Small Business Marketing

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Business marketing

Business marketing is a marketing practice of individuals or organizations (including commercial businesses, governments and institutions).

It allows them to sell products or services to other companies or organizations that resell them, use them in their products or services or use them to support their works.

It is a way to promote business and improve profit too.

Business marketing is also known as industrial marketing or business-to-business (B2B) marketing.

Business-to-government marketing, while still classified within the B2B discipline due to the sharing of dynamics, does differ slightly.

The practice of a purveyor of goods trading with another may be as old as commerce itself.

In relation to marketing today, its history is more recent.

Michael Morris, Leyland Pitt, and Earl Dwight Honeycutt say that for several years Business marketing took "a back seat" to consumer marketing.[1] This entailed providers of goods or services selling directly to households through mass media and retail channels.

David Lichtenthal (professor of marketing at Zicklin School of Business) notes in his research that Business marketing has existed since the mid-19th century.

He adds that the bulk of research on Business marketing has come in the last 25 years.[2] This began to change in the middle to late 1970s.

Academic periodicals, including the Journal of Business-to-Business marketing[3] and the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing[4] now publish studies on the subject regularly.

Professional conferences on Business marketing are held every year[citation needed] and courses are commonplace at many universities today.

According to Jeremy Kourdi, more than half of marketing majors start their careers in Business marketing rather than consumer marketing.[5] Business markets have derived demand – a demand in them exists because of demand in the consumer market.

An example would be a government wishing to purchase equipment for a nuclear power plant.

Another example would be when items are in popular demand.

The underlying consumer demand that has triggered this is that people are consuming more electricity (by using more household devices such as washing machines and computers).

Business markets do not exist in isolation.

A single consumer market demand can give rise to hundreds of business market demands.

The demand for cars creates demands for castings, forgings, plastic components, steel and tires.

In turn, this creates demands for casting sand, forging machines, mining materials, polymers, rubber.

Each of these growing demands has triggered more demands.

As the spending power of citizens increases, countries generally see an upward wave in their economy.

Cities or countries with growing consumption are generally growing business markets.

Despite the differences between business and consumer marketing from a surface perspective being seemingly obvious, there are more subtle distinctions between the two with substantial ramifications.

Dwyer and Tanner note that Business marketing generally entails shorter and more direct channels of distribution.

While consumer marketing is aimed at large groups through mass media and retailers, the negotiation process between the buyer and seller is more personal in Business marketing.

According to Hutt and Speh (2004), most business marketers commit only a small part of their promotional budgets to advertising, and that is usually through direct mail efforts and trade journals.

While advertising is limited, it often helps the business marketer set up successful sales calls.

Both business to business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing is done with the ultimate intention of making a profit to the seller (business-to-Business marketing).

In B2C, B2B and B2G marketing situations, the marketer must always: These are the fundamental principles of the 4 Ps of marketing (the marketing mix) first documented by E.

Jerome McCarthy in 1960.[6] While "other businesses" might seem like the simple answer, Dwyer and Tanner say business customers fall into four broad categories: companies that consume products or services, government agencies, institutions and resellers.

The first category includes original equipment manufacturers, such as large auto-makers who buy gauges to put in their cars and also small firms owned by 1-2 individuals who purchase products to run their business.

The second category - government agencies, is the biggest.

In fact, the U.S.

government is the biggest single purchaser of products and services in the country, spending more than $300 billion annually.

But this category also includes state and local governments.

The third category, institutions, includes schools, hospitals and nursing homes, churches and charities.

Finally, resellers consist of wholesalers, brokers and industrial distributors.

So what are the meaningful differences between B2B and B2C marketing? A B2C sale is to a "Consumer" i.e.

to a single person who pays for the transaction.

A B2B sale is to a "Business" i.e.

organization or firm.

Given the complexity of organizational structure, B2B sales typically involve multiple decision makers.

While the structure of a B2B sale involving an organization is understood, the psychology of a B2B sale, particularly from a marketing perspective, is not always devoid of human emotion.

According to Bill Blaney (2012), a B2C and a B2B sale can be differentiated by the customer as either a "want" or a "need." While retail consumer sales rarely hinge upon a product or service that customers "need" in order to survive (pharmaceutical and other health industry products notwithstanding), business sales are more directly applied to the growth and survival of that particular company, organization or institution.

As a result, marketing to businesses relies on communication that can provide the company buyer with a level of comfort in the long-term performance of their product or service, and support in its continued efficacy.

The marketing mix is affected by the B2B uniqueness which include complexity of business products and services, diversity of demand and the differing nature of the sales itself (including fewer customers buying larger volumes).[7] Because there are some important subtleties to the B2B sale, the issues are broken down beyond just the original 4 Ps of marketing developed by McCarthy.

B2B branding is different from B2C in some crucial ways, including the need to align corporate brands, divisional brands and product/service brands and to apply brand standards to material often considered “informal” such as email and other electronic correspondence.

It is mainly of large scale when compared with B2C.

Due to the fact that business customers are focused on creating shareholder value for themselves, the cost-saving or revenue-producing benefits of products and services are important to factor in throughout the product development and marketing cycles.

Quite often, the target market for a business product or service is smaller and has more specialized needs reflective of a specific industry or niche.[8] A B2B niche, a segment of the market, can be described in terms of firmographics which requires marketers to have good business intelligence in order to increase response rates.

Regardless of the size of the target market, the business customer is making an organizational purchase decision and the dynamics of this, both procedurally and in terms of how they value the product offered, differ dramatically from the consumer market.

There may be multiple influencers on the purchase decision, which may also have to be marketed to, though they may not be members of the decision making unit.[9] In addition the research and decision making process a B2B buyer undertakes will be more extensive.[10] Finally the purchase information that buyers are researching changes as they go through the buying process (see sample decision map).[11] The business market can be convinced to pay premium prices more often than the consumer market with appropriate pricing structure and payment terms.

This pricing premium is particularly achievable if it is supported with a strong brand.[12] Promotion planning is relatively easy when the decision making habits of the customer base and the vocabulary unique to their segment are known.

Specific trade shows, analysts, publications, blogs and retail/wholesale outlets tend to be fairly common to each industry/product area.

Once it is figured out for the industry/product, writing the promotion plan is simple.

Promotion techniques rely heavily on marketing communications strategies (see below).[13] The importance of a knowledgeable, experienced and effective direct (inside or outside) sales force is often critical in the business market.

When selling through distribution channels also, the number and type of sales forces can vary tremendously and success as a marketer is highly dependent on their success.

One of the distinguishing features of the B2B sales cycle is its comparably longer lead times compared to B2C.[14] The result of this longer lead cycle affects the entire B2B marketing process.

The purpose of B2B marketing communications is to support the organizations' sales effort and improve company profitability.

B2B marketing communications tactics generally include advertising, public relations, direct mail, trade show support, sales collateral, branding, and interactive services such as website design and search engine optimization.

The Business marketing Association[15] is the trade organization that serves B2B marketing professionals.

It was founded in 1922 and offers certification programs, research services, conferences, industry awards and training programs.

An important first step in business to Business marketing is the development of a positioning statement.

This is a statement of what is done and how it will be better and more efficient than competitors.

The next step is to develop messages.

There is usually a primary message that conveys more strongly to customers, what is done and how the customers benefit from it.

This is often supported by a number of secondary messages, each of which may have a number of supporting arguments, facts and figures.

A comprehensive plan to target resources where they will deliver the best return on investment.

The infrastructure to support each stage of the marketing process has to be in place and the entire organization must be geared up to handle the inquiries appropriately.

A standard briefing document is usually a good idea for briefing an agency, as well as focusing the agency on what is important in the campaign.

It serves as a checklist of all the important things to consider as part of the brief.

Typical elements to an agency brief are: objectives, target market, target audience, product, campaign description, product positioning, graphical considerations, corporate guidelines, and any other supporting material and distribution.

The value in results measurement is in tying the marketing campaign back to business results.

Metrics to measure the impact are e.g.

cost per acquisition, cost per lead or tangible changes in customer perception.

Hutt and Speh (2001) note that "business marketers serve the largest market of all; the dollar volume of transactions in the industrial or business market significantly exceeds that of the ultimate consumer market." For example, they note that companies such as GE, DuPont and IBM spend more than $60 million a day on purchases to support their operations.

Dwyer and Tanner (2006) say the purchases made by companies, government agencies and institutions "account for more than half of the economic activity in industrialized countries such as the United States, Canada and France." A 2003 study sponsored by the Business marketing Association estimated that business-to-business marketers in the United States spend about $85 billion a year to promote their goods and services.

The BMA study breaks that spending out as follows (figures are in billions of dollars): The tremendous growth and change that Business marketing is experiencing is largely due to three "revolutions" occurring around the world today, according to Morris, Pitt and Honeycutt (2001).

The Internet has become an integral component of the customer relationship management strategy for business marketers.

Dwyer and Tanner (2006) note that business marketers not only use the Internet to improve customer service but also to gain opportunities with distributors.

According to Anderson and Narus (2004), two new types of resellers have emerged as by-products of the Internet: infomediaries and metamediaries.

Infomediaries, such as Google and Yahoo, are search engine companies that also function as brokers, or middlemen, in the Business marketing world.

They charge companies fees to find information on the Web as well as for banner and pop-up ads and search engine optimization services.

Metamediaries are companies with robust Internet sites that furnish customers with multiproduct, multivendor and multiservice marketspace in return for commissions on sales.

With the advent of b-to-b exchanges, the Internet ushered in an enthusiasm for collaboration that never existed before—and in fact might have even seemed ludicrous 10 years ago.

For example, a decade ago who would have imagined Ford, General Motors and DaimlerChrysler entering into a joint venture? That's exactly what happened after all three of the Big Three began moving their purchases online in the late 1990s.

All three companies were pursuing their own initiatives when they realized the economies of scale they could achieve by pooling their efforts.

Thus was born what then was the world's largest Internet business when Ford's Auto-Xchange and GM's TradeXchange merged, with DaimlerChrysler representing the third partner.

While this exchange did not stand the test of time, others have, including Agentrics, which was formed in 2005 with the merger of WorldWide Retail Exchange and GlobalNetXchange, or GNX.

Agentrics serves more 50 retailers around the world and more than 300 customers, and its members have combined sales of about $1 trillion.

Hutt and Speh (2001) note that such virtual marketplaces enable companies and their suppliers to conduct business in real time as well as simplify purchase processes and cut costs.

B2B design often relies heavily on gradients.

This is seen by some to represent the fluid nature of the sector and the democratic approach to design employed by B2B agencies.

[16]

Small business

Small businesses are privately owned corporations, partnerships, or sole proprietorships that have fewer employees and/or less annual revenue than a regular-sized business or corporation.

Businesses are defined as "small" in terms of being able to apply for government support and qualify for preferential tax policy varies depending on the country and industry.

Small businesses range from fifteen employees under the Australian Fair Work Act 2009, fifty employees according to the definition used by the European Union, and fewer than five hundred employees to qualify for many U.S.

Small business Administration programs.

While Small businesses can also be classified according to other methods, such as annual revenues, shipments, sales, assets, or by annual gross or net revenue or net profits, the number of employees is one of the most widely used measures.

Small businesses in many countries include service or retail operations such as convenience stores, small grocery stores, bakeries or delicatessens, hairdressers or tradespeople (e.g., carpenters, electricians), restaurants, guest houses, photographers, very small-scale manufacturing, and Internet-related businesses such as web design and computer programming.

Some professionals operate as Small businesses, such as lawyers, accountants, dentists, and medical doctors (although these professionals can also work for large organizations or companies).

Small businesses vary a great deal in terms of size, revenues, and regulatory authorization, both within a country and from country to country.

Some Small businesses, such as a home accounting business, may only require a business license.

On the other hand, other Small businesses, such as day cares, retirement homes, and restaurants serving liquor are more heavily regulated and may require inspection and certification from various government authorities.

Researchers and analysts of small or owner-managed businesses generally behave as if nominal organizational forms (e.g., partnership, sole-trader, or corporation), and the consequent legal and accounting boundaries of owner-managed firms are consistently meaningful.

However, owner-managers often do not delineate their behavior to accord with the implied separation between their personal and business interests.

Lenders also often contract around organizational (corporate) boundaries by seeking personal guarantees or accepting privately held assets as collateral.[1] Because of this behavior, researchers and analysts may wish to be cautious in the way they assess the organizational types and implied boundaries in contexts relating to owner-managed firms.

These include analyses that use traditional accounting disclosures, and studies that view the firm as defined by some formal organizational structure.

The concepts of Small business, self-employment, entrepreneurship, and startup overlap to certain degree but also carry important distinctions.

These four concepts often conflated with each other.

Below are the key differences of these concepts in summary: Many Small businesses are sole proprietor operations consisting solely of the owner, but Small businesses can also have a small number of additional employees.

Some Small businesses that offer an existing product, process or service, do not have growth as their primary objective.

However, in contrast, a business that is created with the intention of becoming a big firm is known as a startup.

Startups aim for growth and often offer an innovative product, process or service.

The entrepreneurs of startups typically aim to scale up the company by adding employees, seeking international sales, and so on, a process which is often but not always financed by venture capital and angel investments.

Successful entrepreneurs have the ability to lead a business in a positive direction by proper planning, to adapt to changing environments and understand their own strengths and weakness.[2] Spectacular success stories stem from startups that expanded in growth.

Examples would be Microsoft, Genentech, and Federal Express which all embody the sense of new venture creation on Small business.[3] Self-employment provides works primarily for the founders.

Entrepreneurship refers all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend to grow big or become registered, but startups refer to new businesses that intend to grow beyond the founders, to have employees, and grow large.

The legal definition of "Small business" varies by country and by industry.

In addition to number of employees, methods used to classify small companies include annual sales (turnover), value of assets and net profit (balance sheet), alone or as a combination of factors.

Small businesses are usually not dominant in their field of operation.[10] The table below serves as a useful guide to business size nomenclature.

Business size definitions (by number of employees) In 2016 a study that examined the demographic of Small business owners was published.

The study showed that the median American Small business owners were above the age of 50.

The ages were distributed as: 51% over 50 years old, 33% between the ages 35–49, and 16% being under the age of 35.

As for sex: 55% were owned by males, 36% by females, and 9% being equal ownership of both males and females.

As for race: 72% were white/Caucasian, 13.5% were Latinos, 6.3% were African American, 6.2% were Asian, and 2% as other.

As for educational background: 39% had obtained a bachelor's degree or higher, 33% had some college background, and 28% received at least a high school diploma.[11] The United States census data for the years 2014 and 2015 shows the women's ownership share of Small businesses by firm size.

The data explains percentages owned by women along with the number of employees including the owner.

Generally, the smaller the business, the more likely to be owned by a woman.

The data shows that about 22% of Small businesses with 100-500 employees were owned by women, a percentage that rises the smaller the business.

41% of businesses with just 2-4 employees were run by women, and in businesses with just one person, that person was a woman 51% of the time.[11] Franchising is a way for Small business owners to benefit from the economies of scale of the big corporation (franchiser).

McDonald's and Subway are examples of a franchise.

The Small business owner can leverage a strong brand name and purchasing power of the larger company while keeping their own investment affordable.

However, some franchisees conclude that they suffer the "worst of both worlds" feeling they are too restricted by corporate mandates and lack true independence.

It is an assumption that Small business are just franchisees, but the truth is many franchisers are also Small businesses, Although considered to be a successful way of doing business, literature has proved that there is a high failure rate in franchising as well, especially in UK, where research indicates that out of 1658 franchising companies operating in 1984, only 601 remained in 1998, a mere 36%.[12] A retailers' cooperative is a type of cooperative which employs economies of scale on behalf of its retailer members.

Retailers' cooperatives use their purchasing power to acquire discounts from manufacturers and often share marketing expenses.

They are often recognized as "local groups" because they own their own stores within the community.[13] It is common for locally owned grocery stores, hardware stores, and pharmacies to participate in retailers' cooperatives.

Ace Hardware, True Value, and NAPA are examples of a retailers' cooperative.

Retail cooperatives also allow consumers to supply their own earnings and gain bargaining power outside of the business sector.[13] Retail cooperatives mainly reside within small communities where local businesses are often shut down.[13] Many Small businesses can be started at a low cost and on a part-time basis, while a person continues a regular job with an employer or provides care for family members in the home.

In developing countries, many Small businesses are sole-proprietor operations such as selling products at a market stall or preparing hot food to sell on the street, that provide a small income.

In the 2000s, a Small business is also well suited to Internet marketing; because, it can easily serve specialized niches, something that would have been more difficult prior to the Internet revolution which began in the late 1990s.

Internet marketing gives Small businesses the ability to market with smaller budgets.

Adapting to change is crucial in business and particularly Small business; not being tied to the bureaucratic inertia associated with large corporations, Small businesses can respond to changing marketplace demand more quickly.

Small business proprietors tend to be in closer personal contact with their customers and clients than large corporations, as Small business owners see their customers in person each week.

One study showed that small, local businesses are better for a local economy than the introduction of new chain stores.

By opening up new national level chain stores, the profits of locally owned businesses greatly decrease and many businesses end up failing and having to close.

This creates an exponential effect.

When one store closes, people lose their jobs, other businesses lose business from the failed business, and so on.

In many cases, large firms displace just as many jobs as they create.[14] Independence is another advantage of owning a Small business.

A Small business owner does not have to report to a supervisor or manager.

In addition, many people desire to make their own decisions, take their own risks, and reap the rewards of their efforts.

Small business owners possess the flexibility and freedom to making their own decisions within the constraints imposed by economic and other environmental factors.[15] However, entrepreneurs have to work for very long hours and understand that ultimately their customers are their bosses.

Several organizations in the United States also provide help for the Small business sector, such as the Internal Revenue Service's Small business and Self-Employed One-Stop Resource.[16] Small businesses (often carried out by family members) adjust quicker to the changing conditions; however, they are closed to the absorption of new knowledge and employing new labor from outside.[17] Small businesses often face a variety of problems, some of which are related to their size.

