Understanding Marketing: 5 Common Misconceptions

Everybody seems to know Marketing. The world is full of Marketing gurus. We all talk about with a remarkable ease and confidence, though most of the times we are not Marketing professionals and not even close. What are the most frequent mistakes in understanding Marketing practices and theories?

1. Defining Marketing
There is clearly a general tendency in employing the notion of Marketing within a confusing mix of Public Relations, Advertising, or Media Planning. Regardless of the degree in evolution and growing of Marketing, many of us still cannot understand what Marketing really is and only see the its extreme manifestations. Many believe Marketing is a useless, fancy field, eating up budgets and giving little in return. Others see Marketing as an artistic field, where all you need is creativity to develop a memorable ad.

Marketing

2. Marketing is still confused with Communication
This common mistake is, again, the result of sufficient understanding of Marketing. Marketing professionals are often thought to be responsible for creating advertisements, logos, slogans. What people usually see is the mere top of the iceberg, forgetting that there is a product, a price and a distribution strategy to be developed before even thinking of advertising.

3. Under- or overestimating the role of the marketer
On one hand, the marketer is often seen as a must-have within a company, but (s)he has an indefinite role and ends up doing a little of everything (Marketing, Advertising, Public Relations, Customer Care, Account Management etc.) On the other hand we might be faced with the other extreme, where the marketer is an omniscient, all-powerful creature eclipsing everyone else.

4. Segmentation
In spite of the abundance in resources and consulting services aimed at researching the consumers base, segmentation is still done intuitively at least at small-business level. Large companies might have whole departments assigned to work on segmentation research and strategy, and still not be fully failure-proof.

5. Marketing for the sake of it
This is an attitude I have met in too many occasions not to mention it. People (and again, small-business owners are the usual culprits) do marketing because everyone else does it, because they heard they should do it, because it is a fashionable thing to do.

Surely, the list above is not exhaustive, and it only points at several attitudes leading nowhere on the Marketing battlefield.
Marketing is surely not an art, thought it does employ a certain flaire and creativity. Marketing is not a science either, but it operates with precise instruments. Marketing is not for everyone and not to be performed regardless of the conjuncture around the business.

We should keep in mind that Marketing operations have a clear objective: increasing the profitability of a business. To bring money, to be more clear. Marketing is therefore just as important as everything else in the company: if a product has functional faults we would blame the production department, but when a product does not sell for reasons beyond production it is usually the Marketing department to take the blame.

Understanding Marketing: 5 Common Misconceptions

Otilia is a young certified professional with expertise in e-Marketing, currently working as independent consultant. She has recently launched MarketingWHO.com, a professional Marketing Directory and she publishes TeaWithEdge.com, a Marketing and eMarketing articles portal. You can contact Otilia through her personal web site, BRAINmarketing [http://www.brainmarketing.net].

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Commission Sales Vs Salary Sales

In the sales industry, one of the most heated topics of discussion is commission sales vs. salary sales. There are benefits to using both, but many people are hard-core advocates of one or the other. Some people believe commission is the only method of payment for true salespeople, while others would like to see a balance between the two. If you are trying to figure out which payment method to use in your company, there are things to consider. When it comes down to it, though, it really is a matter of preference. Although both have advantages and disadvantages, they are fairly equal.

When discussing commission sales vs. salary sales, it is important to take into consideration your employees. Would they be offended if you only offered them commission? Some people take this as a sign you don't want to pay them the money they deserve. People may be afraid to sign on with your company because they won't make any or enough money. On the other hand, there are some people who see commission sales as a challenge. They have to close as many deals as they can in order to get a paycheck. They don't consider it stressful or worrisome, but rather a competition to see how well they can perform.

Sales

If you choose salary sales in the commission sales vs. salary sales debate, you might have a greater number of people join your company. They see this as sort of a guarantee they will get some sort of payment. Even if the salary is low, it could be enough to sway employees. When using salary in sales, it is important to have a good balance between salary and commission. Many companies that offer salespeople salaries also offer them commission if they exceed their quote. How much are you willing to pay exceptional employees? You have to consider all the angles.

When you think about commission sales vs. salary sales from a business owner's standpoint, it can be tempting to offer commission especially in the current economic recession. You can use it as an area in which you can save money. Although this is enticing, you still have to be considerate of your employees' needs and wants. If the majority of your employees would prefer to have both a salary and commission, it is a good idea to agree on a common source. If your employees are old school salespeople, they probably only will work for commission. Ask your employees what they would prefer. This also lets them know that you actually care about their thoughts and feelings.

