect? (This step is vital as
a ‘reality check” – and one that many business marketing
planners miss)

When you follow these five steps faithfully, you will have
credibility, knowledge and successful long-term
relationships with your customers (who used to be simply
‘target market prospects’ before you understood the power of
this business marketing tip!).

Steve Majors – To-the-point training and coaching for business and wealth creation through creative Real Estate investing. Known as “The Lazy Investor”, with courses and training sessions to slingshot your success. http://SteveMajors.com

Whilst large businesses can afford to throw large amounts of money at campaigns, and absorb the losses if their marketing doesn’t work, small businesses need a return on every pound they spend. They need some level of certainty that the money and effort they invest is going to produce good results. Otherwise, what can happen is that they keep doing what they’re already doing (which probably isn’t working that well), or they blow a load of money on advertising or marketing solutions that don’t work, and then lose faith in outside help or marketing altogether.

If you want to avoid wasting money on marketing and advertising, or getting burnt by marketing consultants then you’ll want to minimise your risks and invest your money in solutions that work for you.

As you read this article you’ll discover 5 options for learning how to do your own marketing or recruiting outside help, and the advantages and disadvantages of each option.

5 Options for Learning Marketing Skills or Getting Help with Marketing

1) Learn how to do it yourself through reading books, attending workshops, using audio programmes etc.

The obvious advantage of this is that it’s the cheapest option, plus as you learn to do things for yourself, you retain control of your marketing programme. However, the major drawbacks are that the learning curve is very steep and it may take a long time to learn what works, plus you may end up learning a lot of generic information that doesn’t directly apply to your business or that doesn’t give you an actual step by step plan. You may learn what to do, but not how to do it or the exact steps you need to take to implement what you’ve learnt.

2) Use a marketing consultant/agency

The advantage of this is that you effectively hand over the problem to someone else who deals with it on your behalf, leaving you to get on with what you do best. The disadvantages of this option are that you don’t learn what works for your business and you are no longer fully in control of your marketing function – so you won’t know why some things work and others don’t.

Also, this is probably the most expensive option, and some marketing consultants have got a tendency to prescribe their pet solution, before even diagnosing the actual problem and the situation. Not only that, but if your problem is, for example, lack of sales, and you decide the solution is PR, and then hire a PR consultant, they will work to your brief. In other words, you’ve diagnosed the problem and precribed the solution. However, PR may not be the best solution to your problem, and a proper analysis of your target market and your current activities, budget and opportunities is required before forming the conclusion that a PR consultant is the answer.

3) Group coaching/training programmes

The advantage of this is the lower cost plus regular classes and fieldwork that keep you on track. Some people will benefit from working in a group, especially as they learn from the experiences of others, and particularly if there is a “buddying” system in place.

The disadvantage is the lack of personal coaching/consulting or significant input from the expert in examining your particular situation. Not only that, but you’ll be going at a pace as dictated by the course outline, when you might want to move considerably faster or even slower. Also, most programmes go through a range of strategies as decided by the programme creator, some (or many) of which are not applicable to your particular situation. This is especially true if the programme is designed for the generic “small business” – what works for a dry cleaning business may not work for a consultant, coach or professional.

The result is that you may be learning 10 or 12 strategies at a rather superficial level, rather than homing in on the 2 or 3 strategies that are really going to deliver results into your business, and which are manageable.

4) One to one business/marketing coaching

The advantage of this is the personal attention, and the ability to address your specific issues. This works out a little more expensive than a group training programme, but less expensive than hiring a consultant.

How this works varies widely and a lot depends on whether the coach is using a coaching model (i.e. they guide you in working out your own solutions) or a marketing model (they take on a role more similar to a consultant than a coach, and tell you what will work for your situation). Most do not seem to offer any structure, specific outcomes, or programme of activities so it can be hard to tell what you’re getting for your money.

5) A Structured Programme of consulting, training and mentoring delivered one to one

In this scenario the consultant uses a structured series of exercises to analyse the client’s situation, help them build their marketing foundation, overcome problems and obstacles standing in their way and works with them to create a series of marketing actions that will work best for them.

This typically costs about the same as marketing coaching, but has more tangible outcomes and the consultant will also be doing things on the client’s behalf in between sessions. The advantages are that the client is fully in control of their own situation and is being guided and taught how to do things for themselves. The consultant will also use their expertise to steer the client towards solutions that will work for their situation, their market and their type of business, and filter out approaches that are irrelevant or less likely to produce good results.

The disadvantages are that you still have to do the work yourself (unless you pay for help with implementation), and if the consultant is helping you to craft your message and build your foundation, then there may be a delay before any strategies get fully implemented. This is really the approach that is analogous to building your house on rock rather than on sand – it takes a little longer to lay the foundations, but it’s a sturdier, stronger solution in the end.

© 2006 Jane Hendry, Attractioneering

Jane Hendry helps professionals, consultants and coaches to create marketing systems that easily and consistently attract their ideal clients. To get your f*ree Attraction Marketing Starter Kit please visit http://www.attractioneers.com . You will also find a F*REE marketing plan template and a F*REE marketing evaluation.