A frequent cause of bankruptcy is under capitalization.

This is often a result of poor planning rather than economic conditions.

It is a common "rule of thumb" that the entrepreneur should have access to a sum of money at least equal to the projected revenue for the first year of business in addition to his or her anticipated expenses.

For example, if the prospective owner thinks that he or she will generate $100,000 in revenues in the first year with $150,000 in start-up expenses, then he or she should have not less than $250,000 available.

Start-up expenses are often grossly underestimated adding to the burden of the business.

Failure to provide this level of funding for the company could leave the owner liable for all of the company's debt should he or she end up in bankruptcy court, under the theory of under capitalization.

In addition to ensuring that the business has enough capital, the Small business owner must also be mindful of contribution margin (sales minus variable costs).

To break even, the business must be able to reach a level of sales where the contribution margin equals fixed costs.

When they first start out, many Small business owners under price their products to a point where even at their maximum capacity, it would be impossible to break even.

Cost controls or price increases often resolve this problem.

In the United States, some of the largest concerns of Small business owners are insurance costs (such as liability and health), rising energy costs, taxes, and tax compliance.[18] In the United Kingdom and Australia, Small business owners tend to be more concerned with percieved excessive governmental red tape.[19] Contracting fraud has been an ongoing problem for Small businesses in the United States.

Small businesses are legally obligated to receive a fair portion (23 percent) of the total value of all the government's prime contracts as mandated by the Small business Act of 1953.

Since 2002, a series of federal investigations have found fraud, abuse, loopholes, and a lack of oversight in federal Small business contracting, which has led to the diversion of billions of dollars in Small business contracts to large corporations.

Another problem for many Small businesses is termed the 'Entrepreneurial Myth' or E-Myth.

The mythic assumption is that an expert in a given technical field will also be expert at running that kind of business.

Additional business management skills are needed to keep a business running smoothly.

Some of this misunderstanding arises from the failure to distinguish between Small business managers as entrepreneurs or capitalists.

While nearly all owner-managers of small firms are obliged to assume the role of capitalist, only a minority will act as entrepreneur.[20] The line between an owner-manager and an entrepreneur can be defined by whether or not their business is growth oriented.

In general, Small business owners are primarily focused on surviving rather than growing; therefore, not experiencing the five stages of the corporate life cycle (birth, growth, maturity, revival, and decline) like an entrepreneur would.[21] Another problem for many Small businesses is the capacity of much larger businesses to influence or sometimes determine their chances for success.

Business networking and social media has been used as a major tool by Small businesses in the UK, but most of them just use a "scatter-gun" approach in a desperate attempt to exploit the market which is not that successful.[22] Over half of small firms lack a business plan, a tool that is considered one of the most important factors for a venture's success.

Business planning is associated with improved growth prospects.

Funders and investors usually require a business plan.

A plan also serves as a strategic planning document for owners and CEOs, which can be used as a "bible" for decision-making [23] An international trade survey indicated that the British share of businesses which are exporting rose from 32% in 2012 to 39% in 2013.

Although this may seem positive, in reality the growth is slow, as Small business owners shy away from exporting due to actual and perceived barriers.

Learning the basics of a foreign language could be the solution to open doors to new trade markets, it is a reality that not all foreign business partners speak English.

China is stated to grow by 7.6% in 2013 and still sadly 95% of business owners who want to export to China have no desire and no knowledge to learn their local language.[24] When Small business fails, the owner may file for bankruptcy.

In most cases, this can be handled through a personal bankruptcy filing.[25] Corporations can file bankruptcy, but if it is out of business and valuable corporate assets are likely to be repossessed by secured creditors, there is little advantage to going to the expense of a corporate bankruptcy.[26][27] Many states offer exemptions for Small business assets so they can continue to operate during and after personal bankruptcy.[28] However, corporate assets are normally not exempt; hence, it may be more difficult to continue operating an incorporated business if the owner files bankruptcy.[29] Researchers have examined Small business failures in some depth, with attempts to model the predictability of failure.[30][31] Small businesses can encounter several problems related to engaging in corporate social responsibility, due to characteristics inherent in their size.

Owners of Small businesses often participate heavily in the day-to-day operations of their companies.

This results in a lack of time for the owner to coordinate socially responsible efforts, such as supporting local charities or not-for-profit activities.[32] Additionally, a Small business owner's expertise often falls outside the realm of socially responsible practices, which can contribute to a lack of participation.

Small businesses also face a form of peer pressure from larger forces in their respective industries, making it difficult to oppose and work against industry expectations.[32] Furthermore, Small businesses undergo stress from shareholder expectations.

Because Small businesses have more personal relationships with their patrons and local shareholders, they must also be prepared to withstand closer scrutiny if they want to share in the benefits of committing to socially responsible practices or not.[32] While Small businesses employ over half the workforce in the US [33] and have been established as a main driving force behind job creation,[34] the quality of the jobs these businesses create has been called into question.

Small businesses generally employ individuals from the Secondary labor market.

As a result, in the U.S., wages are 49% higher for employees of large firms.[34] Additionally, many Small businesses struggle or are unable to provide employees with benefits they would be given at larger firms.

Research from the U.S.

Small business Administration indicates that employees of large firms are 17% more likely to receive benefits including salary, paid leave, paid vacation, bonuses, insurance, and retirement plans.[35] Both lower wages and fewer benefits combine to create a job turnover rate among U.S.

Small businesses that is three times higher than large firms.[34] Employees of Small businesses also must adapt to the higher failure rate of small firms, which means that they are more likely to lose their job due to the firm going under.

In the U.S.

69% of Small businesses last at least two years, but this percentage drops to 51% for firms reaching five years in operation.[33] The U.S.

Small business Administration counts companies with as much as $35.5 million in sales and 1,500 employees as "Small businesses", depending on the industry.

Outside government, companies with less than $7 million in sales and fewer than five hundred employees are widely considered Small businesses.

Cyber crime, in the business world can be broken down into 4 main categories.

They include loss of reputation and consumer confidence, cost of fixing the issue, loss of capital and assets, and legal difficulties that can come from these problems.

Loss of reputation and consumer confidence can be impacted greatly after one attack.

Many Small businesses will struggle to gain confidence and trust in their customers after being known for having problems prior.

Cost of fixing the cyber attack would require experts outside of their field to further the investigation and find the problem.

Being down for a business means losing money at the same time.

This could halt the online operations and mean the business could potentially be down for a long period of time.

Loss of capital and assets ties well in with the cost of fixing the issue.

During a cyber attack, a business may lose their funds for that business.

Worst-case scenario, a business may actually lose all their working capital and funds.

The legal difficulties involved with cyber crime can become pricy and hurt the business itself for not having standard security measures and standards.

Security not only for the business but more importantly the customer should be number one priority when dealing with security protocol.[36] The monetary dollar damage caused by cyber crime in 2016 equalled out to be over 1.33 billion dollars in the United States alone.

In 2016, California alone had over 255 million dollars reported to the IC3.

The average company this year in the United States amounted to 17.36 million dollars in cyber crime attacks.

Certain cyber attacks can vary on how long it takes to solve a problem.

It can take upwards to 69 days for an average everyday attack on a business.

The types of attacks include viruses and malware issues.

Employee activities within the workspace can also render a cyber attack.

Employees using mobile devices or remote work access off the job makes it easier for a cyber attack to occur.[37] Although Small businesses have close relationships with their existing customers, finding new customers and reaching new markets is a major challenge for Small business owners.

Small businesses typically find themselves strapped for time to do marketing, as they have to run the day-to-day aspects of the business.

To create a continual stream of new business and find new clients and customers, they must work on marketing their business continuously.

Low sales (result of poor marketing) is one of the major reasons of Small business failure.

Common marketing techniques for Small business include business networking (e.g., attending Chamber of Commerce events or trade fairs), "word of mouth" promotion by existing customers, customer referrals, Yellow pages directories, television, radio, and outdoor ads (e.g., roadside billboards), print ads, and Internet marketing.

TV ads can be quite expensive, so they are normally intended to create awareness of a product or service.

Another means by which Small businesses can advertise is through the use of "deal of the day" websites such as Groupon and Living Social.

These Internet deals encourage customers to patronize Small businesses.

Many Small business owners find internet marketing more affordable.

Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing are two popular options of getting Small business products or services in front of motivated web searchers.

Social media has also become an affordable route of marketing for Small business.

It is a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing and Small businesses are able to do it themselves or find small social marketing agencies that they can hire out for a small fee.

Statistically, social media marketing has a higher lead-to-close rate than traditional media.[citation needed] Successful online Small business marketers are also adept at utilizing the most relevant keywords in their website content.

Advertising on niche websites that are frequented by potential customers can also be effective, but with the long tail of the Internet, it can be time intensive to advertise on enough websites to garner an effective reach.

Creating a business website has become increasingly affordable with many do-it-yourself programs now available for beginners.

A website can provide significant marketing exposure for Small businesses when marketed through the Internet and other channels.

Some popular services are WordPress, Joomla Squarespace, Wix and EXAI.

Social media has proven to be very useful in gaining additional exposure for many Small businesses.

Many Small business owners use Facebook and Twitter as a way to reach out to their loyal customers to give them news about specials of the day or special coupons, generate repeat business and reach out to new potential clients.

The relational nature of social media, along with its immediacy and twenty-four-hour presence lend intimacy to the relationships Small businesses can have with their customers, while making it more efficient for them to communicate with greater numbers.

Facebook ads are also a very cost-effective way for Small businesses owners to reach a targeted audience with a very specific message.

In addition to the social networking sites, blogs have become a highly effective way for Small businesses to position themselves as experts on issues that are important to their customers.

This can be done with a proprietary blog and/or by using a back-link strategy wherein the marketer comments on other blogs and leaves a link to the Small business' own website.

Posting to a blog about the company's business or service area regularly can increase web traffic to a company website.

Marketing plan In the US, Small businesses (fewer than five hundred employees) account for more than half the non-farm, private GDP and around half the private sector employment.[33] Regarding Small business, the top job provider is those with fewer than ten employees, and those with ten or more but fewer than twenty employees comes in as the second, and those with twenty or more but fewer than one hundred employees comes in as the third (interpolation of data from the following references).[40] The most recent data shows firms with fewer than twenty employees account for slightly more than 18% of the employment.[41] According to "The Family Business Review," "There are approximately seventeen million sole-proprietorship in the US.

It can be argued that a sole-proprietorship (an unincorporated business owned by a single person) is a type of family business" and "there are twenty-two million Small businesses (fewer than five hundred employees) in the US and approximately 14,000 big businesses." Also, it has been found that Small businesses created the newest jobs in communities, "In 1979, David Birch published the first empirical evidence that small firms (fewer than 100 employees) created the most new jobs", and Edmiston claimed that "perhaps the greatest generator of interest in entrepreneurship and Small business is the widely held belief that Small businesses in the United States create most new jobs.

The evidence suggests that Small businesses indeed create a substantial majority of net new jobs in an average year." The U.S.

Small business Administration has found Small businesses have created two-thirds of net new private sector jobs in the US since 2007.[42] Local businesses provide competition to each other and also challenge corporate giants.

Of the 5,369,068 employer firms in 1995, 78.8 percent had fewer than ten employees, and 99.7 percent had fewer than five hundred employees.[43] Small businesses use various sources available for start-up capital: Some Small businesses are further financed through credit card debt—usually a poor choice, given that the interest rate on credit cards is often several times the rate that would be paid on a line of credit at a bank or a bank loan.

Recent research suggests that the use of credit scores in Small business lending by community banks is surprisingly widespread.

Moreover, the scores employed tend to be the consumer credit scores of the Small business owners rather than the more encompassing Small business credit scores that include data on the firms as well as on the owners.[44] Many owners seek a bank loan in the name of their business; however, banks will usually insist on a personal guarantee by the business owner.

In the United States, the Small business Administration (SBA) runs several loan programs that may help a Small business secure loans.

In these programs, the SBA guarantees a portion of the loan to the issuing bank, and thus, relieves the bank of some of the risk of extending the loan to a Small business.

The SBA also requires business owners to pledge personal assets and sign as a personal guarantee for the loan.

The 8(a) Business Development Program assists in the development of Small businesses owned and operated by African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians.[45] Canadian Small businesses can take advantage of federally funded programs and services.

See Federal financing for Small businesses in Canada (grants and loans).

On October 2010, Alejandro Cremades and Tanya Prive founded the first equity crowdfunding platform[46] for Small businesses in history as an alternative source of financing.

The platform operates under the name of Rock The Post.[47] Small businesses often join or come together to form organizations to advocate for their causes or to achieve economies of scale that larger businesses benefit from, such as the opportunity to buy cheaper health insurance in bulk.

These organizations include local or regional groups such as Chambers of Commerce and independent business alliances, as well as national or international industry-specific organizations.

Such groups often serve a dual purpose, as business networks to provide marketing and connect members to potential sales leads and suppliers, and also as advocacy groups, bringing together many Small businesses to provide a stronger voice in regional or national politics.

In the case of independent business alliances, promoting the value of locally owned, independent business (not necessarily small) through public education campaigns is integral to their work.

The largest regional Small business group in the United States is the Council of Smaller Enterprises, located in Greater Cleveland.[48] United Kingdom trade and Investment (www.ukti.gov.in) gives out research in different markets around the world, also research in program planning and promotional activities to exporters.

The BEXA (British Exporters Association) role is to connect new exporters to expert services, it can provide details about regional export contacts, who could be made informally to discuss issues.

Trade associations and all major banks could often provide links to international groups in foreign markets, some could also help set up joint venture, trade fairs etc.[49] A number of youth organizations, including 4-H, Junior Achievement, and Scouting have special interactive programs and training to help young people run their own Small business under adult supervision.[50]

Small Business Administration

The U.S.

Small Business Administration (SBA) is a United States government agency that provides support to entrepreneurs and small businesses.

The mission of the Small Business Administration is "to maintain and strengthen the nation's economy by enabling the establishment and viability of small businesses and by assisting in the economic recovery of communities after disasters".

The agency's activities have been summarized as the "3 Cs" of capital, contracts and counseling.[3] SBA loans are made through banks, credit unions and other lenders who partner with the SBA.

The SBA provides a government-backed guarantee on part of the loan.

Under the Recovery Act and the Small Business Jobs Act, SBA loans were enhanced to provide up to a 90 percent guarantee in order to strengthen access to capital for small businesses after credit froze in 2008.

The agency had record lending volumes in late 2010.[4] SBA helps lead the federal government's efforts to deliver 23 percent of prime federal contracts to small businesses.

Small business contracting programs include efforts to ensure that certain federal contracts reach woman-owned and service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses as well as businesses participating in programs such as the 8(a) Business Development Program and HUBZone.[5] In March 2018 the SBA launched the SBA Franchise Directory, aiming to connect entrepreneurs to lines of credit and capital in order to grow their businesses.[6] SBA has at least one office in each U.S.

state.

In addition, the agency provides grants to support counseling partners, including approximately 900 Small Business Development Centers (often located at colleges and universities), 110 Women's Business Centers, and SCORE, a volunteer mentor corps of retired and experienced business leaders with approximately 350 chapters.

These counseling services provide services to over 1 million entrepreneurs and small business owners annually.

President Obama announced in January 2012 that he would elevate the SBA into the Cabinet, a position it last held during the Clinton administration,[7] thus making the Administrator of the Small Business Administration a cabinet-level position.

The SBA was created on July 30, 1953, by President Eisenhower with the signing of the Small Business Act, currently codified at 15 U.S.C. ch.

14A.

The Small Business Act was originally enacted as the "Small Business Act of 1953" in Title II (67 Stat. 232) of Pub.L. 83–163 (ch.

282, 67 Stat. 230, July 30, 1953); The "Reconstruction Finance Corporation Liquidation Act" was Title I, which abolished the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC).

The Small Business Act Amendments of 1958 (Pub.L. 85–536, 72 Stat. 384, enacted July 18, 1958) withdrew Title II as part of that act and made it a separate act to be known as the "Small Business Act".

Its function was and is to "aid, counsel, assist and protect, insofar as is possible, the interests of small business concerns".

The SBA has survived a number of threats to its existence.

In 1996, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives planned to eliminate the agency.[8] It survived and went on to receive a record high budget in 2000.[9] Renewed efforts by the Bush Administration to end the SBA loan program met congressional resistance, although the SBA's budget was repeatedly cut, and in 2004 certain expenditures were frozen.

The Obama administration Supported SBA budgets and strengthened it through The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

SBA budgets were further strengthened by the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010, and in 2011, President Obama announced that the SBA will double its current rate in rural small businesses to $350 million in the next 5 years.

The Trump Administration has supported the SBA budget.

Significant supplemental appropriations for the agency strengthened SBA lending through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010.[10] The SBA has an Administrator and a Deputy Administrator.

It has an associate administrator or director for the following offices:[11] Senate-confirmed appointees include: Administrator, Deputy Administrator, Chief Counsel for Advocacy, and Inspector General.

The 7(a) Loan Guarantee Program is designed to help entrepreneurs start or expand their small businesses.

The program makes capital available to small businesses through bank and non-bank lending institutions.[12] The Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 increased the maximum size of these loans, indefinitely, from $2 million to $5 million.

Homeowners and renters are eligible for long-term, low-interest loans to rebuild or repair a damaged property to pre-disaster condition.[13] Businesses are also eligible for long-term, low-interest loans to recover from declared disasters.[14] Disaster Relief Loans are often approved within 21 days.

However, after Hurricane Katrina the SBA processed applications, on average, in about 74 days.[15] If a business with a Disaster Relief Loan defaults on the loan, and the business is closed, the SBA will pursue the business owner to liquidate all personal assets, to satisfy an outstanding balance.

The IRS will withhold any tax refund expected by the former business owner and apply the amount toward the loan balance.

The Microloan program provides direct loans to qualified nonprofit intermediary lenders who, in turn, provide “microloans” of up to $50,000 to small businesses and nonprofit child care centers.