There is no right answer for the commission sales vs. salary sales debate because every company is different. Its employees may prefer one greatly over the other. If this is the case, go with what the masses want. If you only are worried about what your company can afford, then you need to examine how much it would cost your company to use both methods and choose the one that is more economical.

Commission Sales Vs Salary Sales

Josh Macmichael

http://www.contractorblab.com

[http://www.contractorblabblog.com]

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Challenges and Advantages of Marketing Research

Marketing research is a systematic and objective collection, analysis, interpretation of data and communication of marketing information relevant to a particular marketing problem. A company or organization can research about the market before initiating any marketing activity like sales and production to identify niche markets.

Advantages of marketing research

\"market Research\"

· It indicates opportunities for products and market development, a company can then decide on the production, sales and production plans after identifying the opportunities.
· It provides a basis for sound, market led decision making by providing information to reduce uncertainty.
· Marketing research enables an organist ion to match their products or services to the requirements of the consumers or market.
· Research enables advertising to be tested during a campaigns development or prior to launch to ensure its effectiveness, and after launch to measure the success of the media used.
· It also enables product ideas to be tested without expenses of lunching to the market; this can be a change in service, product or design.
· It also provides objective explanation for success and failure in the market.
· Marketing research also helps to evaluate the strength and weakness of rivals plus the threats they may cause to the company.

Problems associated with marketing research
Though marketing research is a good practice for all firms to embark on and indeed many put in a lot of effort, many times things go wrong in the process. Below are some of the reasons why marketing research can fail.

Lack of cash
Financial constraints may limit the amount of research activity, leading to erroneous conclusion. Some times research activities are put on hold before they are completed due to lack of funds.

Haste
Many companies and firms attempt to do too much in such a little time, they end up taking shortcuts and some times use out of date secondary data which produces wrong results.

Inappropriate methodology
Research methods can be distorted by errors in project design, sampling techniques, lack of understanding by subject and interview bias.

Inexperience in data analysis
Some mangers that are not experienced in analyzing and interpreting research data may only look for the information they want to see from the research data and hence neglect a whole lot of important data.

Wrong information
Some times, some people due to different reasons can give wrong information to the interviewer which will produce wrong results.

Seasonality
There are some products which are only consumed by seasons, making a research about such products in a different season will produce wrong results.

Challenges and Advantages of Marketing Research

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Article Marketing - Art of Writing Multiple Articles

Article marketing is a big business on the internet. There are many advertisers on the internet who need the right content matter to advertise their products or services. The product reviews are important for online promotion and sales. As more and more people are turning their attention towards online business through websites, there is a huge demand for writers who can write sales promotional letters, product reviews, and advertisements in bulk quantity. There are few article marketing strategies that need to be employed properly for writing multiple articles, to meet the demands of the clients.

Creating Realistic Targets

Marketing

Goal creation is an important strategy of the article marketing. The target set should be realistic and achievable. A target gives the writer a purpose to write for. It is important to judge properly the requirements of the task and schedule the writing project in a manner that it is successfully completed within deadline. The ability to write and submit impressive articles at a fast pace compared to other competitors is essential to stay afloat in this highly competitive field. It is important have a correct idea about the number of articles that one can write, before writing for a project. The ability of writing multiple articles in specified period of time is crucial in success of article marketing strategy.

Hiring Freelance Writers

There are many websites that need content for product reviews, forum postings, e-books, viral marketing through social interaction networks, blogging and internet publishing to promote their products and services. Doing all this, calls for taking professional services of quality writer. With increase in online business, demand for articles that help in promotion of product or service, is on rise. It is not possible for a writer to complete the writing projects, single handedly. Taking help of ghostwriters is the right strategy to handle successfully the large writing projects. There are many websites that provide the services of freelance writers at very cheap rates. These freelance writers can provide high quality articles at very competitive rates. So outsourcing the writing job is the right article marketing technique that helps immensely in writing multiple articles, well within the deadline.

Achieving a Higher Conversion rate

A successful article marketing campaign advocates the use of a resource box, to direct the customer traffic to the site. Adopting skillful marketing tactics like communicating well with customers, offering free services and providing links to the articles, hosted on the site are some marketing tricks that attract customers in flocks, to the site. Building a fruitful association with other writers to outsource the projects is essential to successfully bid, win and execute a big writing project. The endeavor should be, to attract more customers, collect bulk orders and outsource them to reliable and qualified writers. This is necessary for writing multiple articles to increase the writing sales on the net.

Article Marketing - Art of Writing Multiple Articles

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Product Marketing

For the first timers in the marketing world, product marketing may still be confusing. Also, it may come a bit more expensive. However, if you are a newbie in the marketing world and have a limited budget for marketing, you do not have to worry. There are plenty of innumerable amount of options that you can choose from that will help market your products.

