How To Easily And Cautiously Make Your Marketing Plan?

If you do not have lot of experience with marketing, I would advise someone to help you who has experience and he can write the marketing plan for you but there is a hitch in it, It will cost you money if you are just staring out. It’s always better to create your own marketing plan rather than tossing aside the idea of not creating at all.Marketing plan is the much needed oil for any organization. Making good marketing plan was considered to be a tough task, until fairly recently, what was the purview of just the bigger companies is now possible for most. Let me give you some insights into how a basic level marketing plan is developed.

7 Easy Steps For Making Effective Marketing Plan:-

1. Determine And Finalizing What You Going To Serve And To Whom – Determining Your Target Market
2. Determining Your Positioning For Your Product
3. Develop The Product Plan
4. Develop And Build Your Pricing Plan
5. Develop Your Distribution And Logistics Plan
6. Develop Your Offline & Online Promotional Plan
7. Determine And Chalk Out Budget For Your Marketing Ideas

Product Finalization And Identifying Target Market For Your Marketing Plan

Coming to specifies, on what you going to sell and push in the market – make sure whatever you wish or plan to sell actually solve a real and genuine problem for the audience you want to sell to. Talk, communicate and engage with your audiences to know their pain areas. When you embark on this journey, try to take feedback from with the whole, rather than the subset. Avoid relying just on samples to determine the shape and form of the final product, as, often, the really interesting things in market are found that samples fails to catch.

A small insight: – Do not treat difficulty of interacting with all your customers as an unfortunate reality, rather see it for what it is a “necessary evil”. It is the backbone of measurement of the target at scale.

Positioning 
For your positioning make sure you communicate the USP, the point of difference and ensure it is included in your positioning that will attracts customers/buyers to your product. Use effective and low cost marketingmethods like digital marketing and mass marketing with social media. Generate awareness through word–of–mouth and social interactions as part of “Connected Marketing” to reach to the desired target audience.

Product Plan
Third, for your product plan make sure you survey the customer prospects to see what they want. Do ensure the customer survey is comprehensive and sufficient. The golden rule while doing survey is even if you have too much data then also “good enough” is not good enough. Also study your competitors to see what they doing, what’s working and what may be the strength and weakness of their product and also why customers are frustrated with existing product in the market. It is also sometimes termed as gathering “Competitive Intelligence”.

Doing so, is feasible, because success in business and in the product is in working with customers and not against them.

Deducing Pricing
Fourth, when you put together your financial or pricing plan ensure you are again looking at what your competitors are doing and analyzing what opportunities are working best for them and also ensuring that you price your product on the value (value based pricing) and not just on cost. Set the price of your product or the service offered on the tangible and intangible benefits it provides to the end consumer rather than fixing the price on the amount of money it takes to produce the product.

Preparing Distribution Plan
Fifth, for the distribution plan again you may like to look at what’s making sense for similar products in the market, contact the competitors and find how are competitors are doing, find out the latest trend and you may also like to think about how your customers may like to buy for you, where do they want to buy and create a distribution plan around that in order to satisfy your customer wants.

Developing Promotional Plan
Sixth, in your promotional plan make sure you know whom you are trying to target and what content is the most effective and ultimate message to communicate to the target audience. Next do take a quick look what marketing tactics your competitors are using and what methods have worked best for them and take a look at what promotional activities you have used in the past that has worked best for you, then use this information to select which promotional methods are going to work best to communicate the message you want to the target that you are targeting. In addition you want to use specialized consulting services to create a plan specifically to maximize the amount of referral you going to get as referrals are the number one source of new customers for the business.

Determining ROI For Each Promotional Idea
Finally list down all the examples of marketing strategies, sales and marketing, promotional, advertising ideas and creative marketing ideas, for your consumer products that you had and take a look at some of the matrix to see which are going to be most profitable. To do this take a look at the impressions that the marketing strategies will deliver. The estimated conversion rate will able to give you estimated ROI and also they take a look at the time, how much time it’s going to take to implement these type of marketing strategies and see which one’s appear to be the best options for your business.