It also provides marketing, management, and technical assistance to microloan borrowers and potential borrowers.[16] Approximately 900 Small Business Development Center sites are funded through a combination of state and SBA support in the form of matching grants.

Typically, SBDCs are co-located at community colleges, state universities, and/or other entrepreneurial hubs.

Cole Browne leads the SBA in purchasing of new Development Center sites.

Women's Business Centers (WBCs) represent a national network of over 100 non-profit educational centers throughout the United States and its territories, funded in part through SBA support.[17] The maximum SBA grant for a WBC is $150,000 per year, although most centers receive less.[17] WBCs are designed to assist women in starting and growing small businesses, though their services are available to all.[18] WBCs help women succeed in business by providing training, mentoring, business development, and financing opportunities to over 100,000 women entrepreneurs annually across the nation.[17] Women’s Business Centers are mandated to serve a significant number of socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.[18] Research conducted by the Association of Women’s Business Centers indicates that 64% of WBC clients in 2012 were low-income, 39% were persons of color, and 70% were nascent businesses.[19] WBC services are provided in more than 35 languages, with 64% of WBCs providing services in two or more languages.

In addition to business training services, 68% of WBCs provide mentoring services, and 45% provide microloans.[19] SCORE, the nation's largest network of volunteer, expert business mentors, was founded in 1964[20] as a resource partner of the U.S.

Small Business Administration.

SCORE has since educated more than 10 million current and aspiring U.S.

small business owners through its free mentoring and free and low-cost workshops.[20] In 2016, SCORE’s more than 10,000 volunteer mentors helped their 125,000 clients create 54,072 small businesses, adding 78,691 non-owner jobs to the U.S.

economy.[20] SCORE’s core service offering is its mentoring program, through which volunteer mentors (all experienced in entrepreneurship and related areas of expertise) provide free counsel to small business clients.

Mentors, operating out of 300 chapters nationwide,[20] work with their clients to address issues related to starting and growing a business, including writing business plans, developing products, conceiving marketing strategies, hiring staff, and more.

Clients access their mentors via free, ongoing face-to-face mentoring sessions or through email or video mentoring services.

In addition to mentoring, SCORE also offers free and low-cost educational workshops each year, both online and in-person.

In 2016, clients attended 119,957 online workshop sessions, while 237,712 local workshop attendees benefited from SCORE’s in-person educational programming.[20] SBA's Office of Veteran Business Development operates twenty-two[21] Veteran Business Outreach Centers[22] through grants and cooperative agreements with organizations which provide technical assistance to businesses owned by veterans and family members.

VBOCs also provide instructors for the SBA's program Boots to Business.[23] The SBA also supports regional innovation clusters across the country.[24] The 8(a) Business Development Program assists in the development of small businesses owned and operated by individuals who are socially and economically disadvantaged, such as women and minorities.

Applicants must provide evidence of economic disadvantage (net worth under $250,000K), and must write a statement of personal experiences in combination with evidence to sufficiently demonstrate social disadvantage.

The following groups are presumed socially disadvantaged through SBA policy and do not have to submit a social disadvantage narrative when applying for the program: Black Americans; Hispanic Americans; Native Americans (American Indians, Eskimos, Aleuts, or Native Hawaiians); Asian Pacific Americans (persons with origins from Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Japan, China (including Hong Kong), Taiwan, Laos, Cambodia (Kampuchea), Vietnam, Korea, The Philippines, U.S.

Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (Republic of Palau), Republic of the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Samoa, Macao, Fiji, Tonga, Kiribati, Tuvalu, or Nauru); Subcontinent Asian Americans (persons with origins from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Maldives Islands or Nepal).

The 8(a) Program opens the doors for disadvantaged firms to grow and develop for a period of 9-years.

It has increased jobs for thousands of people across the Nation, and many of the successful firms had impacted their communities with internships, college funding, and more.

Annually, of the government's $99B in small business contracts, 8(a) firms are awarded 5% of contracts.

In 2011, the SBA, along with the FBI and the IRS, uncovered a massive scheme to defraud this program.

Civilian employees of the U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers, working in concert with an employee of Alaska Native Corporation Eyak Technology LLC allegedly submitted fraudulent bills to the program, totaling over 20 million dollars, and kept the money for their own use.[25] The Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA) is an independent office within the SBA established in 1983 to provide an independent, quasi-judicial appeal against certain SBA program decisions.[26] OHA is able to hear appeals regarding: The OHA publishes unredacted final decisions within a few days of each decision being issued.[27] The Cato Institute has challenged the justification of the federal government in intervening in credit markets.[28][29] Among other criticisms, Cato argues that "the SBA benefits a relatively tiny number of small businesses at the expense of the vast majority of small business that do not receive government assistance.

SBA subsidies also represent a form of corporate welfare for the banking industry." Cato notes that the failure rate of all SBA loans from 2001 to 2010 is 19.4%,[28] contributing to a cost to taxpayers of $6.2 billion in 2011.[30] In 2005, SBA Inspector General Report 5-15 stated, "One of the most important challenges facing the Small Business Administration and the entire Federal government today is that large businesses are receiving small business procurement awards and agencies are receiving credit for these awards."[31] In October 2009, the Government Accountability Office released Report 10-108 which stated, "By failing to hold firms accountable, SBA and contracting agencies have sent a message to the contracting community that there is no punishment or consequences for committing fraud."[32] On April 17, 2020, the SBA approved $20 million in forgivable loans to Ruth's Hospitality Group, a publicly traded company, as part of the Payroll Protection Program.

[33] While accommodation and franchise businesses were allowed to participate in Payroll Protection Program per its qualification requirements, the loan made to Ruth's Hospitality Group represents a departure from the SBA's mission to serve small businesses.

This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Small Business Administration.

This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Archives and Records Administration.

Marketing management

Marketing management is the organizational discipline which focuses on the practical application of marketing orientation, techniques and methods inside enterprises and organizations and on the management of a firm's marketing resources and activities.

Marketing management employs tools from economics and competitive strategy to analyze the industry context in which the firm operates.

These include Porter's five forces, analysis of strategic groups of competitors, value chain analysis and others.[1] In competitor analysis, marketers build detailed profiles of each competitor in the market, focusing on their relative competitive strengths and weaknesses using SWOT analysis.

Marketing managers will examine each competitor's cost structure, sources of profits, resources and competencies, competitive positioning and product differentiation, degree of vertical integration, historical responses to industry developments, and other factors.

Marketing management often conduct market research and marketing research to perform marketing analysis.

Marketers employ a variety of techniques to conduct market research, but some of the more common include: Marketing managers may also design and oversee various environmental scanning and competitive intelligence processes to help identify trends and inform the company's marketing analysis.

A brand audit is a thorough examination of a brand's current position in an industry compared to its competitors and the examination of its effectiveness.

When it comes to brand auditing, six questions should be carefully examined and assessed: When a business is conducting a brand audit, the goal is to uncover business’ resource strengths, deficiencies, best market opportunities, outside threats, future profitability, and its competitive standing in comparison to existing competitors.

A brand audit establishes the strategic elements needed to improve brand position and competitive capabilities within the industry.

Once a brand is audited, any business that ends up with a strong financial performance and market position is more likely than not to have a properly conceived and effectively executed brand strategy.

A brand audit examines whether a business’ share of the market is increasing, decreasing, or stable.

It determines if the company's margin of profit is improving, decreasing, and how much it is in comparison to the profit margin of established competitors.

Additionally, a brand audit investigates trends in a business’ net profits, the return on existing investments, and its established economic value.

It determines whether or not the business’ entire financial strength and credit rating is improving or getting worse.

This kind of audit also assesses a business’ image and reputation with its customers.

Furthermore, a brand audit seeks to determine whether or not a business is perceived as an industry leader in technology, offering product or service innovations, along with exceptional customer service, among other relevant issues that customers use to decide on a brand of preference.

A brand audit usually focuses on a business’ strengths and resource capabilities because these are the elements that enhance its competitiveness.

A business’ competitive strengths can exist in several forms.

Some of these forms include skilled or pertinent expertise, valuable physical assets, valuable human assets, valuable organizational assets, valuable intangible assets, competitive capabilities, achievements and attributes that position the business into a competitive advantage, and alliances or cooperative ventures.

The basic concept of a brand audit is to determine whether a business’ resource strengths are competitive assets or competitive liabilities.

This type of audit seeks to ensure that a business maintains a distinctive competence that allows it to build and reinforce its competitive advantage.

What's more, a successful brand audit seeks to establish what a business capitalizes on best, its level of expertise, resource strengths, and strongest competitive capabilities, while aiming to identify a business’ position and future performance.

Two customer segments are often selected as targets because they score highly on two dimensions: A commonly cited definition of marketing is simply "meeting needs profitably".[3] The implication of selecting target segments is that the business will subsequently allocate more resources to acquire and retain customers in the target segment(s) than it will for other, non-targeted customers.

In some cases, the firm may go so far as to turn away customers who are not in its target segment.

The doorman at a swanky nightclub, for example, may deny entry to unfashionably dressed individuals because the business has made a strategic decision to target the "high fashion" segment of nightclub patrons.

In conjunction with targeting decisions, marketing managers will identify the desired positioning they want the company, product, or brand to occupy in the target customer's mind.

This positioning is often an encapsulation of a key benefit the company's product or service offers that is differentiated and superior to the benefits offered by competitive products.[4] For example, Volvo has traditionally positioned its products in the automobile market in North America in order to be perceived as the leader in "safety", whereas BMW has traditionally positioned its brand to be perceived as the leader in "performance".

Ideally, a firm's positioning can be maintained over a long period of time because the company possesses, or can develop, some form of sustainable competitive advantage.[5] The positioning should also be sufficiently relevant to the target segment such that it will drive the purchasing behavior of target customers.[4] To sum up,the marketing branch of a company is to deal with the selling and popularity of its products among people and its customers, as the central and eventual goal of a company is customer satisfaction and the return of revenue.

If the company has obtained an adequate understanding of the customer base and its own competitive position in the industry, marketing managers are able to make their own key strategic decisions and develop a marketing strategy designed to maximize the revenues and profits of the firm.

The selected strategy may aim for any of a variety of specific objectives, including optimizing short-term unit margins, revenue growth, market share, long-term profitability, or other goals.

After the firm's strategic objectives have been identified, the target market selected, and the desired positioning for the company, product or brand has been determined, marketing managers focus on how to best implement the chosen strategy.

Traditionally, this has involved implementation planning across the "4 Ps": product management, pricing (at what price slot does a producer position a product, e.g.

low, medium or high price), place (the place or area where the products are going to be sold, which could be local, regional, countrywide or international) (i.e.

sales and distribution channels), and promotion.

Taken together, the company's implementation choices across the 4 P's are often described as the marketing mix, meaning the mix of elements the business will employ to "go to market" and execute the marketing strategy.

The overall goal for the marketing mix is to consistently deliver a compelling value proposition that reinforces the firm's chosen positioning, builds customer loyalty and brand equity among target customers, and achieves the firm's marketing and financial objectives.

In many cases, Marketing management will develop a marketing plan to specify how the company will execute the chosen strategy and achieve the business' objectives.

The content of marketing plans varies for each firm, but commonly includes: More broadly, marketing managers work to design and improve the effectiveness of core marketing processes, such as new product development, brand management, marketing communications, and pricing.

Marketers may employ the tools of business process re-engineering to ensure these processes are properly designed, and use a variety of process management techniques to keep them operating smoothly.

Effective execution may require management of both internal resources and a variety of external vendors and service providers, such as the firm's advertising agency.

Marketers may therefore coordinate with the company's Purchasing department on the procurement of these services.

Under the area of marketing agency management (i.e.

working with external marketing agencies and suppliers) are techniques such as agency performance evaluation, scope of work, incentive compensation, RFx's and storage of agency information in a supplier database.

Marketing management employs a variety of metrics to measure progress against objectives.

It is the responsibility of marketing managers to ensure that the execution of marketing programs achieves the desired objectives and does so in a cost-efficient manner.

Marketing management therefore often makes use of various organizational control systems, such as sales forecasts, and sales force and reseller incentive programs, sales force management systems, and customer relationship management tools (CRM).

Some software vendors have begun using the term marketing operations management or marketing resource management to describe systems that facilitate an integrated approach for controlling marketing resources.

In some cases, these efforts may be linked to various supply chain management systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), material requirements planning (MRP), efficient consumer response (ECR), and inventory management systems.

Globalization has led some firms to market beyond the borders of their home countries, making international marketing a part of those firms' marketing strategy.[6] Marketing managers are often responsible for influencing the level, timing, and composition of customer demand.

In part, this is because the role of a marketing manager (or sometimes called managing marketer in small- and medium-sized enterprises) can vary significantly based on a business's size, corporate culture, and industry context.

For example, in a small- and medium-sized enterprises, the managing marketer may contribute in both managerial and marketing operations roles for the company brands.

In a large consumer products company, the marketing manager may act as the overall general manager of his or her assigned product.[7] To create an effective, cost-efficient Marketing management strategy, firms must possess a detailed, objective understanding of their own business and the market in which they operate.[2] In analyzing these issues, the discipline of Marketing management often overlaps with the related discipline of strategic planning.

Multi-level marketing

Multi-level marketing (MLM), also called pyramid selling,[1][2] network marketing,[2][3] and referral marketing,[4] is a marketing strategy for the sale of products or services where the revenue of the MLM company is derived from a non-salaried workforce selling the company's products/services, while the earnings of the participants are derived from a pyramid-shaped or binary compensation commission system.

Although each MLM company dictates its own specific financial compensation plan for the payout of any earnings to their respective participants, the common feature that is found across all MLMs is that the compensation plans theoretically pay out to participants only from two potential revenue streams.

The first is paid out from commissions of sales made by the participants directly to their own retail customers.

The second is paid out from commissions based upon the wholesale purchases made by other distributors below the participant who have recruited those other participants into the MLM; in the organizational hierarchy of MLMs, these participants are referred to as one's down line distributors.[5] MLM salespeople are, therefore, expected to sell products directly to end-user retail consumers by means of relationship referrals and word of mouth marketing, but most importantly they are incentivized to recruit others to join the company's distribution chain as fellow salespeople so that these can become down line distributors.[3][6][7] According to a report that studied the business models of 350 MLMs, published on the Federal Trade Commission's website, at least 99% of people who join MLM companies lose money.[8][9] Nonetheless, MLMs function because downline participants are encouraged to hold onto the belief that they can achieve large returns, while the statistical improbability of this is de-emphasised.

MLMs have been made illegal or otherwise strictly regulated in some jurisdictions as merely variations of the traditional pyramid scheme, including in mainland China.[10][11] The overwhelming majority of MLM participants (most sources estimated to be over 99.25% of all MLM distributors) participate at either an insignificant or nil net profit.[12] Indeed, the largest proportion of participants must operate at a net loss (after expenses are deducted) so that the few individuals in the uppermost level of the MLM pyramid can derive their significant earnings.

Said earnings are then emphasized by the MLM company to all other participants to encourage their continued participation at a continuing financial loss.[13] Many MLM companies do generate billions of dollars in annual revenue and hundreds of millions of dollars in annual profit.

However, the profits of the MLM company are accrued at the detriment to the majority of the company's constituent workforce (the MLM participants).

Only some of said profit is then significantly shared with individual participants at the top of the MLM distributorship pyramid.

The earnings of those top few participants is emphasized and championed at company seminars and conferences, thus creating an illusion of how one can potentially become financially successful if they become a participant in the MLM.

This is then advertised by the MLM company to recruit more distributors to participate in the MLM with a false anticipation of earning margins which are in reality merely theoretical and statistically improbable.[14] Although an MLM company holds out those few top individual participants as evidence of how participation in the MLM could lead to success, the MLM business model depends on the failure of the overwhelming majority of all other participants, through the injecting of money from their own pockets, so that it can become the revenue and profit of the MLM company, of which the MLM company shares only a small proportion of it to a few individuals at the very top of the MLM participant pyramid.

Participants, other than the few individuals at the top, provide nothing more than their own financial loss for the company's own profit and the profit of the top few individual participants.[15] The main sales pitch of MLM companies to their participants and prospective participants is not the MLM company's products or services.

The products/services are largely peripheral to the MLM model.

Rather, the true sales pitch and emphasis is on a confidence given to participants of potential financial independence through participation in the MLM, luring with phrases like "the lifestyle you deserve" or "independent distributor."[16] Erik German's memoir My Father's Dream documents the real life failures of German's father as he is lured into "get-rich-quick" schemes such as Amway.[17] The memoir illustrates the Multi-level marketing sales principle known as "selling the dream".[18] Although emphasis is always made on the potential of success and the positive life change that "might" or "could" (not "will" or "can") result, it is only in otherwise difficult to find disclosure statements (or at the very least, difficult to read and interpret disclosure statements), that MLM participants are given fine print disclaimers that they as participants should not rely on the earning results of other participants in the highest levels of the MLM participant pyramid as an indication of what they should expect to earn.

MLMs very rarely emphasize the extreme likelihood of failure, or the extreme likelihood of financial loss, from participation in MLM.

MLMs are also seldom forthcoming about the fact that any significant success of the few individuals at the top of the MLM participant pyramid is in fact dependent on the continued financial loss and failure of all other participants below them in the MLM pyramid.[citation needed] MLMs have been made illegal in some jurisdictions as a mere variation of the traditional pyramid scheme, including in China.[10][11] In jurisdictions where MLMs have not been made illegal, many illegal pyramid schemes attempt to present themselves as MLM businesses.[7] Given that the overwhelming majority of MLM participants cannot realistically make a net profit, let alone a significant net profit, but instead overwhelmingly operate at net losses, some sources have defined all MLMs as a type of pyramid scheme, even if they have not been made illegal like traditional pyramid schemes through legislative statutes.[4][19][20] MLMs are designed to make profit for the owners/shareholders of the company, and a few individual participants at the top levels of the MLM pyramid of participants.

According to the U.S.