Marketing is the management process that identifies, anticipates and satisfies customer requirements profitably. In pre-modern economies, the predominance of small enterprise and there was monopoly and there was no recognition of marketing as a separate field of expertise. Marketing emerged as a separate technical field only in the late 19th century.

In the present scenario, the changing needs and wants or taste and preferences among the customers leads to paradigm shift in marketing. This is due to changing attitude and behaviour of the customers, globalization, increasing purchasing power and changing life style of the customers.

Causes for Marketing in Transition

• Globalization – Globalization has brought changes in technology, quality, service, work culture and undoubtedly fierce competition.
• Emerging Middle-Class Consumers – the increasing Purchasing Power of the Middle-Class consumers creates the MNC’s to seek opportunity in the emerging market.
• Changing Lifestyle and attitude of Consumers – since there is a change in the customers lifestyle due to western influence the customer’s needs and expectations has increased.
• Increasing literacy rate
• Children influence in buying decision making
• Changing perspective of rural marketing in India
• Increasing penetration of mass media
• Consumer awareness
• Information revolution
• An Enormous growth in international business

Formation of marketing concepts and practices
• 1905 – the University of Pennsylvania offered a course in “The Marketing of Products”
• 1908 – Harvard Business School opens
• 1940s – electronic computers developed
• 1980s – emergence of relationship marketing
• 1984 – introduction of guerilla marketing
• 1995-2001 – the Dot-com bubble temporarily re-defines the future of marketing
• 1996 – identification of viral marketing

Emerging New Marketing Practices

Due to increased competition the companies had necessity to enhance additional features to their products to promote the sale of their products. Many companies followed different marketing practices to attract their customers.

Winning concepts and marketing practices are
• Relationship marketing
• Co-branding
• Viral Marketing
• Sachet Marketing
• Green marketing
• Rural marketing
• Destination marketing
• Online marketing
• Cause related marketing

MARKETING IN TRANSITION

A transition from a product oriented approach to a resource oriented approach

Transaction marketing Relationship marketing
Focus on Obtaining new customers Customer retention
Orientation to Service features Customer benefits
Timescale shorts long
Customer service Little emphasis High emphasis
Customer commitment Limited High
Customer contact Limited High

Quality

Primarily an operations concern

The concern to all

Nowadays many companies are practicing the new marketing concepts and practices. Some of the examples are as follows.

Relationship marketing:

The domain of relationship marketing extends into many areas of marketing and strategic decision making. In the phenomenon of cooperation and collaboration with customers becomes the dominant paradigm of marketing practices. Relationship marketing has the potential to emerge as the predominance perspective in the paradigm of marketing.

In the fierce competitive market customer relationship management is emerging as the core marketing activity in companies. For that to maintain companies practices customer retention strategies and having good relation with the customers.

Example:
HSBC bank sent greeting cards to the customers on their birthdays to have good relationship
Whirlpool do very good post sale service to the customers.

Sachet Marketing

In India, Unilever successfully markets Sunsil and Lux shampoo sachets sold in units of 2-4 dollar cents; Clinic All Clear anti-dandruff shampoo sachets at 2.5 rupees each; and 16 cent Rexona deodorant sticks.

Idhayam gingili oil available for Rs 4/- package.
To capture the BOTTOM OF PYRAMID also

Green Marketing

It refers to the process of selling products and/or services based on their environmental benefits. Such a product or service may be environmentally friendly in itself or produced and/or packaged in an environmentally friendly way.

Green marketing can be a very powerful marketing strategy though when it’s done right. Nowadays all companies are trying to produce eco-friendly products. And many companies have got ISO 14001 awards and strive to get.
Examples are ITC products, in the note books, it is environment friendly notebook.

Changing Perspective Of Rural Marketing In India

The great Indian rural market is characterized by huge untapped potential and opportunities. It is estimated that almost 70% of Indian consumers live in rural areas, which generate almost half of the national income. The number of middle income households in rural India is growing to above 111 million by 2007. There are almost twice as many lower middle income households in rural areas as in the urban areas.

A large number of corporate are excited about tapping the potential of rural areas. The recent entry of some corporate like Bharti, ITC, DCM shriram consolidated, EID parry and Amul etc. proved their fascination towards this sector. These corporates tried to develop successful model of integrating information-technology in rural transformation in a profitable way.

The tamilnadu based EID parry has developed an agro-portal [http://www.indiaagrline.com] to cater the specific needs of the rural farming community. It is an endeavor to catalyze e-commerce in agricultural and non-farms products by offering a network of partnerships. The content is available in local tamil language.

The Anand, Gurajat based Amuls DISK dairy information system KIOSK project is yet another milestone of integrating corporate sector and information technology. These kiosk serve valuable information related to dairying, breeding and rearing cattle .

ITC e-choupal has emerged as one of the most ambitious project integrating information technology and corporate sector for rural transformation. ITC e-choupal network has already covered approximately 3.1 million farmers through 5050 choupal in 29,500 villages. The company has ambitious plan to reach 1,00,000 villages covering 10 million farmers by 2010 with whopping approximately 1,000 crore. It is opening 5-6 e-choupals everyday in six different states of India.