The above mentioned 7 best practices of integrated marketing can be your most valuable tools while preparing your powerful marketing plan and your marketing ideas for small business. Simply put, poorly – prepared guys always finish last. Do not fall trap of procrastination. Do IT NOW with best marketing mix. You need to escape from it and use the above tips to make an impact to your business. As you make your way to make a marketingplan, you may grope in dark and may stumble. Use the above tips as landmarks and make your way to great leadership.

By Tarun Gupta

International Networking: Few Examples of Marketing Strategies

What about breaking into a new country without any marketing strategies? Would you not want to have a trip to a new country? Do you not wish to go to a new country earn dollars there and comeback richer? Won’t you like to be a called a rich international entrepreneur? If you ask me, I personally have a wish to be able to travel the world on company’s dollars and come back richer. But you would wonder – How would I do that? Well at the core of it lies your strategy. You need to have a strategy and a focused plan to make this happen.

So, when it’s decided that you want to do business somewhere in the other part of the world, everybody would start saying – I can’t help you, since I don’t know anyone there or have no examples of marketing strategies for there. But what will you do then. How will you go ahead with the entrepreneurial instinct inside you that just arose. Would you just let it burn off? I’ll take this up later. First, think about this. Have you ever noticed unemployed people saying “I will take any job” but just with this information you won’t be able to think anything about it. But, if he says that I am an electric engineer and I want work for a fortune 500 company like IBM. Hearing IBM all of a sudden, you would realize you probably know someone at IBM and you can put him in touch with that concerned person. Here, in this case you were able to help the person because he became very specific.

Here is the answer of the question I had left unanswered. Always be specific, even if anybody seeks help form you then specifically ask about the areas in which he/she needs your help like in the above case the engineer did and also vice versa. Always have a pertinent, specific, to the point answer. This is the most important part to be kept in your mind while framing a international networking and marketing strategy and organization’s marketing strategies.

Deploy Social Media Extensively In Your Marketing Strategies

Your marketing strategies may consist of A) List of companies B) List of decision makers and many such things. What is most important here is, you should be able to find a common means of communication between you and the other person because this would make things a lot easier for you and your marketing plan. Social media, for instance is great for this, specially “Linked-in”. Linked-in helps you know the professional profile of the person really well. On the other hand, you also have sites like Facebook, Twitter where you can have informal communication with the person as well. Thus, social media can help a lot in knowing the person.

Besides these, you can always Google the person, send mail to the person, send message to the person or even call the person say through Skype or VOIP. In short, this would enable you with all the information you wanted to always know. Sometimes companies invest heavily in their internet marketing, internet advertising strategies, online marketing or online marketing tactics to be present actively across all the social media forums to promote reverse/pull marketing strategies.

Creating Local Partner Model As One Of Your Key Marketing Strategies

Now, you know about the customer well, say through some of the social media means, but one question that still remains unanswered in your marketing strategies is – how to reach out to the customer? Answer is simple, instead of you yourself trying to reach out to the customer, you look for a liaising partner in between. You may try to find out a guy who has a good network and can help you to reach out to your customers. This is same as this situation, say I am selling a product for an education institution, so I have 2 options with me; either I can go to each institute on my own or else I can sell to the “X” guy who sells to these institutes. I would approach “X” and ask him whether he would like to sell my services as well, and will offer him good commission. These Intermediaries are generally known as Local Partners.

Thus knowing local partners and establishing connect with them in the specific region you wish to go would help you in 2 ways; first it would give you a good understanding of the region, second it will obviously help you in your business expansion. Apart from all this, one thing that is irreplaceable is you yourself. Before doing any kind of business in the new country, you first need to go there, meet people, get acquainted with their culture etc. Also, sometimes in some cultures people prefer to see you face-to-face before they actually do any kind of business with you. In this case, a local partnering model proves to be very helpful creating a win-win situation for both.

I will like to give you a small tip which someone had given me sometime back and it is a brilliant one. When one of my closest friend who had never been to Singapore before, landed at the airport he just called up the top 10 hotels of Singapore saying that he is a sales trainer by profession, and he will do sales training of their sales staff in the evening for free, if they could allow him to stay for two weeks in their hotel. Isn’t is something very creative and interesting to hear. I guess it’s certainly is. And guess what, his communication with those 10 hotels made him win a complimentary room in all those 10 hotels for 2 weeks. Since he had a pool of choices, he could choose the best among them.