Federal Trade Commission (FTC), some MLM companies already constitute illegal pyramid schemes even by the narrower existing legislation, exploiting members of the organization.[21] Companies that use the MLM business model have been a frequent subject of criticism and lawsuits.

Legal claims against MLMs have included, among other things: "Network marketing" and "Multi-level marketing" (MLM) have been described by author Dominique Xardel as being synonymous, with it being a type of direct selling.[6] Some sources emphasize that Multi-level marketing is merely one form of direct selling, rather than being direct selling.[23][24] Other terms that are sometimes used to describe Multi-level marketing include "word-of-mouth marketing", "interactive distribution", and "relationship marketing".

Critics have argued that the use of these and other different terms and "buzzwords" is an effort to distinguish Multi-level marketing from illegal Ponzi schemes, chain letters, and consumer fraud scams.[25] The Direct Selling Association (DSA), a lobbying group for the MLM industry, reported that in 1990 only 25% of DSA members used the MLM business model.

By 1999, this had grown to 77.3%.[26] By 2009, 94.2% of DSA members were using MLM, accounting for 99.6% of sellers, and 97.1% of sales.[27] Companies such as Avon, Electrolux, Tupperware, and Kirby were all originally single-level marketing companies, using that traditional and uncontroversial direct selling business model (distinct from MLM) to sell their goods.

However, they later introduced multi-level compensation plans, becoming MLMs.[23] The DSA has approximately 200 members[28] while it is estimated there are over 1,000 firms using Multi-level marketing in the United States alone.[29] The origin of Multi-level marketing is often disputed; but Multi-level marketing style businesses existed in the 1920s,[30] 1930s California Vitamin Company,[31] (later named Nutrilite) or California Perfume Company (renamed as "Avon Products").[32] Independent non-salaried participants, referred to as distributors (variously called "associates", "independent business owners", "independent agents", etc.), are authorized to distribute the company's products or services.

They are awarded their own immediate retail profit from customers plus commission from the company, not downlines, through a Multi-level marketing compensation plan, which is based upon the volume of products sold through their own sales efforts as well as that of their downline organization.

Independent distributors develop their organizations by either building an active consumer network, who buy direct from the company, or by recruiting a downline of independent distributors who also build a consumer network base, thereby expanding the overall organization.[citation needed] The combined number of recruits from these cycles are the sales force which is referred to as the salesperson's "downline".

This "downline" is the pyramid in MLM's multiple level structure of compensation.[6] Several sources have commented on the income level of specific MLMs or MLMs in general: MLM businesses operate in all 50 U.S.

states.

Businesses may use terms such as "affiliate marketing" or "home-based business franchising".

Many pyramid schemes attempt to present themselves as legitimate MLM businesses.[7] Some sources say that all MLMs are essentially pyramid schemes, even if they are legal.[4][19][20] The U.S.

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) states: "Steer clear of multilevel marketing plans that pay commissions for recruiting new distributors.

They're actually illegal pyramid schemes.

Why is pyramiding dangerous? Because plans that pay commissions for recruiting new distributors inevitably collapse when no new distributors can be recruited.

And when a plan collapses, most people—except perhaps those at the very top of the pyramid—end up empty-handed."[44] In a 2004 Staff Advisory letter to the Direct Selling Association, the FTC states:Much has been made of the personal, or internal, consumption issue in recent years.

In fact, the amount of internal consumption in any multi-level compensation business does not determine whether or not the FTC will consider the plan a pyramid scheme.

The critical question for the FTC is whether the revenues that primarily support the commissions paid to all participants are generated from purchases of goods and services that are not simply incidental to the purchase of the right to participate in a money-making venture.[45] The Federal Trade Commission warns "Not all multilevel marketing plans are legitimate.

Some are pyramid schemes.

It's best not to get involved in plans where the money you make is based primarily on the number of distributors you recruit and your sales to them, rather than on your sales to people outside the plan who intend to use the products."[21] The Federal Trade Commission issued a decision, In re Amway Corp., in 1979 in which it indicated that Multi-level marketing was not illegal per se in the United States.

However, Amway was found guilty of price fixing (by effectively requiring "independent" distributors to sell at the same fixed price) and making exaggerated income claims.[46][47] The FTC advises that Multi-level marketing organizations with greater incentives for recruitment than product sales are to be viewed skeptically.

The FTC also warns that the practice of getting commissions from recruiting new members is outlawed in most states as "pyramiding".[48] Walter J.

Carl stated in a 2004 Western Journal of Communication article that "MLM organizations have been described by some as cults (Butterfield, 1985),[49] pyramid schemes (Fitzpatrick & Reynolds, 1997),[50] or organizations rife with misleading, deceptive, and unethical behavior (Carter, 1999),[51] such as the questionable use of evangelical discourse to promote the business (Höpfl & Maddrell, 1996),[52] and the exploitation of personal relationships for financial gain (Fitzpatrick & Reynolds, 1997)".[50][53] In China, volunteers working to rescue people from the schemes have been physically attacked.[54] MLMs are also criticized for being unable to fulfill their promises for the majority of participants due to basic conflicts with Western cultural norms.[55] There are even claims that the success rate for breaking even or even making money are far worse than other types of businesses:[56] "The vast majority of MLMs are recruiting MLMs, in which participants must recruit aggressively to profit.

Based on available data from the companies themselves, the loss rate for recruiting MLMs is approximately 99.9%; i.e., 99.9% of participants lose money after subtracting all expenses, including purchases from the company."[56] In part, this is because encouraging recruits to further "recruit people to compete with [them]"[4] leads to "market saturation."[22] It has also been claimed "(b)y its very nature, MLM is completely devoid of any scientific foundations."[57] Because of the encouraging of recruits to further recruit their competitors, some people have even gone so far as to say at best modern MLMs are nothing more than legalized pyramid schemes[4][19][20] with one stating "Multi-level marketing companies have become an accepted and legally sanctioned form of pyramid scheme in the United States"[19] while another states "Multi-level marketing, a form of Pyramid Scheme, is not necessarily fraudulent."[20] In October 2010 it was reported that multilevel marketing companies were being investigated by a number of state attorneys general amid allegations that salespeople were primarily paid for recruiting and that more recent recruits cannot earn anything near what early entrants do.[58] Industry critic Robert L.

FitzPatrick has called Multi-level marketing "the Main Street bubble" that will eventually burst.[59] Multi-level marketing (simplified Chinese: 传销; traditional Chinese: 傳銷; pinyin: chuán xiāo; lit.: 'spread sell') was first introduced to mainland China by American, Taiwanese, and Japanese companies following the Chinese economic reform of 1978.

This rise in Multi-level marketing's popularity coincided with economic uncertainty and a new shift towards individual consumerism.

Multi-level marketing was banned on the mainland by the government in 1998, citing social, economic, and taxation issues.[60] Further regulation "Prohibition of Chuanxiao" (where MLM is a type of Chuanxiao was enacted in 2005, clause 3 of Chapter 2 of the regulation states having downlines is illegal).[11] O'Regan wrote 'With this regulation China makes clear that while Direct Sales is permitted in the mainland, Multi-level marketing is not'.[10] MLM companies have been trying to find ways around China's prohibitions, or have been developing other methods, such as direct sales, to take their products to China through retail operations.

The Direct Sales Regulations limit direct selling to cosmetics, health food, sanitary products, bodybuilding equipment and kitchen utensils.

And the Regulations require Chinese or foreign companies ("FIEs") who intend to engage into direct sale business in mainland China to apply for and obtain direct selling license from the Ministry of Commerce ("MOFCOM").[61] In 2016, there are 73 companies, including domestic and foreign companies, that have obtained the direct selling license.[62] Some Multi-level marketing sellers have circumvented this ban by establishing addresses and bank accounts in Hong Kong, where the practice is legal, while selling and recruiting on the mainland.[10][63] It was not until August 23, 2005 that the State Council promulgated rules that dealt specifically with direct sale operation- Administration of Direct Sales (entered into effect on 1 December 2005) and the Regulations for the Prohibition of Chuanxiao (entered into effect on 1 November 2005).

When direct selling is allowed, it will only be permitted under the most stringent requirements, in order to ensure the operations are not pyramid schemes, MLM, or fly-by-night operations.

In 2015, the Government of Bangladesh banned all types of domestic and foreign MLM trade in Bangladesh.[64] Many Islamic jurists have considered MLM trade to be prohibited or haram, the reasons behind which are as follows: In this process, followings are related - exchange without labor and labour without exchange, contract on another contract or condition on another condition, similarity with interest, similarity with gambling, widespread uncertainty of profits and losses, not everyone benefiting equally, financial fraud and torture, lying and exaggeration, etc.[65][66]

Small Business Saturday

Small Business Saturday is an American shopping holiday held during the Saturday after US Thanksgiving during one of the busiest shopping periods of the year.

This Saturday is always the last one in November, so falls between November 24 and November 30.

First observed in the United States on November 27, 2010, Small Business Saturday is a counterpart to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which feature big box retail and e-commerce stores respectively.

By contrast, Small Business Saturday encourages holiday shoppers to patronize brick and mortar businesses that are small and local.

Small Business Saturday is a registered trademark of American Express.[1] The first event was created by American Express, in partnership with the non-profit National Trust for Historic Preservation, Boston Mayor Thomas M.

Menino, and Roslindale Village Main Street.

In 2010, the holiday was promoted by American Express via a nationwide radio and television advertising campaign.

That year Amex bought advertising inventory on Facebook, which it in turn gave to its small merchant account holders,[2] and also gave rebates to new customers to promote the event.[3][4] American Express publicized the initiative using social media, advertising, and public relations.

Many local politicians and small business groups in the United States issued proclamations concerning the campaign,[5][6][7] which generated more than one million Facebook "like" registrations and nearly 30,000 tweets under the Twitter hashtags #smallbusinesssaturday and #smallbizsaturday.[8] The Twitter hashtag #SmallBusinessSaturday has existed since early 2010 and was used to promote small businesses on any Saturday (not solely that Saturday between Black Friday and Cyber Monday).

The hashtag is used in a manner similar to #FollowFriday to highlight favorite local businesses.

Additionally, some small business owners have run marketing specials on the November Small Business Saturday to help capitalize on the boost in foot or online traffic, as most customers in this time period are actively shopping for the holidays.

Small Business Saturday UK began in the United Kingdom in 2013 after the success of Small Business Saturday in the United States of America.[9]

Marketing

Marketing is the study and management of exchange relationships.[1][2] It is the business process of identifying, anticipating and satisfying customers' needs and wants.

Because Marketing is used to attract customers, it is one of the primary components of business management and commerce.[3] Marketers can direct product to other businesses (B2B Marketing) or directly to consumers (B2C Marketing).[4] Regardless of who is being marketed to, several factors, including the perspective the marketers will use.

These market orientations determine how marketers will approach the planning stage of Marketing.[5] This leads into the Marketing mix, which outlines the specifics of the product and how it will be sold.[6][7] This can in turn be affected by the environment surrounding the product [8], the results of Marketing research and market research[9], and the characteristics of the product's target market.[10] Once these factors are determined, marketers must then decide what methods will be used to market the product.[4] This decision is based on the factors analyzed in the planning stage as well as where the product is in the product life cycle.[4] Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large".[11] The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market with goods for sale.

From a sales process engineering perspective, Marketing is "a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction".[12] Philip Kotler defined Marketing as "Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process".[13] and a decade later defines it as “a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they want and need through creating, offering and exchanging products of value with others.”[13] The Chartered Institute of Marketing defines Marketing as "the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably".[14] A similar concept is the value-based Marketing which states the role of Marketing to contribute to increasing shareholder value.[15] In this context, Marketing can be defined as "the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage".[15] In the past, Marketing practice tended to be seen as a creative industry, which included advertising, distribution and selling.

However, because the academic study of Marketing makes extensive use of social sciences, psychology, sociology, mathematics, economics, anthropology and neuroscience, the profession is now widely recognized as a science,[16] allowing numerous universities to offer Master-of-Science (MSc) programs.[17] The process of Marketing is that of bringing a product to market, which includes these steps: broad market research; market targeting and market segmentation; determining distribution, pricing and promotion strategies; developing a communications strategy; budgeting; and visioning long-term market development goals.[18] Many parts of the Marketing process (e.g.

product design, art director, brand management, advertising, inbound Marketing, copywriting etc.) involve use of the creative arts.[citation needed][19] The 'Marketing concept' proposes that to complete its organizational objectives, an organization should anticipate the needs and wants of potential consumers and satisfy them more effectively than its competitors.

This concept originated from Adam Smith's book The Wealth of Nations but would not become widely used until nearly 200 years later.[20] Marketing and Marketing Concepts are directly related.

Given the centrality of customer needs, and wants in Marketing, a rich understanding of these concepts is essential:[21] Marketing research, conducted for the purpose of new product development or product improvement, is often concerned with identifying the consumer's unmet needs.[22] Customer needs are central to market segmentation which is concerned with dividing markets into distinct groups of buyers on the basis of "distinct needs, characteristics, or behaviors who might require separate products or Marketing mixes."[23] Needs-based segmentation (also known as benefit segmentation) "places the customers' desires at the forefront of how a company designs and markets products or services."[24] Although needs-based segmentation is difficult to do in practice, it has been proved to be one of the most effective ways to segment a market.[25][22] In addition, a great deal of advertising and promotion is designed to show how a given product's benefits meet the customer's needs, wants or expectations in a unique way.[26] The two major segments of Marketing are business-to-business (B2B) Marketing and business-to-consumer (B2C) Marketing.

[4] B2B (business-to-business) Marketing refers to any Marketing strategy or content that is geared towards a business or organization.

Any company that sells products or services to other businesses or organizations (vs.

consumers) typically uses B2B Marketing strategies.

Examples of products sold through B2B Marketing include: The four major categories of B2B product purchasers are: Business-to-consumer Marketing, or B2C Marketing, refers to the tactics and strategies in which a company promotes its products and services to individual people.

Traditionally, this could refer to individuals shopping for personal products in a broad sense.

More recently the term B2C refers to the online selling of consumer products.[27] Consumer-to-business Marketing or C2B Marketing is a business model where the end consumers create products and services which are consumed by businesses and organizations.

It is diametrically opposed to the popular concept of B2C or Business- to- Consumer where the companies make goods and services available to the end consumers.

Customer to customer Marketing or C2C Marketing represents a market environment where one customer purchases goods from another customer using a third-party business or platform to facilitate the transaction.

C2C companies are a new type of model that has emerged with e-commerce technology and the sharing economy.[28] The different goals of B2B and B2C Marketing lead to differences in the B2B and B2C markets.

The main differences in these markets are demand, purchasing volume, number of customers, customer concentration, distribution, buying nature, buying influences, negotiations, reciprocity, leasing and promotional methods.[4] A Marketing orientation has been defined as a "philosophy of business management."[5] or "a corporate state of mind"[29] or as an "organisation[al] culture"[30] Although scholars continue to debate the precise nature of specific orientations that inform Marketing practice, the most commonly cited orientations are as follows:[31] A firm employing a product orientation is mainly concerned with the quality of its product.

A product orientation is based on the assumption that all things being equal, consumers will purchase products of superior quality.

The approach is most effective when the firm has deep insights into customer needs and desires as derived from research or intuition and understands consumer's quality expectations and price consumers are willing to pay.

Although the product orientation has largely been supplanted by the Marketing orientation, firms practicing a product orientation can still be found in haute couture and arts Marketing.[32][33] A sales orientation focuses on the selling/promotion of the firm's existing products, rather than developing new products to satisfy unmet needs or wants.

This orientation seeks to attain the highest possible sales through promotion and direct sales techniques.[34] The sales orientation "is typically practiced with unsought goods."[35] One study found that industrial companies are more likely to hold a sales orientation than consumer goods companies.[36] The approach may also suit scenarios in which a firm holds dead stock, or otherwise sells a product that is in high demand, with little likelihood of changes in consumer tastes diminishing demand.

A 2011 meta analyses[37] found that the factors with the greatest impact on sales performance are a salesperson's sales related knowledge (knowledge of market segments, sales presentation skills, conflict resolution, and products), degree of adaptiveness (changing behavior based on the aforementioned knowledge), role clarity (salesperson's role is expressly to sell), cognitive aptitude (intelligence) and work engagement (motivation and interest in a sales role).

A firm focusing on a production orientation specializes in producing as much as possible of a given product or service in order to achieve economies of scale or economies of scope.

A production orientation may be deployed when a high demand for a product or service exists, coupled with certainty that consumer tastes and preferences remain relatively constant (similar to the sales orientation).

The so-called production era is thought to have dominated Marketing practice from the 1860s to the 1930s, but other theorists argue that evidence of the production orientation can still be found in some companies or industries.

Specifically, Kotler and Armstrong note that the production philosophy is "one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers...

[and] is still useful in some situations."[38] The Marketing orientation is the most common orientation used in contemporary Marketing.

It is a customer-centric approach that involves a firm basing its Marketing program around products that suit new consumer tastes.

Firms adopting a Marketing orientation typically engage in extensive market research to gauge consumer desires, use R&D (Research & Development) to develop a product attuned to the revealed information, and then utilize promotion techniques to ensure consumers are aware of the product's existence and the benefits it can deliver.[39] Scales designed to measure a firm's overall market orientation have been developed and found to be robust in a variety of contexts.[40] The Marketing orientation has three prime facets, which are: A number of scholars and practitioners have argued that marketers have a greater social responsibility than simply satisfying customers and providing them with superior value.

Marketing organizations that have embraced the societal Marketing concept typically identify key stakeholder groups such as employees, customers, and local communities.

Companies that adopt a societal Marketing perspective typically practice triple bottom line reporting whereby they publish social impact and environmental impact reports alongside financial performance reports.

Sustainable Marketing or green Marketing is an extension of societal Marketing.[41] A Marketing mix is a foundational tool used to guide decision making in Marketing.

The Marketing mix represents the basic tools that marketers can use to bring their products or services to the market.

They are the foundation of managerial Marketing and the Marketing plan typically devotes a section to the Marketing mix.