Product marketing may be done with the help of social media. One good social media would be the Facebook. All over the world, there are over millions of users log in to this social media who log in everyday. With that much users, your potential clients can be a lot. You can put up a fan page in Facebook. You can be given the chance to give your clients information about your product as well as updates about your product. This is a very interesting marketing strategy because the fan page provides an open communication between you and the clients that you have. You can even provide product reviews about your product. You can even post pictures of people enjoying your product or service.

Marketing

If you want, you can even start up an online newsletter. Your clients would enjoy this as they will be given updated information about your product, promotions and such. You can hire few individuals to write some information on the newsletters. If you want to express something beyond the words that consumers can see, then you can create a video of your own. Your video may contain information on how to effectively use your product or service. You can even create a video that somehow relates to the product that you have. All these can be put on your website. If you want, you can even post it in top rated blog sites and have it back linked to your website after viewing the post.

Another simple technique for product marketing would be the referral system. You can have a regular client of yours refer your product to their family and friends. This will cost you nothing because it is done by the word of mouth. Just make sure that your product or service would be substantial and worthy to be talked about and relayed to other people.

You can even put some helpful comments or link your website in the comment box of some industry blogs. You can state to the readers that your product showcases the same thing that the blog has mentioned. If you have time, you can email to clients and prospects related articles about your product. It is effective because they the readers would have a thinking that you personally emailed them about your product. The reader would feel special and would be regular client in the wrong. Just be sure to write something about your product in a simple way. Do not try to make it lengthy as people may have the tendency to delete it if they see that it is long.

Product marketing may take time but you can do it with the massive resources surrounding you. Just remember to market your product well enough so you can be able to get a good profit.

Product Marketing

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Marketing Research & Elements of Marketing Research

Marketing research "The systematic gathering, recording and analyzing data about problems relating to the marketing of goods and services".

Market research on the other hand, is only a part of marketing research that covers a few of aspects of marketing. It is only the sub function of marketing research 'some companies use "market research" for describing research into markets the size geographical distribution incomes, and so on. However it fails to cover the idea of research into the effects of marketing efforts on markets, for which the term marketing research is the accurate. Elements of marketing research.

\"market Research\"

1. Market Research. It covers the aspects regarding size and nature of the market including export markets dividing the consumers in terms, of their age, sex, income (market segmentation), economic aspects of marketing etc.

2. Sales Research. This relates to the problem regional variations in sales fixing sales territories, measurement of the effectiveness of salesman, evaluation of sales methods and incentives, etc.

3. Product Research. This relates to the analysis of strengths and or weakness of existing product testing problems relating to diversification, simplification, trading up and trading down (all product line decisions), etc.

4. Packaging Research. In essence, it is a part of product research. But the recent development in packaging and its contribution in the advertising made it to occupy an independent position. This necessitates a separate study concerning the aspects of package to know its impact and response in the market.

5. Advertising Research. It undertakes a study relating to the preparation of advertisement copy (copy research), media to be used (media research) and measurement of advertising effectiveness.

6. Business Economic Research. Problems relating to input output analysis, forecasting, price and profit analysis, and preparation of break -even charts are the main fields of the research.

7. Export Marketing Research. This research is intended to study the export potentials of the product. In such cases any or all kinds of research mentioned above become necessary.

Marketing Research & Elements of Marketing Research

Elements of the Marketing Research

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The Keys To Success - Routine, Buyer Psychology, Market Research

In this next installment of my keys to success series, I want to touch on three more keys to success which are establishing a routine, understanding buyer psychology and doing market research. These are just as critical as any other for having success online.

Establishing a routine may be one of the hardest things for a marketer to do even though it should be one of the easiest. This really comes down to how disciplined a person you are. Personally, I get up every morning at 7 AM and get right to work, even before I have breakfast, which I eat while I work. I have everything typed up in a spreadsheet as far as what I have to do for the day. As i complete each item, I cross it off and move on to the next item. I do this until all the items for the day are completed. This is not something I even have to think about anymore. After establishing this routine now for over 4 years, it just comes naturally. This is one of the main reasons I am earning a five figure a month income.

\"market Research\"

Understanding buyer psychology is critical to being able to make sales. If you don't understand why a person wants something, you can't sell to them. This is one of the areas where expert copywriters are king. They know all the hot buttons to push when it comes to selling to their target market because they know what makes people tick. While I can't give you a complete course on buyer psychology in an article, I can tell you that the main reason that people buy things is to relieve pain or to make themselves feel better. We don't buy things because we need them. We buy things because they solve some kind of a problem and make us feel better because of it. If your product or service can tap into this, then you're ahead of the game.