But aren’t you thinking how was he able to get a free accommodation? All this happened because he asked himself a question “How can I go to Singapore on a budget?” And while thinking for an answer to this question he realized he could use his training capabilities in order to stay in a hotel. So, aren’t you asking this question to yourself – how can you make it happen instead of just relying on the normal belief that you cannot afford it since it’s too far or since you don’t know anybody there.

My same Singapore friend just called the place, offered his services and was there for good 2 weeks, and he just networked, networked and networked, probably didn’t get too much out of it in the first time. But he did the same thing again two months later and now Singapore has become one of the hub for his business operations. And now he is doing the same with Indonesia, Malaysia, China and other countries around Singapore. Now, he is even developing a hub in Dubai as well. Thus, the bottom line is “You have to go there, no matter how far is it, whether you know somebody there or not and that is the only marketing strategy one can deploy at that point in time”.

Just couple of quick tips on marketing strategies – as takeaways to expand your business internationally:
1. Give yourself a local phone number.
2. Get a local virtual office address.

They will facilitate your liaising with a local partner and will give a boost to your newly set business in the new country.

Here’s another very simple idea, just to show that you have an international mindset, add ‘+’ in front of telephone number, as all international numbers have. Start with a ‘+’ in front of the telephone number, then add the country code. This will help your local partners to know that you have an international mindset in type of marketing strategies you do and you can think on their lines as well.

Re-Validate Your Marketing Material And Marketing Strategies
Last tip, have a look at the marketing material created by your senior management or public relations cell, check if your marketing strategies cater to the international audience or does it only use lot of local lingos that might not be understood by even an English speaking people in the foreign country. This kind of research and planning is important because if they cannot understand your marketing material then whole idea behind creating that material and allocating huge finances towards them goes completely in vain.

Hence, all these points and marketing strategies are needed to be kept in mind in order to inculcate in your business DNA an international mindset.

By Tarun Gupta

Generosity as One of The Examples Of Marketing Strategies

Marketing Strategies is a multi facet subject. But general perception among the people is that, it relates only to business perspective and scenarios. What is less known about these is that, there are some examples of marketing strategies that relate to our normal daily lives as well. Therefore they can be used by us in multiple ways in our lifestyle to achieve various goals. One such objective which can be achieved through some of the examples of marketing strategies is “Social Success”. An obvious question is – what do I mean by social success. By this I mean, being able to market your ideas well in public, be able to connect well with people socially, have good public relations and finally be a heart winner in social gatherings. Generosity is one of such examples of marketing strategies. An obvious question here arises is how generosity is linked to marketing, where is it used in marketing management and how could it be one of the greatest examples of marketing strategies. Let me clear all your doubts one by one.

When I take generosity as one of the examples of marketing strategies, I suggest you to always carry a “Go give” attitude, just as in marketing management you need to find out customer needs and satisfy them as well. Behind this philosophy lies the very same concept of generosity. Go give your customers whatever they need, and not just whatever you have with you. Just assume yourself in the shoes of an advertising agency, how judiciously you would go extra mile to do your research and planning to deliver class solutions to your customers using extensive Information Technology in Internet Marketing (Online Marketing and Social Media), it being a critical mass media channel to promote the right marketing mix and client’s strategic marketing goals. Bring this philosophy in one’s personal life brings success to one’s feet.

I am often asked “What is the golden rule for success?”, “What is the secret mantra for high achievement and steady gains?” and “What is the basic tenet for building and maintaining a great social network“?

Honestly telling you, there are no ready-made answers for this. But to answer them succinctly and show you a glimpse of the real story I always reply in one line “Become generous and change the attitude from being a Go–Getter to a Go–Giver”. Believe me, in all respects, the above statement should not be taken lightly at all.