The traditional Marketing mix refers to four broad levels of Marketing decision, namely: product, price, promotion, and place.[6][42] One of the limitations of the 4Ps approach is its emphasis of an inside out-view.

[45] An inside-out approach is the traditional planning approach where the organisation identifies its desired goals and objectives, which are often based around what has always been done.

Marketing's task then becomes one of "selling" the organization's products and messages to the "outside" or external stakeholders.[43] In contrast, an outside-in approach first seeks to understand the needs and wants of the consumer.[46] From a model-building perspective, the 4 Ps has attracted a number of criticisms.

Well-designed models should exhibit clearly defined categories that are mutually exclusive, with no overlap.

Yet, the 4 Ps model has extensive overlapping problems.

Several authors stress the hybrid nature of the fourth P, mentioning the presence of two important dimensions, "communication" (general and informative communications such as public relations and corporate communications) and "promotion" (persuasive communications such as advertising and direct selling).

Certain Marketing activities, such as personal selling, may be classified as either promotion or as part of the place (i.e., distribution) element.[47] Some pricing tactics, such as promotional pricing, can be classified as price variables or promotional variables and, therefore, also exhibit some overlap.

Other important criticisms include that the Marketing mix lacks a strategic framework and is, therefore, unfit to be a planning instrument, particularly when uncontrollable, external elements are an important aspect of the Marketing environment.[48] To overcome the deficiencies of the 4P model, some authors have suggested extensions or modifications to the original model.

Extensions of the four P's are often included in cases such as services Marketing where unique characteristics (i.e.

intangibility, perishability, heterogeneity and the inseparability of production and consumption) warrant additional consideration factors.

Other extensions have been found necessary for retail Marketing, industrial Marketing, and internet Marketing include "people", "process", and "physical evidence" and are often applied in the case of services Marketing[49] Other extensions have been found necessary in retail Marketing, industrial Marketing and internet Marketing.

In response to environmental and technological changes in Marketing, as well as criticisms towards the 4Ps approach, the 4Cs has emerged as a modern Marketing mix model.

Consumer (or Client) The consumer refers to the person or group that will acquire the product.

This aspect of the model focuses on fulfilling the wants or needs of the consumer.

[7] Cost Cost refers to what is exchanged in return for the product.

Cost mainly consists of the monetary value of the product.

Cost also refers to anything else the consumer must sacrifice to attain the product, such as time or money spent on transportation to acquire the product.

[7] Convenience Like "Place" in the 4Ps model, convenience refers to where the product will be sold.

This, however, not only refers to physical stores but also whether the product is available in person or online.

The convenience aspect emphasizes making it as easy as possible for the consumer to attain the product, thus making them more likely to do so.

[7] Communication Like "Promotion" in the 4Ps model, communication refers to how consumers find out about a product.

Unlike, promotion, communication not only refers to the one-way communication of advertising, but also the two-way communication available through social media.

[7] The term "Marketing environment" relates to all of the factors (whether internal, external, direct or indirect) that affect a firm's Marketing decision-making/planning.

A firm's Marketing environment consists of three main areas, which are: A firm's Marketing macro-environment consists of a variety of external factors that manifest on a large (or macro) scale.

These include factors that are: A common method of assessing a firm's macro-environment is via a PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Ecological) analysis.

Within a PESTLE analysis, a firm would analyze national political issues, culture and climate, key macroeconomic conditions, health and indicators (such as economic growth, inflation, unemployment, etc.), social trends/attitudes, and the nature of technology's impact on its society and the business processes within the society.

[8] A firm's micro-environment comprises factors pertinent to the firm itself, or stakeholders closely connected with the firm or company.

A firm's micro-environment typically spans: In contrast to the macro-environment, an organization holds a greater (though not complete) degree of control over these factors.[8] A firms internal environment consists of factors inside of the actual company.

These are factors controlled by the firm and they affect the relationship that a firm has with its customers.

These include factors such as: Marketing research is a systematic process of analyzing data that involves conducting research to support Marketing activities and the statistical interpretation of data into information.

This information is then used by managers to plan Marketing activities, gauge the nature of a firm's Marketing environment and to attain information from suppliers.

A distinction should be made between Marketing research and market research.

Market research involves gathering information about a particular target market.

As an example, a firm may conduct research in a target market, after selecting a suitable market segment.

In contrast, Marketing research relates to all research conducted within Marketing.

Market research is a subset of Marketing research.

Marketing researchers use statistical methods (such as quantitative research, qualitative research, hypothesis tests, Chi-square tests, linear regression, correlation coefficients, frequency distributions, Poisson and binomial distributions, etc.) to interpret their findings and convert data into information.[52] The stages of research include: Market segmentation consists of taking the total heterogeneous market for a product and dividing it into several sub-markets or segments, each of which tends to be homogeneous in all significant aspects.[10] The process is conducted for two main purposes: better allocation of a firm's finite resources and to better serve the more diversified tastes of contemporary consumers.

A firm only possesses a certain amount of resources.

Thus, it must make choices (and appreciate the related costs) in servicing specific groups of consumers.

Moreover, with more diversity in the tastes of modern consumers, firms are noting the benefit of servicing a multiplicity of new markets.

Market segmentation can be defined in terms of the STP acronym, meaning Segment, Target, and Position.

Segmentation involves the initial splitting up of consumers into persons of like needs/wants/tastes.

Commonly used criteria include: Once a segment has been identified to target, a firm must ascertain whether the segment is beneficial for them to service.

The DAMP acronym is used as criteria to gauge the viability of a target market.

The elements of DAMP are: The next step in the targeting process is the level of differentiation involved in a segment serving.

Three modes of differentiation exist, which are commonly applied by firms.

These are: Positioning concerns how to position a product in the minds of consumers and inform what attributes differentiate it from the competitor's products.

A firm often performs this by producing a perceptual map, which denotes similar products produced in the same industry according to how consumers perceive their price and quality.

From a product's placing on the map, a firm would tailor its Marketing communications to meld with the product's perception among consumers and its position among competitors' offering.

[54] The promotional mix outlines how a company will market its product.

It consists of five tools: personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, advertising and social media Personal selling involves an oral presentation given by a salesperson who approaches an individual or a group of potential customers.

Personal selling allows for two-way communication and relationship building that can aid both the buyer and the seller in their goals.

Personal selling is most commonly seen in business-to-business Marketing (e.g.: selling machinery to a factory, selling paper to a print shop), but it can also be found in business-to-consumer Marketing (e.g.: selling cars at a dealership).

[4]Sales promotion involves short-term incentives to encourage the buying of products.

Examples of these incentives include: Depending on the incentive, one or more of the other elements of the promotional mix may be used in conjunction with sales promotion to inform customers of the incentives.

[4] Public relations is the use of media tools to promote a positive view of a company or product in the public's eye.

Public relations monitors the public opinion of a company or product and generates publicity to either sustain a positive opinion or lessen or change a negative opinion.

Public relations can include interviews, speeches/presentations, corporate literature, social media, news releases and special events.

[4] Advertising occurs when a firm directly pays a media channel to publicize its product.

Common examples of advertising include: Social media is used to facilitate two-way communication between companies and their customers.

Social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Snapchat and YouTube allow brands to start a conversation with regular and prospective customers.

Viral Marketing can be greatly facilitated by social media and if successful, allows key Marketing messages and content in reaching a large number of target audiences within a short time frame.

Additionally, social media platforms can also house advertising and public relations content..[4] The area of Marketing planning involves forging a plan for a firm's Marketing activities.

A Marketing plan can also pertain to a specific product, as well as to an organization's overall Marketing strategy.

An organization's Marketing planning process is derived from its overall business strategy.

Thus, when top management are devising the firm's strategic direction/mission, the intended Marketing activities are incorporated into this plan.

Within the overall strategic Marketing plan, the stages of the process are listed as thus: As stated previously, the senior management of a firm would formulate a general business strategy for a firm.

However, this general business strategy would be interpreted and implemented in different contexts throughout the firm.

At the corporate level, Marketing objectives are typically broad-based in nature, and pertain to the general vision of the firm in the short, medium or long-term.

As an example, if one pictures a group of companies (or a conglomerate), top management may state that sales for the group should increase by 25% over a ten-year period.

A strategic business unit (SBU) is a subsidiary within a firm, which participates within a given market/industry.

The SBU would embrace the corporate strategy, and attune it to its own particular industry.

For instance, an SBU may partake in the sports goods industry.

It thus would ascertain how it would attain additional sales of sports goods, in order to satisfy the overall business strategy.

The functional level relates to departments within the SBUs, such as Marketing, finance, HR, production, etc.

The functional level would adopt the SBU's strategy and determine how to accomplish the SBU's own objectives in its market.

To use the example of the sports goods industry again, the Marketing department would draw up Marketing plans, strategies and communications to help the SBU achieve its Marketing aims.

The product life cycle (PLC) is a tool used by Marketing managers to gauge the progress of a product, especially relating to sales or revenue accrued over time.

The PLC is based on a few key assumptions, including: In the introduction stage, a product is launched onto the market.

To stimulate the growth of sales/revenue, use of advertising may be high, in order to heighten awareness of the product in question.

During the growth stage, the product's sales/revenue is increasing, which may stimulate more Marketing communications to sustain sales.

More entrants enter into the market, to reap the apparent high profits that the industry is producing.

When the product hits maturity, its starts to level off, and an increasing number of entrants to a market produce price falls for the product.

Firms may use sales promotions to raise sales.

During decline, demand for a good begins to taper off, and the firm may opt to discontinue the manufacture of the product.

This is so, if revenue for the product comes from efficiency savings in production, over actual sales of a good/service.

However, if a product services a niche market, or is complementary to another product, it may continue the manufacture of the product, despite a low level of sales/revenue being accrued.

[4]

Marketing plan

A Marketing plan may be part of an overall business plan.

Solid marketing strategy is the foundation of a well-written Marketing plan so that goals may be achieved.

While a Marketing plan contains a list of actions, without a sound strategic foundation, it is of little use to a business.

A Marketing plan is a comprehensive document or blueprint that outlines the advertising and marketing efforts for the coming year.

It describes business activities involved in accomplishing specific marketing objectives within a set time frame.

A Marketing plan also includes a description of the current marketing position of a business, a discussion of the target market and a description of the marketing mix that a business will use to achieve their marketing goals.

A Marketing plan has a formal structure, but can be used as a formal or informal document which makes it very flexible.

It contains some historical data, future predictions, and methods or strategies to achieve the marketing objectives.

Marketing plans start with the identification of customer needs through a market research and how the business can satisfy these needs while generating an acceptable return.[1] This includes processes such as market situation analysis, action programs, budgets, sales forecasts, strategies and projected financial statements.

A Marketing plan can also be described as a technique that helps a business to decide on the best use of its resources to achieve corporate objectives.

It can also contain a full analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of a company, its organization and its products.[2] The Marketing plan shows the step or actions that will be utilized in order to achieve the plan goals.

For example, a Marketing plan may include a strategy to increase the business's market share by fifteen percent.

The Marketing plan would then outline the objectives that need to be achieved in order to reach the fifteen percent increase in the business market share.[3] The Marketing plan can be used to describe the methods of applying a company's marketing resources to fulfill marketing objectives.[2] Marketing planning segments the markets, identifies the market position, forecast the market size, and plans a viable market share within each market segment.

Marketing planning can also be used to prepare a detailed case for introducing a new product, revamping current marketing strategies for an existing product or put together a company Marketing plan to be included in the company corporate or business plan.[2] A Marketing plan should be based on where a company needs to be at some point in the future.

These are some of the most important things that companies need when developing a Marketing plan: One of the main purposes of developing a Marketing plan is to set the company on a specific path in marketing.

The marketing goals normally aligns itself to the broader company objectives.

For example, a new company looking to grow their business will generally have a Marketing plan that emphasizes strategies to increase their customer base.[4] Acquiring marketing share, increasing customer awareness, and building a favorable business image are some of the objectives that can be related to Marketing planning.

The Marketing plan also helps layout the necessary budget and resources needed to achieve the goals stated in the Marketing plan.

The Marketing plan shows what the company is intended to accomplish within the budget and also to make it possible for company executives to assess potential return on the investment of marketing dollars.

Different aspects of the Marketing plan relate to accountability.[4] The Marketing plan is a general responsibility from company leaders and the marketing staff to take the company in a specific direction.

After the strategies are laid out and the tasks are developed, each task is assigned to a person or a team for implementation.

The assigned roles allows companies to keep track of their milestones and communicate with the teams during the implementation process.

Having a Marketing plan helps company leaders to develop and keep an eye on the expectations for their functional areas.

For example, if a company's Marketing plan goal is to increase sales growth then the company leaders may have to increase their sales staff in stores to help generate more sales.[4] The Marketing plan offers a unique opportunity for a productive discussion between employees and leaders of an organization.

It provides good communication within the company.

The Marketing plan also allows the marketing team to examine their past decisions and understand their results in order to better prepare for the future.

It also lets the marketing team to observe and study the environment that they are operating in.[5] Though it's not clear, behind the corporate objectives, which in themselves offer the main context for the Marketing plan, will lie the "corporate mission," in turn provides the context for these corporate objectives.

In a sales-oriented organization, the Marketing planning function designs incentive pay plans to not only motivate and reward frontline staff fairly but also to align marketing activities with corporate mission.

The Marketing plan basically aims to make the business provide the solution with the awareness with the expected customers.

This "corporate mission" can be thought of as a definition of what the organization is, or what it does: "Our business is ...".

This definition should not be too narrow, or it will constrict the development of the organization; a too rigorous concentration on the view that "We are in the business of making meat-scales," as IBM was during the early 1900s, might have limited its subsequent development into other areas.

On the other hand, it should not be too wide or it will become meaningless; "We want to make a profit" is not too helpful in developing specific plans.

Jacob Zimmerem suggested that the definition should cover three dimensions: "customer groups" to be served, "customer needs" to be served, and "technologies" to be used.[6] Thus, the definition of IBM's "corporate mission" in the 1940s might well have been: "We are in the business of handling accounting information [customer need] for the larger US organizations [customer group] by means of punched cards [technology]." Perhaps the most important factor in successful marketing is the "corporate vision." Surprisingly, it is largely neglected by marketing textbooks, although not by the popular exponents of corporate strategy — indeed, it was perhaps the main theme of the book by Peters and Waterman, in the form of their "Superordinate Goals." "In Search of Excellence" said: "Nothing drives progress like the imagination.

The idea precedes the deed." [7] If the organization in general, and its chief executive in particular, has a strong vision of where its future lies, then there is a good chance that the organization will achieve a strong position in its markets (and attain that future).

This will be not least because its strategies will be consistent and will be supported by its staff at all levels.

In this context, all of IBM's marketing activities were underpinned by its philosophy of "customer service," a vision originally promoted by the charismatic Watson dynasty.

The emphasis at this stage is on obtaining a complete and accurate picture.

A "traditional" — albeit product-based — format for a "brand reference book" (or, indeed, a "marketing facts book") was suggested by Godley more than three decades ago: It is apparent that a marketing audit can be a complex process, but the aim is simple: "it is only to identify those existing (external and internal) factors which will have a significant impact on the future plans of the company." It is clear that the basic material to be input to the marketing audit should be comprehensive.

Accordingly, the best approach is to accumulate this material continuously, as and when it becomes available; since this avoids the otherwise heavy workload involved in collecting it as part of the regular, typically annual, planning process itself — when time is usually at a premium.

Even so, the first task of this annual process should be to check that the material held in the current facts book or facts files actually is comprehensive and accurate, and can form a sound basis for the marketing audit itself.

The structure of the facts book will be designed to match the specific needs of the organization, but one simple format — suggested by Malcolm McDonald — may be applicable in many cases.

This splits the material into three groups: It is only at this stage (of deciding the marketing objectives) that the active part of the Marketing planning process begins.

This next stage in Marketing planning is indeed the key to the whole marketing process.

The "marketing objectives" state just where the company intends to be at some specific time in the future.

James Quinn succinctly defined objectives in general as: Goals (or objectives) state what is to be achieved and when results are to be accomplished, but they do not state "how" the results are to be achieved.[8] They typically relate to what products (or services) will be where in what markets (and must be realistically based on customer behavior in those markets).

They are essentially about the match between those "products" and "markets." Objectives for pricing, distribution, advertising and so on are at a lower level, and should not be confused with marketing objectives.

They are part of the marketing strategy needed to achieve marketing objectives.

To be most effective, objectives should be capable of measurement and therefore "quantifiable." This measurement may be in terms of sales volume, money value, market share, percentage penetration of distribution outlets and so on.

An example of such a measurable marketing objective might be "to enter the market with product Y and capture 10 percent of the market by value within one year." As it is quantified it can, within limits, be unequivocally monitored, and corrective action taken as necessary.

The marketing objectives must usually be based, above all, on the organization's financial objectives; converting these financial measurements into the related marketing measurements.

He went on to explain his view of the role of "policies," with which strategy is most often confused: "Policies are rules or guidelines that express the 'limits' within which action should occur.

"Simplifying somewhat, marketing strategies can be seen as the means, or "game plan," by which marketing objectives will be achieved and, in the framework that appears here, are generally concerned with the 8 P's.

Examples are: In principle, these strategies describe how the objectives will be achieved.

The 7 Ps are a useful framework for deciding how a company's resources will be manipulated (strategically) to achieve its objectives.

However, the 7 Ps are not the only framework, and may divert attention from other real issues.

The focus of a business's strategies must be the objectives of the business— not the process of planning itself.

If the 7 Ps fit the business's strategies, then the 7 Ps may be an acceptable framework for that business.

The strategy statement can take the form of a purely verbal description of the strategic options which have been chosen.

Alternatively, and perhaps more positively, it might include a structured list of the major options chosen.

One aspect of strategy which is often overlooked is that of "timing." The timing of each element of the strategy is critical.

Taking the right action at the wrong time can sometimes be almost as bad as taking the wrong action at the right time.

Timing is, therefore, an essential part of any plan; and should normally appear as a schedule of planned activities.