Finally, there is market research. This is so important because without it you won't even know if there is a demand for your product or not. Doing market research is time consuming, but it's not hard. The best way to do market research is to go to forums in the niche you're targeting and see what people are looking for. This way you can tell if the product you are selling, or thinking of creating, actually has a market. Also, look on the Internet and see if products like yours are already being sold. If so, then there is a good chance that the market exists.

Establishing a routine, understanding buyer psychology and doing market research are three keys to having success on the Internet with your business.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

The Keys To Success - Routine, Buyer Psychology, Market Research

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Starbucks Target Market and Management

Originally when Starbucks began they targeted the young college students, with slightly higher than average income levels. After this initial target market Starbucks has since realized that they could target specific neighborhoods and social classes. Different customers are more willing to pay for luxury good now more than ever. With that in mind, through Starbucks aggressive expansion techniques they have begun targeting almost every demographic.

"McDonald's is planning to capitalize on the public's willingness to pay for a cup of coffee by hiring baristas and dropping espresso machines in 14,000 of their fast-food outlets. Meanwhile, Starbucks, with business lagging, is fighting back with an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" strategy, by offering heated breakfast sandwiches and adding drive-through windows to some of their locations." (Tancer, 2008)

Market

As McDonalds and other chains realize the money in luxury coffee more companies will begin to enter the marketplace. One the other side of the spectrum you have the small local coffee bars that were around before Starbucks took over the marketplace. These smaller coffee shops have their core customers who will not give their business to anyone else. These smaller coffee shops can offer specialized products and services or serving to the local markets needs. However Starbucks has a much larger buying power then the local smaller coffee shops giving them a competitive advantage. Coming back to our original quote, we believe that McDonalds has a customer base that is extremely large that now has the option to get their coffee where they get their breakfast already. McDonalds also has an extremely large bargaining power and runs each franchise with impeccable automation. McDonalds cup of coffee costs a lot less money than Starbucks and tastes the same in a lot of cases. One of Starbucks biggest competitors is the economy; Starbucks provides a luxury good that will be a good that people cut out when they want to save money. This has been witnessed with the recent closing of over a hundred Starbucks stores.

Tancer, B. (2008, January 10). Brewing Battle:Starbucks vs. McDonalds.

Starbucks Target Market and Management

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Marketing Environment and the Factors Involved

Marketing environment is made up of all the factors and forces that influence marketing. These forces can be internal like departments (other than marketing such as finance department and human resource department) or external like competitors, suppliers, economic or political situation. To understand them better, marketing personals divide them in two categories namely macro environment and micro-environment. Let's have a look at some of the important factors involved in marketing environment.

Internal factors:
All the departments involved in business management affects the process of marketing as well, for example the finance or research department in large enterprises. Marketing department is bound to keep their expenses under the budget set by the finance managers or to consider recommendations from the research department. Similarly the supplies and collections can have an impact on marketing as well.

Marketing

Customer markets:
Different types of customers markets include consumer markets (B2C), business markets (B2B), government markets (B2G), also a new type of customer market has emerged as a result of globalization i.e. international market. Where most other departments will treat these markets similarly, marketing team has to treat them all in different manner. Though most advertising campaigns are targeted to consumer market, the type of customer market does affect marketing decisions on the whole.

Competition:
Competition is becoming more and more influential in a company's approach towards marketing. Competition stems from the business that is offering the same product as yours. A business has to counter this competition through marketing; some times businesses do try to have a hit at their competitors in advertisements (though not candidly). The level of competition is also a decisive factor when planning on how much to spend on marketing.

Different types of publics:
Another important microenvironment factor is the publics (government, consumer associations, financial or media publics). All of them can have an affect (positive or negative) on company's reputation and marketing.

Demography:
Good marketing managers tend to spend plenty of time in conducting demographic research for their targeted consumers. Demography is the research of gender, age, race or anything else related to consumers. International businesses are concerned about various races (Asians, Hispanics, etc) and their different set of demands. While the terms like "baby boomers" or "generation X" were invented to reflect the specific age groups of consumers.

Economic Factors:
All the variables of economic markets like inflation, rate of exchange, fiscal policies and monetary policies fall under macro environment factors. They affect all businesses, and needless to say their marketing efforts as well.

Other Factors:
Other notable macro and microenvironment factors are marketing intermediaries, political stability (or instability), new technologies or natural forces.

Marketing Environment and the Factors Involved

William King is the director of Designer Clothing Wholesale Suppliers and Canada Wholesale Suppliers & Manufacturers. He has 18 years of experience in the marketing and trading industries and has been helping retailers and startups with their product sourcing, promotion, marketing and supply chain requirements.

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