- Product
- Price
- Place
- Promotion
- People
- Process
- Physical evidence
- Partners
- Perception
- Performance
PRODUCT
DIY & customization is a current trend (IKEA). A customer saves money and seems like they don't mind wasting their time finding details in a warehouse and then mounting furniture at home.
PRICE
It is not a smart idea to compete over the price :) Find some other USP's, unless you sell for volume. Selling for less is eventually not sustainable -- how low can you drop the price?
PLACE
Make use of affiliate marketing (e.g. hotel + opera ticket, hotel + restaurant, etc)
There are many internet channels for finding your product/service. Google has come up with many useful search engines, like Google Hotel Finder and Google Trends to name some, to facilitate search on the Internet.
There are many sites that offer booking possibilities, and they all take booking fees. Nowadays quite many hotels and airlines have dropped using their services, instead they have set up their own online ticket/room sales.
PROMOTION
Every marketer's goal is to get their customers' profile and Facebook is a channel companies use more and more (making FB users like the networking channel less and less).
Affiliate marketing is also widely used in promotion: I market you, you market me, we're a happy family (sing it with Barney tune :)) This kind of cross-marketing eases the pressure for finding target groups and joint marketing gives a possibility to create a positive synergy because it creates more USP's concentrated together. Here is a good example of cross-marketing of companies all sponsoring a non-profit film festival in Estonia:
Viral marketing is another trend used nowadays more and more. Young customers step in and do the marketing for you :) Here is an example of a viral video created for a horror film festival in Estonia:
PEOPLE
Customer service on the web is very important, as people use less phones and more internet. If you give an option to contact you on the Internet, then answer your customers' questions ASAP :)
PROCESS
Up-selling is a method used very widely because it is easy to do and easy to get more money from customers: you add a little more and get a lot more. The same goes for cross-selling your products/services with other companies. For example, travel companies and airlines sell insurance, hotels and events. Post-selling is also a nice way to earn more money. For example budget airlines offer you an option to choose your own seat on the plane, but for some extra money (if you want to travel comfortably, then pay extra for leg space on a plane).PHYSICAL EVIDENCE
Quite many companies have besides a physical store also a web store, the latter supporting the first (and vice versa).
Here are some examples of long-tail marketing techniques:
- new media marketing (e.g. through blogs, RSS feeds, podcasts)
- buzz marketing (word-of-mouth online or real world)
- viral marketing (e.g. through YouTube videos, viral e-mails, standalone microsites)
- pay per click & search engine optimization (the marketing of websites on search engines such as Google, Yahoo & Bing by focusing on long-tail keywords which have less competition)
PS: When 90% of the world's population just reads the content on the Internet, then just 9% share and just 1% create the content.
PS: People don't buy propaganda anymore. Instead, they value authenticity and honesty. Therefore, grassroots information creation is popular (blogs :)). Moreover, quite many people trust information written by unknown people and their reviews. Emotions sell!

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