Having completed this crucial stage of the planning process, to re-check the feasibility of objectives and strategies in terms of the market share, sales, costs, profits and so on which these demand in practice.

As in the rest of the marketing discipline, employ judgment, experience, market research or anything else which helps for conclusions to be seen from all possible angles.

At this stage, overall marketing strategies will need to be developed into detailed plans and program.

Although these detailed plans may cover each of the 7 Ps (marketing mix), the focus will vary, depending upon the organization's specific strategies.

A product-oriented company will focus its plans for the 7 Ps around each of its products.

A market or geographically oriented company will concentrate on each market or geographical area.

Each will base its plans upon the detailed needs of its customers, and on the strategies chosen to satisfy these needs.

Brochures and Websites are used effectively.

Again, the most important element is, the detailed plans, which spell out exactly what programs and individual activities will carry at the period of the plan (usually over the next year).

Without these activities the plan cannot be monitored.

These plans must therefore be: A Marketing plan for a small business typically includes Small Business Administration Description of competitors, including the level of demand for the product or service and the strengths and weaknesses of competitors The main contents of a Marketing plan are:[9] In detail, a complete Marketing plan typically includes:[9] The final stage of any Marketing planning process is to establish targets (or standards) so that progress can be monitored.

Accordingly, it is important to put both quantities and timescales into the marketing objectives (for example, to capture 20 percent by value of the market within two years) and into the corresponding strategies.

Marketers must be ready to update and adapt Marketing plans at any time.

The Marketing plan should define how progress towards objectives will be measured.

Managers typically use budgets, schedules and marketing metrics for monitoring and evaluating results.

With budget, they can compare planned expenditures with actual expenditures for given period.

Schedules allow management to see when tasks were supposed to be completed and when they actually were.

Marketing metrics tracks actual outcomes of marketing programs to see whether the company is moving forward towards its objectives (P.

Kotler, K.L.

Keller).

Other than the above-included contents of a Marketing plan, it is also vital to include a specific action plan because planning is not primarily about the plan itself rather its more about the results.

The main purpose of a Marketing plan is to assess or measure the produced results, as such building, a specific action plan enhances the ability to measure the specific, concrete plans and ensuring there is a follow up of the eventual results.

It is essential to realize that depending on the different types of Marketing plans, a specific action plan is vital for it ensures that all the criteria are met from a comprehensive perspective.

Case in point, if a firm is launching a new product, it is often vital to craft a Marketing plan that will showcase the strategies that will be used in a bid to introduce the platform to the industry.

Luckily, the integration of a specific action plan ensures that all the strategies integrated into the Marketing plan are met effectively.

Additionally, a specific action plan ensures that in the long run, the respective firm is able to assess and monitor the success of its approaches with regards to the new brand introduction.

Changes in the environment mean that the forecasts often have to be changed.

Along with these, the related plans may well also need to be changed.

Continuous monitoring of performance, against predetermined targets, represents a most important aspect of this.

However, perhaps even more important is the enforced discipline of a regular formal review.

Again, as with forecasts, in many cases the best (most realistic) planning cycle will revolve around a quarterly review.

Best of all, at least in terms of the quantifiable aspects of the plans, if not the wealth of backing detail, is probably a quarterly rolling review — planning one full year ahead each new quarter.

Of course, this does absorb more planning resource; but it also ensures that the plans embody the latest information, and — with attention focused on them so regularly — forces both the plans and their implementation to be realistic.

Plans only have validity if they are actually used to control the progress of a company: their success lies in their implementation, not in the writing'.

The most important elements of marketing performance, which are normally tracked, are: Most organizations track their sales results; or, in non-profit organizations for example, the number of clients.

The more sophisticated track them in terms of 'sales variance' - the deviation from the target figures — which allows a more immediate picture of deviations to become evident.

`Micro-analysis', which is simply the normal management process of investigating detailed problems, then investigates the individual elements (individual products, sales territories, customers and so on) which are failing to meet targets Few organizations track market share though it is often an important metric.

Though absolute sales might grow in an expanding market, a firm's share of the market can decrease which bodes ill for future sales when the market starts to drop.

Where such market share is tracked, there may be a number of aspects which will be followed: The key ratio to watch in this area is usually the `marketing expense to sales ratio'; although this may be broken down into other elements (advertising to sales, sales administration to sales, and so on).

Expense analysis can be defined as a detailed report of all the expenses that a business incurs.

It is produced on a monthly, quarterly and yearly basis.

It can be dissected into small business subsets to determine how much money each area is costing the company.[12] In marketing, the marketing expense-to-sales ratio plays an important part in expense analysis because it is used to align marketing spend with industry norms.

Marketing expense-to-sales ratio helps the company drive its marketing spend productivity.

Marketing expense-to-sales analysis is also included with the sales analysis, market share analysis, financial analysis and market-based scorecard analysis as one of the five analysis tools marketers used to control and drive spending productivity.

The marketing expense-to-sales ratio allows companies to track actual spending that is relative to the accepted budget and relative to sales goals as stated in the Marketing plan.[13] The "bottom line" of marketing activities should at least in theory, be the net profit (for all except non-profit organizations, where the comparable emphasis may be on remaining within budgeted costs).

There are a number of separate performance figures and key ratios which need to be tracked: There can be considerable benefit in comparing these figures with those achieved by other organizations (especially those in the same industry); using, for instance, the figures which can be obtained (in the UK) from `The Centre for Interfirm Comparison'.

The most sophisticated use of this approach, however, is typically by those making use of PIMS (Profit Impact of Management Strategies), initiated by the General Electric Company and then developed by Harvard Business School, but now run by the Strategic Planning Institute.

The above performance analyses concentrate on the quantitative measures which are directly related to short-term performance.

But there are a number of indirect measures, essentially tracking customer attitudes, which can also indicate the organization's performance in terms of its longer-term marketing strengths and may accordingly be even more important indicators.

Some useful measures are: A formal, written Marketing plan is essential; in that it provides an unambiguous reference point for activities throughout the planning period.

However, perhaps the most important benefit of these plans is the planning process itself.

This typically offers a unique opportunity, a forum, for information-rich and productively focused discussions between the various managers involved.

The plan, together with the associated discussions, then provides an agreed context for their subsequent management activities, even for those not described in the plan itself.

Additionally, Marketing plans are included in business plans, offering data showing investors how the company will grow and most importantly, how they will get a return on investment.

The classic quantification of a Marketing plan appears in the form of budgets.

Because these are so rigorously quantified, they are particularly important.

They should, thus, represent an unequivocal projection of actions and expected results.

What is more, they should be capable of being monitored accurately; and, indeed, performance against budget is the main (regular) management review process.

The purpose of a marketing budget is to pull together all the revenues and costs involved in marketing into one comprehensive document.

The budget is a managerial tool that balances what is needed to be spent against what can be afforded, and helps make choices about priorities.

A budget can further be used to measure a business's performance in the general trends of a business's spending.

The marketing budget is usually the most powerful tool by which one can determine the relationship between desired results and available means.

Its starting point should be the marketing strategies and plans, which have already been formulated in the Marketing plan itself; although, in practice, the two will run in parallel and will interact.

At the very least, a thorough budget may cause a change in the more optimistic elements of a company's business plans.

Digital marketing

Digital marketing is the component of marketing that utilizes internet and online based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services.[1][2] Its development during the 1990s and 2000s, changed the way brands and businesses use technology for marketing.

As digital platforms became increasingly incorporated into marketing plans and everyday life,[3] and as people increasingly use digital devices instead of visiting physical shops,[4][5] Digital marketing campaigns have become prevalent, employing combinations of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, influencer marketing, content automation, campaign marketing, data-driven marketing, e-commerce marketing, social media marketing, social media optimization, e-mail direct marketing, display advertising, e–books, and optical disks and games have become commonplace.

Digital marketing extends to non-Internet channels that provide digital media, such as television, mobile phones (SMS and MMS), callback, and on-hold mobile ring tones.[6] The extension to non-Internet channels differentiates Digital marketing from online marketing.[7] The development of Digital marketing is inseparable from technology development.

One of the key points in the start of was in 1971, where Ray Tomlinson sent the very first email and his technology set the platform to allow people to send and receive files through different machines.[8] However, the more recognisable period as being the start of Digital marketing is 1990 as this was where the Archie search engine was created as an index for FTP sites.

In the 1980s, the storage capacity of computer was already big enough to store huge volumes of customer information.

Companies started choosing online techniques, such as database marketing, rather than limited list broker.[9] These kinds of databases allowed companies to track customers' information more effectively, thus transforming the relationship between buyer and seller.

However, the manual process was not as efficient.

In the 1990s, the term Digital marketing was first coined,.[10] With the debut of server/client architecture and the popularity of personal computers, the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications became a significant factor in marketing technology.[11] Fierce competition forced vendors to include more service into their software, for example, marketing, sales and service applications.

Marketers were also able to own huge online customer data by eCRM software after the Internet was born.

Companies could update the data of customer needs and obtain the priorities of their experience.

This led to the first clickable banner ad being going live in 1994, which was the "You Will" campaign by AT&T and over the first four months of it going live, 44% of all people who saw it clicked on the ad.[12][13] In the 2000s, with increasing numbers of Internet users and the birth of iPhone, customers began searching products and making decisions about their needs online first, instead of consulting a salesperson, which created a new problem for the marketing department of a company.[14] In addition, a survey in 2000 in the United Kingdom found that most retailers had not registered their own domain address.[15] These problems encouraged marketers to find new ways to integrate digital technology into market development.

In 2007, marketing automation was developed as a response to the ever evolving marketing climate.

Marketing automation is the process by which software is used to automate conventional marketing processes.[16] Marketing automation helped companies segment customers, launch multichannel marketing campaigns, and provide personalized information for customers.[16] However, the speed of its adaptability to consumer devices was not fast enough.

Digital marketing became more sophisticated in the 2000s and the 2010s, when[17][18] the proliferation of devices' capable of accessing digital media led to sudden growth.[19] Statistics produced in 2012 and 2013 showed that Digital marketing was still growing.[20][21] With the development of social media in the 2000s, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, consumers became highly dependent on digital electronics in daily lives.

Therefore, they expected a seamless user experience across different channels for searching product's information.

The change of customer behavior improved the diversification of marketing technology.[22] Digital marketing is also referred to as 'online marketing', 'internet marketing' or 'web marketing'.

The term Digital marketing has grown in popularity over time.

In the USA online marketing is still a popular term.

In Italy, Digital marketing is referred to as web marketing.

Worldwide Digital marketing has become the most common term, especially after the year 2013.[23] Digital media growth was estimated at 4.5 trillion online ads served annually with digital media spend at 48% growth in 2010.[24] An increasing portion of advertising stems from businesses employing Online Behavioural Advertising (OBA) to tailor advertising for internet users, but OBA raises concern of consumer privacy and data protection.[19] Nonlinear marketing, a type of interactive marketing, is a long-term marketing approach which builds on businesses collecting information about an Internet user's online activities, and trying to be visible in multiple areas.[25][26] Unlike traditional marketing techniques, which involve direct, one-way messaging to consumers (via print, television and radio advertising), nonlinear Digital marketing strategies are centered on reaching prospective customers across multiple online channels.[27] Combined with higher consumer knowledge and the demand for more sophisticated consumer offerings, this change has forced many businesses to rethink their outreach strategy and adopt or incorporate omnichannel, nonlinear marketing techniques to maintain sufficient brand exposure, engagement and reach.[28] Nonlinear marketing strategies involve efforts to adapt the advertising to different platforms,[29] and to tailor the advertising to different individual buyers rather than a large coherent audience.[26] Tactics may include: Some studies indicate that consumer responses to traditional marketing approaches are becoming less predictable for businesses.[30] According to a 2018 study, nearly 90% of online consumers in the United States researched products and brands online before visiting the store or making a purchase.[31] The Global Web Index estimated that in 2018, a little more than 50% of consumers researched products on social media.[32] Businesses often rely on individuals portraying their products in a positive light on social media, and may adapt their marketing strategy to target people with large social media followings in order to generate such comments.[33] In this manner, businesses can use consumers to advertise their products or services, decreasing the cost for the company.[34] One of the key objectives of modern Digital marketing is to raise brand awareness, the extent to which customers and the general public are familiar with and recognize a particular brand.

Enhancing brand awareness is important in Digital marketing, and marketing in general, because of its impact on brand perception and consumer decision-making.

According to the 2015 essay, “Impact of Brand on Consumer Behavior”: “Brand awareness, as one of the fundamental dimensions of brand equity, is often considered to be a prerequisite of consumers’ buying decision, as it represents the main factor for including a brand in the consideration set.

Brand awareness can also influence consumers’ perceived risk assessment and their confidence in the purchase decision, due to familiarity with the brand and its characteristics.”[35] Recent trends show that businesses and digital marketers are prioritizing brand awareness, focusing more of their Digital marketing efforts on cultivating brand recognition and recall than in previous years.

This is evidenced by a 2019 Content Marketing Institute study, which found that 81% of digital marketers have worked on enhancing brand recognition over the past year.[36] Another Content Marketing Institute survey revealed 89% of B2B marketers now believe improving brand awareness to be more important than efforts directed at increasing sales.[37] Increasing brand awareness is a focus of Digital marketing strategy for a number of reasons: Digital marketing strategies may include the use of one or more online channels and techniques (omnichannel) to increase brand awareness among consumers.[45] Building brand awareness may involve such methods/tools as: Search engine optimization techniques may be used to improve the visibility of business websites and brand-related content for common industry-related search queries.[46] The importance of SEO to increasing brand awareness is said to correlate with the growing influence of search results and search features like featured snippets, knowledge panels and local SEO on customer behavior.[47] SEM, also known as PPC advertising, involves the purchase of ad space in prominent, visible positions atop search results pages and websites.

Search ads have been shown to have a positive impact on brand recognition, awareness and conversions.[48] 33% of searchers who click on paid ads do so because they directly respond to their particular search query.[49] 70% of marketers list increasing brand awareness as their number one goal for marketing on social media platforms.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube are listed as the top platforms currently used by social media marketing teams.[50] 56% of marketers believe personalized content – brand-centered blogs, articles, social updates, videos, landing pages – improves brand recall and engagement.[51] According to Mentionlytics, an active and consistent content strategy that incorporates elements of interactive content creation, social posting and guest blogging can improve brand awareness and loyalty by 88%.[52] One of the major changes that occurred in traditional marketing was the "emergence of Digital marketing" (Patrutiu Baltes, Loredana, 2015), this led to the reinvention of marketing strategies in order to adapt to this major change in traditional marketing (Patrutiu Baltes, Loredana, 2015).

As Digital marketing is dependent on technology which is ever-evolving and fast-changing, the same features should be expected from Digital marketing developments and strategies.

This portion is an attempt to qualify or segregate the notable highlights existing and being used as of press time.[when?] To summarize, Pull Digital marketing is characterized by consumers actively seeking marketing content while Push Digital marketing occurs when marketers send messages without that content being actively sought by the recipients.

An important consideration today while deciding on a strategy is that the digital tools have democratized the promotional landscape.

The new digital era has enabled brands to selectively target their customers that may potentially be interested in their brand or based on previous browsing interests.

Businesses can now use social media to select the age range, location, gender and interests of whom they would like their targeted post to be seen by.

Furthermore, based on a customer's recent search history they can be ‘followed’ on the internet so they see advertisements from similar brands, products and services,[58] This allows businesses to target the specific customers that they know and feel will most benefit from their product or service, something that had limited capabilities up until the digital era.

Digital marketing activity is still growing across the world according to the headline global marketing index.

A study published in September 2018, found that global outlays on Digital marketing tactics are approaching $100 billion.[59] Digital media continues to rapidly grow; while the marketing budgets are expanding, traditional media is declining (World Economics, 2015).[60] Digital media helps brands reach consumers to engage with their product or service in a personalised way.

Five areas, which are outlined as current industry practices that are often ineffective are prioritizing clicks, balancing search and display, understanding mobiles, targeting, viewability, brand safety and invalid traffic, and cross-platform measurement (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Why these practices are ineffective and some ways around making these aspects effective are discussed surrounding the following points.

Prioritizing clicks refers to display click ads, although advantageous by being ‘simple, fast and inexpensive’ rates for display ads in 2016 is only 0.10 percent in the United States.

This means one in a thousand click ads are relevant therefore having little effect.

This displays that marketing companies should not just use click ads to evaluate the effectiveness of display advertisements (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Balancing search and display for digital display ads are important; marketers tend to look at the last search and attribute all of the effectiveness to this.

This, in turn, disregards other marketing efforts, which establish brand value within the consumers mind.

ComScore determined through drawing on data online, produced by over one hundred multichannel retailers that digital display marketing poses strengths when compared with or positioned alongside, paid search (Whiteside, 2016).[61] This is why it is advised that when someone clicks on a display ad the company opens a landing page, not its home page.

A landing page typically has something to draw the customer in to search beyond this page.

Things such as free offers that the consumer can obtain through giving the company contact information so that they can use retargeting communication strategies (Square2Marketing, 2012).[62] Commonly marketers see increased sales among people exposed to a search ad.

But the fact of how many people you can reach with a display campaign compared to a search campaign should be considered.

Multichannel retailers have an increased reach if the display is considered in synergy with search campaigns.

Overall both search and display aspects are valued as display campaigns build awareness for the brand so that more people are likely to click on these digital ads when running a search campaign (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Understanding Mobiles: Understanding mobile devices is a significant aspect of Digital marketing because smartphones and tablets are now responsible for 64% of the time US consumers are online (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Apps provide a big opportunity as well as challenge for the marketers because firstly the app needs to be downloaded and secondly the person needs to actually use it.

This may be difficult as ‘half the time spent on smartphone apps occurs on the individuals single most used app, and almost 85% of their time on the top four rated apps’ (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Mobile advertising can assist in achieving a variety of commercial objectives and it is effective due to taking over the entire screen, and voice or status is likely to be considered highly; although the message must not be seen or thought of as intrusive (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Disadvantages of digital media used on mobile devices also include limited creative capabilities, and reach.