Become generous and change the attitude from being a Go–Getter to a Go–Give

The above tenet plays into the hands of “Law of nature” or the more glorified “Law of karma” i.e. every action will have an equal and opposite reaction. Infact many scientific experiments have also proved that good karma (Generosity) is often rewarded in a unequal proportion, multiplying the positive effect much beyond our expectations. Always remember, the process of “give & take” is a constant one i.e. asking for help from someone and offering help is a continuous cycle. By connecting with each other, by sharing your knowledge and expertise with them, by helping others when they need you, you are in a way helping yourself, leading yourself onto the path of self development be it professionally or personally.

Examples of Marketing Strategies: My Story, My Experience

Personally, I follow the above type of marketing strategy, religiously knowingly or unknowingly, it being one of the key examples of marketing strategies. I also advise various young entrepreneurs and start-ups on a regular basis and counsel them on this. I do it selflessly. It gives me immense satisfaction, joy and happiness to help such entrepreneurial engagements to grow. I do it without any expectation of any monetary reward. I have done it with hundreds of people over last 5 years. Sometimes you have no idea how a simple moral boosting talk can change the life of young entrepreneurship mind and lift his/her sprit. It can be life transforming. I can proudly claim that I have helped many to nurture their dreams and by god’s grace they all are doing reasonably well in their respective domain.

True to the genuine joy of giving I would go out of my way to introduce people to countless business marketing opportunities like, helping small companies connect to a larger one, helping an individual get a job, or in some cases helping few to get meaningful internships. These acts though are small in magnitude, but have altered the destinies of many. That is how I add value to these examples of marketing strategies.

Examples of Marketing Strategies: Essence Of Great Networking And Social Success

While discussing the examples of marketing strategies, I am reminded of the fact that the term ‘Network’ derives its essence from recognition and awareness of mutual need. If you block one side of the equation of “giving” and just keenly focus on taking help, the network as an institute will malfunction and collapse. It will slowly fade away and one day it will shrink to bare minimum. By this means you are sure to get short term social success but not a sustainable one. You must invest energy and time with people, reach out to people, always ask them what help they need and how you can be of any help to them, in order to be socially successful. One should always give out positive vibes, one of the key factors in social communication.

Your “Network” should act as a medium or instrument for creating a value for others and not just a personal growth mechanism. Always remember that we live in an interdependent world, the more you assist and help people, the more help you will have from the network. This is the simplest way to expand your social network and be successful and thereby reap benefits out of these examples of marketing strategies.

Examples of Marketing Strategies: Other Facets Of Social Success

Adding to above discussed examples of marketing strategies, I want to highlight that the same thing applies in the employer and employee relationship, teacher and student relationship, parent and child relationship, husband and wife relationship. How? We will see it now.

You would agree that in all the relations, I mentioned above, you need to have personal kind of loyalty and generosity since in today’s connected world as stress of work is increasing, it is also affecting our social relations. Now we need each other more than ever before.

Create Your Own Examples of Marketing Strategies: Test Your Generosity

1. Name 3 people whom you have helped in last 2 years in any form?
2. How many people have you connected selflessly (either personally or professionally)
3. With how many people have you shared your knowledge be it in any form?

Indeed, the above questions are there to mull you over. Answer these questions and you would be able to calculate your “Generosity score”. Remember that Givers will always strive to create right opportunity for their colleagues to give and contribute! So, be a giver and create success opportunities for yourself and your colleagues and keep on adding your real life examples of marketing strategies using the above principle.

My Learnings From These Examples Of Marketing Strategies
Out of these examples of marketing strategies, here are few of the learnings that I have taken for myself:

• The more generous you are, the more respect and praise you will earn from your friends, families and colleagues. Also, you will be ahead of all and behind none.
• Just follow the above principle for just 6 months and you will be a unbeatable winner on all counts

In the last I would only like to say that, the feeling of giving is indescribably beautiful and most exhilarating. It has elated me exceedingly. To enjoy this you need to do it yourself. Become genuinely helpful, always motivate others to give. This will allow you to get ahead in life and create a long lasting and ever increasing social network and succeed.

It’s the right time to lay an axe on the very root of selfishness and awaken to the new world of social networking through “generosity”, one of the examples of marketing strategies. There are many other marketing tactics that will help you out in gaining social success but for the time being practice this only and “Stay Ahead & Stay Happy”.

By Tarun Gupta