Pepsi rural marketing

Pepsi company India has entered into rural market by having joint programme with the Punjab agriculture university in ludiana and Punjab agro industries corporation in chandigarh. The programme focuses on evolving agricultural practices to help Punjab farmers produce crops that would make Indian products internationally competitive. To cultivate a range of sweet oranges for its Tropicana range.

Apart from that, they have given advertisement to attract the rural people with the celebrity of Amitabh bachchan and star cricketer sachin tendulkar.

Coca-cola rural marketing

With the help of Isha foundation coca-cola released the CD of the coca-cola tamil CSR film “NESA KARANGAL” and also acknowledged and appreciated coca-cola’s efforts in promoting social cohesiveness and sportsmanship with an aim to transform rural lives,

Advertisements to attract the rural customers are maasa-actress Rani Mukherji acted in this advertisement and says “masti ka chataka” , Satis shah’s maaza ad is also based on village background.

Aamir khan acted in the advertisement which showcases a beautiful village background with the punch line “thanda ka matlab cocacola” and also ad title “soni kudi” targeted the villagers.

Destination marketing:

Destination marketing is all about selling the experience. To sell the experience is far more difficult. In destination marketing media plays a major role . word of mouth plays a vital role in destination marketing . people love to discuss their tour, infact they feel proud in telling their experiences, they bring gifts for their close ones they show their photographs and purchases to their relatives and neighbours

Eg . kerala has implemented the destination marketing very successfully and emerged as the most acclaimed tourist destination of the country in the recent past. Because of this destination marketing kerala has achieved remarkable success in generating revenue and employment in state through tourism. It is estimated nearly $100 million which generate the employment opportunity in kerala.

In the recent past all the successful stories of destination marketing that is Malaysia, Goa, Kerala, Singapore etc.

Emergence of theme parks such as ADHISAYAM, MGM , BLACK THUNDER,- all are examples of destination marketing.

Transition from kirana stores to modern organized retail outlets:

Modern retailing in India is growing rapidly. Although it commands just 3% of the overall retail market share, changing demographics and consumer taste are driving the growth of more than 30% of the modern retail formats. It is expected to grow another 9% in the year of 2010. India is more attractive than ever to global retailers.

Major players in India are:

Pantaloon retail India limited or future group, RPG group, Tata group, k.Raheja corp. group of companies, RRL (Reliance retail limited), A.B.Birla group, Gati, Calvin klein,murjani group, Disney artist stores, Vishal group (vishal megamart)
Foreign players in India are
Wal-mart stores, Carrefour, Tesco, Rosy blue group, LVMH Group, Metro
This transition makes the marketing in transition

Transition in Segmentation:
Transition from demographic based segmentation to psychographic based segmentation . since 1950′s market segmentation has been referred to as a process of identifying groups of individuals who are similar in attitudes etc. and the segmentation is of demographic segmentation . after 1970s it is psychographic segmentation , know about the customer taste and preferences and collect at the real time point of purchase data. And now it is need based segmentation is using for different marketing functions like advertising and new product development .

Cause related marketing

Cause related marketing is practiced on the rationale that consumers are human beings are kind hearted. The customer pay the amount with some satisfaction that the specific amount is to for relevant social cause.

Example

A sanitary napkin brand “whisper” announced a contribution o Re.1 on every pack of sales for blind relief society. This helps in improving whisper’s market share.

HLL announced a contribution of Rs 0.50 on the sale of each of its brand of lifebuoy brand soap to a diarrhea project.

Co-branding

Co-branding is when two companies form an alliance to work together, creating marketing synergy. This co-branding is innovative in the marketing practices.

Examples:
• Andhra bank and ICFAI university are using the strategy of co-branding.
• Andhra bank and Hindustan petroleum also launched their co-branded card
• SBI card and LG electronics India launched the LG-SBI card. This is the country’s first co-branded credit card for the consumer appliances industry and can be used at more than 2 lakh outlets in India.
• Idea cellular and HDFC Bank launched two co-branded cards providing multiple benefits to customers of both.
• Pillsbury Brownies with Nestle Chocolate
• Dell Computers with Intel Processors

Online marketing

Internet marketing, also referred to as online marketing, Internet advertising, or eMarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. Internet marketing also includes management of digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management (E-CRM) systems.

Samsung marketing practices

Viral marketing , interactive marketing

Samsung created its “Fun Club” as a way to engage with Samsung mobile phone owners to help them get the most from their phones. Samsung provides content such as games, ringers, and wallpapers that are designed specifically for Samsung mobile phone models. Hearing about new mobile content is one of the benefits of joining the “Fun Club.” Samsung was looking for a new way to use rich multimedia to promote the game, Skipping Stone, to its customers. Samsung engaged Enpocket to create a mobile marketing campaign promoting Skipping Stone using the graphically rich MMS channel.

Conclusion

In the present competitive scenario, there should be transition in marketing practices in order to survive in the market. Since “change in the only thing which never change” in the world, companies have to adapt themselves according to the changing environment. The best emerging practices in the corporate world is win-win concept to be the leader in the market.

A. ARCHANA

II MBA (2007-2009) BATCH

RL INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES.

MADURAI