Although there are many positive aspects including the users entitlement to select product information, digital media creating a flexible message platform and there is potential for direct selling (Belch & Belch, 2012).[63] Cross-platform measurement: The number of marketing channels continues to expand, as measurement practices are growing in complexity.

A cross-platform view must be used to unify audience measurement and media planning.

Market researchers need to understand how the Omni-channel affects consumer's behaviour, although when advertisements are on a consumer's device this does not get measured.

Significant aspects to cross-platform measurement involves deduplication and understanding that you have reached an incremental level with another platform, rather than delivering more impressions against people that have previously been reached (Whiteside, 2016).[61] An example is ‘ESPN and comScore partnered on Project Blueprint discovering the sports broadcaster achieved a 21% increase in unduplicated daily reach thanks to digital advertising’ (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Television and radio industries are the electronic media, which competes with digital and other technological advertising.

Yet television advertising is not directly competing with online digital advertising due to being able to cross platform with digital technology.

Radio also gains power through cross platforms, in online streaming content.

Television and radio continue to persuade and affect the audience, across multiple platforms (Fill, Hughes, & De Franceso, 2013).[64] Targeting, viewability, brand safety and invalid traffic: Targeting, viewability, brand safety and invalid traffic all are aspects used by marketers to help advocate digital advertising.

Cookies are a form of digital advertising, which are tracking tools within desktop devices; causing difficulty, with shortcomings including deletion by web browsers, the inability to sort between multiple users of a device, inaccurate estimates for unique visitors, overstating reach, understanding frequency, problems with ad servers, which cannot distinguish between when cookies have been deleted and when consumers have not previously been exposed to an ad.

Due to the inaccuracies influenced by cookies, demographics in the target market are low and vary (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Another element, which is affected within Digital marketing, is ‘viewabilty’ or whether the ad was actually seen by the consumer.

Many ads are not seen by a consumer and may never reach the right demographic segment.

Brand safety is another issue of whether or not the ad was produced in the context of being unethical or having offensive content.

Recognizing fraud when an ad is exposed is another challenge marketers face.

This relates to invalid traffic as premium sites are more effective at detecting fraudulent traffic, although non-premium sites are more so the problem (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Digital marketing Channels are systems based on the Internet that can create, accelerate, and transmit product value from producer to a consumer terminal, through digital networks.[65][66] Digital marketing is facilitated by multiple Digital marketing channels, As an advertiser one's core objective is to find channels which result in maximum two-way communication and a better overall ROI for the brand.

There are multiple Digital marketing channels available namely;[67] It is important for a firm to reach out to consumers and create a two-way communication model, as Digital marketing allows consumers to give back feed back to the firm on a community based site or straight directly to the firm via email.[80] Firms should seek this long term communication relationship by using multiple forms of channels and using promotional strategies related to their target consumer as well as word-of mouth marketing.[80] The ICC Code has integrated rules that apply to marketing communications using digital interactive media throughout the guidelines.

There is also an entirely updated section dealing with issues specific to digital interactive media techniques and platforms.

Code self-regulation on use of digital interactive media includes: Digital marketing planning is a term used in marketing management.

It describes the first stage of forming a Digital marketing strategy for the wider Digital marketing system.

The difference between digital and traditional marketing planning is that it uses digitally based communication tools and technology such as Social, Web, Mobile, Scannable Surface.[84][85] Nevertheless, both are aligned with the vision, the mission of the company and the overarching business strategy.[86] Using Dr Dave Chaffey's approach, the Digital marketing planning (DMP) has three main stages: Opportunity, Strategy and Action.

He suggests that any business looking to implement a successful Digital marketing strategy must structure their plan by looking at opportunity, strategy and action.

This generic strategic approach often has phases of situation review, goal setting, strategy formulation, resource allocation and monitoring.[86] To create an effective DMP, a business first needs to review the marketplace and set 'SMART' (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant and Time-Bound) objectives.[87] They can set SMART objectives by reviewing the current benchmarks and key performance indicators (KPIs) of the company and competitors.

It is pertinent that the analytics used for the KPIs be customised to the type, objectives, mission and vision of the company.[88][89] Companies can scan for marketing and sales opportunities by reviewing their own outreach as well as influencer outreach.

This means they have competitive advantage because they are able to analyse their co-marketers influence and brand associations.[90] To cease opportunity, the firm should summarize their current customers' personas and purchase journey from this they are able to deduce their Digital marketing capability.

This means they need to form a clear picture of where they are currently and how many resources they can allocate for their Digital marketing strategy i.e.

labour, time etc.

By summarizing the purchase journey, they can also recognise gaps and growth for future marketing opportunities that will either meet objectives or propose new objectives and increase profit.

To create a planned digital strategy, the company must review their digital proposition (what you are offering to consumers) and communicate it using digital customer targeting techniques.

So, they must define online value proposition (OVP), this means the company must express clearly what they are offering customers online e.g.

brand positioning.

The company should also (re)select target market segments and personas and define digital targeting approaches.

After doing this effectively, it is important to review the marketing mix for online options.

The marketing mix comprises the 4Ps – Product, Price, Promotion and Place.[91][92] Some academics have added three additional elements to the traditional 4Ps of marketing Process, Place and Physical appearance making it 7Ps of marketing.[93] The third and final stage requires the firm to set a budget and management systems; these must be measurable touchpoints, such as audience reached across all digital platforms.

Furthermore, marketers must ensure the budget and management systems are integrating the paid, owned and earned media of the company.[94] The Action and final stage of planning also requires the company to set in place measurable content creation e.g.

oral, visual or written online media.[95] After confirming the Digital marketing plan, a scheduled format of digital communications (e.g.

Gantt Chart) should be encoded throughout the internal operations of the company.

This ensures that all platforms used fall in line and complement each other for the succeeding stages of Digital marketing strategy.

One way marketers can reach out to consumers, and understand their thought process is through what is called an empathy map.

An empathy map is a four step process.

The first step is through asking questions that the consumer would be thinking in their demographic.

The second step is to describe the feelings that the consumer may be having.

The third step is to think about what the consumer would say in their situation.

The final step is to imagine what the consumer will try to do based on the other three steps.

This map is so marketing teams can put themselves in their target demographics shoes.[96] Web Analytics are also a very important way to understand consumers.

They show the habits that people have online for each website.[97] One particular form of these analytics is predictive analytics which helps marketers figure out what route consumers are on.

This uses the information gathered from other analytics, and then creates different predictions of what people will do so that companies can strategize on what to do next, according to the peoples trends.[98] The "sharing economy" refers to an economic pattern that aims to obtain a resource that is not fully utilized.[101] Nowadays, the sharing economy has had an unimagined effect on many traditional elements including labor, industry, and distribution system.[101] This effect is not negligible that some industries are obviously under threat.[101][102] The sharing economy is influencing the traditional marketing channels by changing the nature of some specific concept including ownership, assets, and recruitment.[102] Digital marketing channels and traditional marketing channels are similar in function that the value of the product or service is passed from the original producer to the end user by a kind of supply chain.[103] Digital marketing channels, however, consist of internet systems that create, promote, and deliver products or services from producer to consumer through digital networks.[104] Increasing changes to marketing channels has been a significant contributor to the expansion and growth of the sharing economy.[104] Such changes to marketing channels has prompted unprecedented and historic growth.[104] In addition to this typical approach, the built-in control, efficiency and low cost of Digital marketing channels is an essential features in the application of sharing economy.[103] Digital marketing channels within the sharing economy are typically divided into three domains including, e-mail, social media, and search engine marketing or SEM.[104] Other emerging Digital marketing channels, particularly branded mobile apps, have excelled in the sharing economy.[104] Branded mobile apps are created specifically to initiate engagement between customers and the company.This engagement is typically facilitated through entertainment, information, or market transaction.[104]

Industrial marketing

Industrial marketing (or business-to-business marketing) is the marketing of goods and services by one business to another.

Industrial goods are those an industry of uses to produce an end product from one or more raw materials.

The term, Industrial marketing has largely been replaced by the term B2B marketing (i.e.

business to business marketing).

Historically, the marketing discipline made a distinction between Industrial marketing and consumer goods marketing.

During the 1980s, businesses shifted from Industrial marketing to business marketing.

Within a decade, the term business marketing had largely displaced Industrial marketing.

By the late 1990s, the term, B2B marketing, came into widespread use.[1] Main features of the B2B selling process are: Industrial marketing can cross the border into consumer marketing.

For example, an electronic component seller may distribute its products through Industrial marketing channels (see Channel (marketing)), but also support consumer sales.

Many products are equally desired by business and consumers—such as audio products, furniture, paint, hardware, etc.

Nonetheless, manufactures and service providers frequently maintain separate industrial and consumer marketing operations to reflect the different needs of the two channels.

Industrial marketing often involves competitive tendering.

This is a process where a purchasing organization undertakes to procure goods and services from suitable suppliers.

Due to the high value of some purchases (for example buying a new computer system, manufacturing machinery, or outsourcing a maintenance contract) and the complexity of such purchases, the purchasing organization will seek to obtain a number of bids from competing suppliers and choose the best offering.

An entire profession (strategic procurement) that includes tertiary training and qualifications has been built around the process of making important purchases.

The key requirement in any competitive tender is to ensure that: Because of the significant value of many purchases, issues of probity arise.

Organisations seek to ensure that awarding a contract is based on "best fit" to the agreed criteria, and not bribery, corruption, or incompetence.

Suppliers who are seeking to win a competitive tender go through a bidding process.

At its most primitive, this would consist of evaluating the specification (issued by the purchasing organization), designing a suitable proposal, and working out a price.

This is a "primitive" approach because...

Before industrial buyers engage in the bidding process, they go through a long and distinct buying journey.

A 2018 study conducted by Thomasnet.com and the research firm Strategyn[2] revealed that the industrial buying process involves 15 distinct steps: By aligning their marketing activities to the buying cycle, industrial manufacturers and suppliers can be more successful.

This is very similar to the inbound process of inbound marketing.

Not all industrial sales involve competitive tendering.

Tender processes are time consuming and expensive, particularly when executed with the aim of ensuring probity.

Government agencies are particularly likely to utilise elaborate competitive tendering processes due to the expectation that they should be seen at all times to be responsibly and accountably spending public money.

Private companies are able to avoid the complexity of a fully transparent tender process but are still able to run the procurement process with some rigour.

B2B firms make extensive use of solution selling where sales force identify the client's problem or needs and sell goods or services that specifically address those needs.[3] In solution selling, it is essential that sales staff explore the client's requirements in depth before presenting a solution.

Marketing supports solution selling through methods like account-based marketing—understanding a specific target organization's requirements as the foundation of a marketing program.

As research shows, sales success is heavily weighted towards suppliers who understand the customer.

In UK research, 77 per cent of senior decision-makers believe new suppliers' marketing approaches are poorly targeted and make it easy to justify staying with current suppliers).[4] Sales force management has a critical function in industrial selling, where it assumes a greater role than other parts of the marketing mix.

Typical industrial organisations depend on the ability of their sales people to build relationships with customers.

During periods of high demand (economic boom), sales forces often become mere order takers and struggle to respond to customer requests for quotations and information.

However, when economic downturn hits it becomes critical to direct the sales force outward to sell.

The term "cannon fodder" derives from the World Wars and refers to the massing of undertrained and recently recruited troops sent to the fronts to face the enemy.

Such troops invariably had a poor survival rate but provided the tactical advantage of distracting the enemy while professional soldiers mounted more effective operations.

In adopting the term to Industrial marketing it means those bids being submitted that have no chance of winning but are involved to make up the numbers (you can't have only one bid in a "competitive" tender process; that wouldn't satisfy the requirements of probity) (for example in government tenders, or for private enterprise the requirement to "truly test the market" and to "keep them honest").

The reader might be wondering why anybody would go to all of the work of submitting a tender when they had no chance of winning; for the same reason that troops were sent into battle to die; they thought they had a real chance.

In Industrial marketing personal selling is still very effective because many products must be customized to suit the requirements of the individual customer.

Indicators such as the sales tunnel give information on the expected sales in the near future, the hit rate indicates whether the sales organization is busy with promising sales leads or it is spending too much effort on projects that are eventually lost to the competition or that are abandoned by the prospect.

The dot-com boom and bust of the late 1990s saw significant attempts to develop online shopping.

Many entrepreneurs (and their investors) discovered that merely having a website (no matter how innovative) was insufficient to generate sales.

The amount of conventional media advertising required to promote the sites burnt cash at a faster rate than on-line sales generated.

They also presumed that consumers would eschew the conventional shopping experience (driving, parking, poor service etc.) for the convenience of shopping on-line.

Some did, but for many companies, not in sufficient numbers.

There were many unforeseen problems, and apart from some notable exceptions (Amazon.com and others) the business to consumer online failed for many companies.

B2B selling, however, more frequently achieved impressive results.

John Jantsch

John Jantsch (born April 2, 1960) is an author, speaker, and marketing consultant who specializes in assisting small businesses.[1] He is the author of Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, and The Commitment Engine.[2] Jantsch grew up in Kansas City and attended the University of Kansas.[3] In 2002, Jantsch created the Duct Tape Marketing System, which trains and licenses small business consultants.[4] Two years later he added the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.[5] Duct Tape Marketing offers marketing workshops and consulting to small businesses looking to expand.[6] Jantsch suggests treating small business marketing systematically and not creating individual "marketing events."[6][7] One way to do this, Jantsch says, is to maintain a strong and consistent internet presence through blogs, social media, and forums tailored to small business interests.[8] In 2007, Jantsch published Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide, which outlines his systematic approach to marketing.[9] The book is divided into three parts.[10] Part I is titled "The Duct Tape Foundation—The Way to Sticky Marketing" and deals with laying the groundwork for a successful marketing system.[10] Part II is titled "The Duct Tape Lead Generation Machine—Turning Stickiness Into a System That Works for You" and it focuses on implementing the strategies of Part I.[10] Part III is titled "Getting on a Roll!" and it serves as a conclusion meant to ground the preceding two parts.[10] Michael Gerber said Duct Tape Marketing is "just like its namesake – Duct Tape – it's good, incredibly smart, amazingly practical, and immensely sticky stuff."[11] Duct Tape Marketing Revised & Updated was published in 2011.[12] In 2010, Jantsch published The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself.

The book outlines an approach to marketing that moves away from complicated marketing campaigns and instead focuses on personal interactions with customers through outlets such as social media and friend-to-friend word of mouth.[13] The idea, Jantsch writes, is that a business should always focus on and understand the importance of referrals.[14] The Referral Engine was a Wall Street Journal bestseller, a Small Business Trends "Editor's Choice Best Business Books 2010," Library Journal's "Best Marketing Book 2010," and was on 800-CEO-READ's "Best Business Book of 2010" shortlist.[15][16][17][18] The Commitment Engine: Making Work Worth It is directed at helping business owners establish lasting commitment in their employees, customers, and businesses and examines what makes some businesses worth referring.[19][20] The book diagnosis the key qualities of successful, "effortless" business approaches.[21] The Commitment Engine has been featured in Forbes, CNBC, The New York Enterprise Report, and was reviewed positively by Trust Agents author Chris Brogan.[1][22][23][24] Jantsch has given a TEDx talk about the book.[25] In 2016 John Jantsch and co-author Phil Singleton published SEO for Growth - The Ultimate Guide for Marketers, Web Designers, and Entrepreneurs.

The book is aimed at teaching marketers, designers and entrepreneurs the strategic nature of search engine optimization as well as the SEO forces at play in web design and social media.

Excerpts from SEO for Growth have appeared in Entrepreneur, Copyblogger, and Search Engine Journal as well as on MSNBC.

Jantsch's Duct Tape Marketing blog was chosen as a Forbes favorite for marketing and small business and his Duct Tape Marketing podcast was called a "must listen" by Fast Company magazine.[26][27] Jantsch has delivered keynote speeches to organizations such as American Express, Microsoft, Verizon, HP, and eBay.[28] He also is the featured marketing contributor to American Express OPENForum.[29] Jantsch's small business advice has been featured in New York Times, Wall St.

Journal, and CNNMoney among others.[2][7][8] Seth Godin called Jantsch the "Peter Drucker of small business tactics."[30]

Marketing research

Marketing research is "the process or set of processes that links the producers, customers, and end users to the marketer through information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process.

Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the method for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyzes the results, and communicates the findings and their implications."[1] It is the systematic gathering, recording, and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data about issues relating to marketing products and services.

The goal of Marketing research is to identify and assess how changing elements of the marketing mix impacts customer behavior.

The term is commonly interchanged with market research; however, expert practitioners may wish to draw a distinction, in that market research is concerned specifically with markets, while Marketing research is concerned specifically about marketing processes.[2] Marketing research is often partitioned into two sets of categorical pairs, either by target market: Or, alternatively, by methodological approach: Consumer Marketing research is a form of applied sociology that concentrates on understanding the preferences, attitudes, and behaviors of consumers in a market-based economy, and it aims to understand the effects and comparative success of marketing campaigns.[citation needed] Thus, Marketing research may also be described as the systematic and objective identification, collection, analysis, and dissemination of information for the purpose of assisting management in decision making related to the identification and solution of problems and opportunities in marketing.[3] The goal of market research is to obtain and provide management with viable information about the market (e.g.

competitors), consumers, the product/service itself etc.

The purpose of Marketing research (MR) is to provide management with relevant, accurate, reliable, valid, and up to date market information.

Competitive marketing environment and the ever-increasing costs attributed to poor decision making require that Marketing research provide sound information.

Sound decisions are not based on gut feeling, intuition, or even pure judgment.

Managers make numerous strategic and tactical decisions in the process of identifying and satisfying customer needs.

They make decisions about potential opportunities, target market selection, market segmentation, planning and implementing marketing programs, marketing performance, and control.

These decisions are complicated by interactions between the controllable marketing variables of product, pricing, promotion, and distribution.

Further complications are added by uncontrollable environmental factors such as general economic conditions, technology, public policies and laws, political environment, competition, and social and cultural changes.

Another factor in this mix is the complexity of consumers.

Marketing research helps the marketing manager link the marketing variables with the environment and the consumers.

It helps remove some of the uncertainty by providing relevant information about the marketing variables, environment, and consumers.

In the absence of relevant information, consumers' response to marketing programs cannot be predicted reliably or accurately.

Ongoing Marketing research programs provide information on controllable and non-controllable factors and consumers; this information enhances the effectiveness of decisions made by marketing managers.[4] Traditionally, Marketing researchers were responsible for providing the relevant information and marketing decisions were made by the managers.

However, the roles are changing and Marketing researchers are becoming more involved in decision making, whereas marketing managers are becoming more involved with research.

The role of Marketing research in managerial decision making is explained further using the framework of the DECIDE model.

Evidence for commercial research being gathered informally dates to the Medieval period.

In 1380, the German textile manufacturer, Johann Fugger, travelled from Augsburg to Graben in order to gather information on the international textile industry.

He exchanged detailed letters on trade conditions in relevant areas.

Although, this type of information would have been termed "commercial intelligence" at the time, it created a precedent for the systemic collection of marketing information.[5] During the European age of discovery, industrial houses began to import exotic, luxury goods - calico cloth from India, porcelain, silk and tea from China, spices from India and South-East Asia and tobacco, sugar, rum and coffee from the New World.[6] International traders began to demand information that could be used for marketing decisions.

During this period, Daniel Defoe, a London merchant, published information on trade and economic resources of England and Scotland.

Defoe was a prolific publisher and among his many publications are titles devoted to the state of trade including; Trade of Britain Stated, (1707); Trade of Scotland with France, (1713) and The Trade to India Critically and Calmly Considered, (1720) - all of which provided merchants and traders with important information on which to base business decisions.[7] Until the late 18th-century, European and North-American economies were characteristed by local production and consumption.

Produce, household goods and tools were produced by local artisans or farmers with exchange taking place in local markets or fairs.

Under these conditions, the need for marketing information was minimal.

However, the rise of mass-production following the industrial revolution, combined with improved transportation systems of the early 19th-century, led to the creation of national markets and ultimately, stimulated the need for more detailed information about customers, competitors, distribution systems and market communications.[8] By the 19th-century, manufacturers were exploring ways to understand the different market needs and behaviours of groups of consumers.

A study of the German book trade found examples of both product differentiation and market segmentation as early as the 1820s.[9] From the 1880s, German toy manufacturers were producing models of tin toys for specific geographic markets; London omnibuses and ambulances destined for the British market; French postal delivery vans for Continental Europe and American locomotives intended for sale in America.[10] Such activities suggest that sufficient market information was collected to support detailed market segmentation.

In 1895, American advertising agency, N.

H.

Ayer & Son, used telegraph to contact publishers and state officials throughout the country about grain production, in an effort to construct an advertising schedule for client, Nichols-Shephard company, an agricultural machinery company in what many scholars believe is the first application of Marketing research to solve a marketing/ advertising problem)[11] Between 1902 and 1910, George B Waldron, working at Mahin's Advertising Agency in the United States used tax registers, city directories and census data to show advertisers the proportion of educated vs illiterate consumers and the earning capacity of different occupations in a very early example of simple market segmentation.[12][13] In 1911 Charles Coolidge Parlin was appointed as the Manager of the Commercial Research Division of the Advertising Department of the Curtis Publishing Company, thereby establishing the first in-house market research department - an event that has been described as marking the beginnings of organised Marketing research.[14] His aim was to turn market research into a science.

Parlin published a number of studies of various product-markets including agriculture (1911); consumer goods (c.1911); department store lines (1912) a five-volume study of automobiles (1914).[15] In 1924 Paul Cherington improved on primitive forms of demographic market segmentation when he developed the 'ABCD' household typology; the first socio-demographic segmentation tool.[12][16] By the 1930s, market researchers such as Ernest Dichter recognised that demographics alone were insufficient to explain different marketing behaviours and began exploring the use of lifestyles, attitudes, values, beliefs and culture to segment markets.[17] In the first three decades of the 20th-century, advertising agencies and marketing departments developed the basic techniques used in quantitative and qualitative research - survey methods, questionnaires, gallup polls etc.

As early as 1901, Walter B Scott was undertaking experimental research for the Agate Club of Chicago.[18] In 1910, George B Waldron was carrying out qualitative research for Mahins Advertising Agency.[18] In 1919, the first book on commercial research was published, Commercial Research: An Outline of Working Principles by Professor C.S.

Duncan of the University of Chicago.[19] Adequate knowledge of consumer preferences was a key to survival in the face of increasingly competitive markets.[20] By the 1920s, advertising agencies, such as J Walter Thompson (JWT), were conducting research on the how and why consumers used brands, so that they could recommend appropriate advertising copy to manufacturers.[19] The advent of commercial radio in the 1920s, and television in the 1940s, led a number of market research companies to develop the means to measure audience size and audience composition.

In 1923, Arthur Nielsen founded market research company, A C Nielsen and over next decade pioneered the measurement of radio audiences.

He subsequently applied his methods to the measurement of television audiences.

Around the same time, Daniel Starch developed measures for testing advertising copy effectiveness in print media (newspapers and magazines), and these subsequently became known as Starch scores (and are still used today).

During, the 1930s and 1940s, many of the data collection methods, probability sampling methods, survey methods, questionnaire design and key metrics were developed.

By the 1930s, Ernest Dichter was pioneering the focus group method of qualitative research.

For this, he is often described as the 'father of market research.'[21] Dichter applied his methods on campaigns for major brands including Chrysler, Exxon/Esso where he used methods from psychology and cultural anthropology to gain consumer insights.

These methods eventually lead to the development of motivational research.[22] Marketing historians refer to this period as the "Foundation Age" of market research.

By the 1930s, the first courses on Marketing research were taught in universities and colleges.[23] The text-book, Market Research and Analysis by Lyndon O.

Brown (1937) became one of the popular textbooks during this period.[24] As the number of trained research professionals proliferated throughout the second half of the 20th-century, the techniques and methods used in Marketing research became increasingly sophisticated.

Marketers, such as Paul Green, were instrumental in developing techniques such as conjoint analysis and multidimensional scaling, both of which are used in positioning maps, market segmentation, choice analysis and other marketing applications.[25] Web analytics were born out of the need to track the behavior of site visitors and, as the popularity of e-commerce and web advertising grew, businesses demanded details on the information created by new practices in web data collection, such as click-through and exit rates.

As the Internet boomed, websites became larger and more complex and the possibility of two-way communication between businesses and their consumers became a reality.

Provided with the capacity to interact with online customers, Researchers were able to collect large amounts of data that were previously unavailable, further propelling the Marketing research industry.

In the new millennium, as the Internet continued to develop and websites became more interactive, data collection and analysis became more commonplace for those Marketing research firms whose clients had a web presence.

With the explosive growth of the online marketplace came new competition for companies; no longer were businesses merely competing with the shop down the road — competition was now represented by a global force.

Retail outlets were appearing online and the previous need for bricks-and-mortar stores was diminishing at a greater pace than online competition was growing.

With so many online channels for consumers to make purchases, companies needed newer and more compelling methods, in combination with messages that resonated more effectively, to capture the attention of the average consumer.

Having access to web data did not automatically provide companies with the rationale behind the behavior of users visiting their sites, which provoked the Marketing research industry to develop new and better ways of tracking, collecting and interpreting information.

This led to the development of various tools like online focus groups and pop-up or website intercept surveys.

These types of services allowed companies to dig deeper into the motivations of consumers, augmenting their insights and utilizing this data to drive market share.

As information around the world became more accessible, increased competition led companies to demand more of market researchers.

It was no longer sufficient to follow trends in web behavior or track sales data; companies now needed access to consumer behavior throughout the entire purchase process.

This meant the Marketing research Industry, again, needed to adapt to the rapidly changing needs of the marketplace, and to the demands of companies looking for a competitive edge.

Today, Marketing research has adapted to innovations in technology and the corresponding ease with which information is available.

B2B and B2C companies are working hard to stay competitive and they now demand both quantitative (“What”) and qualitative (“Why?”) Marketing research in order to better understand their target audience and the motivations behind customer behaviors.[citation needed] This demand is driving Marketing researchers to develop new platforms for interactive, two-way communication between their firms and consumers.

Mobile devices such as Smart Phones are the best example of an emerging platform that enables businesses to connect with their customers throughout the entire buying process.[citation needed] As personal mobile devices become more capable and widespread, the Marketing research industry will look to further capitalize on this trend.

Mobile devices present the perfect channel for research firms to retrieve immediate impressions from buyers and to provide their clients with a holistic view of the consumers within their target markets, and beyond.

Now, more than ever, innovation is the key to success for Marketing researchers.

Marketing research Clients are beginning to demand highly personalized and specifically-focused products from the Marketing research firms; big data is great for identifying general market segments, but is less capable of identifying key factors of niche markets, which now defines the competitive edge companies are looking for in this mobile-digital age.[citation needed] First, Marketing research is systematic.

Thus systematic planning is required at all the stages of the Marketing research process.

The procedures followed at each stage are methodologically sound, well documented, and, as much as possible, planned in advance.

Marketing research uses the scientific method in that data are collected and analyzed to test prior notions or hypotheses.

Experts in Marketing research have shown that studies featuring multiple and often competing hypotheses yield more meaningful results than those featuring only one dominant hypothesis.[26] Marketing research is objective.

It attempts to provide accurate information that reflects a true state of affairs.

It should be conducted impartially.

While research is always influenced by the researcher's research philosophy, it should be free from the personal or political biases of the researcher or the management.

Research which is motivated by personal or political gain involves a breach of professional standards.

Such research is deliberately biased so as to result in predetermined findings.

The objective nature of Marketing research underscores the importance of ethical considerations.

Also, researchers should always be objective with regard to the selection of information to be featured in reference texts because such literature should offer a comprehensive view on marketing.

Research has shown, however, that many marketing textbooks do not feature important principles in Marketing research.[27] Other forms of business research include: Organizations engage in Marketing research for two reasons: firstly, to identify and, secondly, to solve marketing problems.

This distinction serves as a basis for classifying Marketing research into problem identification research and problem solving research.

Problem identification research is undertaken to help identify problems which are, perhaps, not apparent on the surface and yet exist or are likely to arise in the future like company image, market characteristics, sales analysis, short-range forecasting, long range forecasting, and business trends research.

Research of this type provides information about the marketing environment and helps diagnose a problem.

For example, the findings of problem solving research are used in making decisions which will solve specific marketing problems.

The Stanford Research Institute, on the other hand, conducts an annual survey of consumers that is used to classify persons into homogeneous groups for segmentation purposes.

The National Purchase Diary panel (NPD) maintains the largest diary panel in the United States.

Standardized services are research studies conducted for different client firms but in a standard way.

For example, procedures for measuring advertising effectiveness have been standardized so that the results can be compared across studies and evaluative norms can be established.

The Starch Readership Survey is the most widely used service for evaluating print advertisements; another well-known service is the Gallup and Robinson Magazine Impact Studies.

These services are also sold on a syndicated basis.

Marketing research techniques come in many forms, including: All of these forms of Marketing research can be classified as either problem-identification research or as problem-solving research.

There are two main sources of data — primary and secondary.

Primary research is conducted from scratch.

It is original and collected to solve the problem in hand.

Secondary research already exists since it has been collected for other purposes.

It is conducted on data published previously and usually by someone else.

Secondary research costs far less than primary research, but seldom comes in a form that exactly meets the needs of the researcher.

A similar distinction exists between exploratory research and conclusive research.

Exploratory research provides insights into and comprehension of an issue or situation.

It should draw definitive conclusions only with extreme caution.

Conclusive research draws conclusions: the results of the study can be generalized to the whole population.

Exploratory research is conducted to explore a problem to get some basic idea about the solution at the preliminary stages of research.

It may serve as the input to conclusive research.

Exploratory research information is collected by focus group interviews, reviewing literature or books, discussing with experts, etc.

This is unstructured and qualitative in nature.

If a secondary source of data is unable to serve the purpose, a convenience sample of small size can be collected.

Conclusive research is conducted to draw some conclusion about the problem.

It is essentially, structured and quantitative research, and the output of this research is the input to management information systems (MIS).

Exploratory research is also conducted to simplify the findings of the conclusive or descriptive research, if the findings are very hard to interpret for the marketing managers.

Methodologically, Marketing research uses the following types of research designs:[28] Researchers often use more than one research design.

They may start with secondary research to get background information, then conduct a focus group (qualitative research design) to explore the issues.

Finally they might do a full nationwide survey (quantitative research design) in order to devise specific recommendations for the client.

Business to business (B2B) research is inevitably more complicated than consumer research.

The researchers need to know what type of multi-faceted approach will answer the objectives, since seldom is it possible to find the answers using just one method.

Finding the right respondents is crucial in B2B research since they are often busy, and may not want to participate.

Encouraging them to “open up” is yet another skill required of the B2B researcher.

Last, but not least, most business research leads to strategic decisions and this means that the business researcher must have expertise in developing strategies that are strongly rooted in the research findings and acceptable to the client.

There are four key factors that make B2B market research special and different from consumer markets:[30] Marketing research does not only occur in huge corporations with many employees and a large budget.

Marketing information can be derived by observing the environment of their location and the competitions location.

Small scale surveys and focus groups are low cost ways to gather information from potential and existing customers.

Most secondary data (statistics, demographics, etc.) is available to the public in libraries or on the internet and can be easily accessed by a small business owner.

Below are some steps that could be done by SME (Small Medium Enterprise) to analyze the market: International Marketing research follows the same path as domestic research, but there are a few more problems that may arise.

Customers in international markets may have very different customs, cultures, and expectations from the same company.

In this case, Marketing research relies more on primary data rather than secondary information.

Gathering the primary data can be hindered by language, literacy and access to technology.

Basic Cultural and Market intelligence information will be needed to maximize the research effectiveness.

Some of the steps that would help overcoming barriers include: Market research techniques resemble those used in political polling and social science research.

Meta-analysis (also called the Schmidt-Hunter technique) refers to a statistical method of combining data from multiple studies or from several types of studies.

Conceptualization means the process of converting vague mental images into definable concepts.

Operationalization is the process of converting concepts into specific observable behaviors that a researcher can measure.

Precision refers to the exactness of any given measure.

Reliability refers to the likelihood that a given operationalized construct will yield the same results if re-measured.

Validity refers to the extent to which a measure provides data that captures the meaning of the operationalized construct as defined in the study.

It asks, “Are we measuring what we intended to measure?” Some of the positions available in Marketing research include vice president of Marketing research, research director, assistant director of research, project manager, field work director, statistician/data processing specialist, senior analyst, analyst, junior analyst and operational supervisor.[31] The most common entry-level position in Marketing research for people with bachelor's degrees (e.g., BBA) is as operational supervisor.

These people are responsible for supervising a well-defined set of operations, including field work, data editing, and coding, and may be involved in programming and data analysis.

Another entry-level position for BBAs is assistant project manager.

An assistant project manager will learn and assist in questionnaire design, review field instructions, and monitor timing and costs of studies.

In the Marketing research industry, however, there is a growing preference for people with master's degrees.

Those with MBA or equivalent degrees are likely to be employed as project managers.[31] A small number of business schools also offer a more specialized Master of Marketing research (MMR) degree.

An MMR typically prepares students for a wide range of research methodologies and focuses on learning both in the classroom and the field.

The typical entry-level position in a business firm would be junior research analyst (for BBAs) or research analyst (for MBAs or MMRs).

The junior analyst and the research analyst learn about the particular industry and receive training from a senior staff member, usually the Marketing research manager.

The junior analyst position includes a training program to prepare individuals for the responsibilities of a research analyst, including coordinating with the marketing department and sales force to develop goals for product exposure.

The research analyst responsibilities include checking all data for accuracy, comparing and contrasting new research with established norms, and analyzing primary and secondary data for the purpose of market forecasting.

As these job titles indicate, people with a variety of backgrounds and skills are needed in Marketing research.

Technical specialists such as statisticians obviously need strong backgrounds in statistics and data analysis.

Other positions, such as research director, call for managing the work of others and require more general skills.

To prepare for a career in Marketing research, students usually:

Business-to-business

Business-to-business (B2B or, in some countries, BtoB) is a situation where one business makes a commercial transaction with another.

This typically occurs when: B2B is often contrasted with business-to-consumer (B2C).

In B2B commerce, it is often the case that the parties to the relationship have comparable negotiating power, and even when they do not, each party typically involves professional staff and legal counsel in the negotiation of terms, whereas B2C is shaped to a far greater degree by economic implications of information asymmetry.

However, within a B2B context, large companies may have many commercial, resource and information advantages over smaller businesses.

The United Kingdom government, for example, created the post of Small Business Commissioner under the Enterprise Act 2016 to "enable small businesses to resolve disputes" and "consider complaints by small business suppliers about payment issues with larger businesses that they supply."[1] Business-to-business companies represent a significant part of the United States economy.

This is especially true in firms of 500 employees and above, of which there were 19,464 in 2015,[2] where it is estimated that as many as 72% are businesses that primarily serve other businesses.[3] The principle difference between B2B and B2C is that the first one refers to commerce transaction between manufacturer and retailer, and the second one it is the retailer supplying goods to the consumer.[4]In B2B there are business people on both sides, whereas in B2C there is normally one business person and one consumer.

In the first case the decision is pursued by need (because the other business needs it), and in the second case they are expectatives rather than needs.

B2B have many sellers and different stores, whereas B2C is usually just one supplier.

B2B concentrates on raw data for another company, but B2C focuses on producing something for consumers.

A B2B transaction entails direct-sourcing contract management, which involves negotiating terms that establish prices and various other factors such as volume-based pricing, carrier and logistics preferences, etc.

B2C transaction is clearer, it has spot sourcing contract management that offers a flat retail rate for each item sold.

Time is also a difference as B2B has a slower process than B2C which is concluded in shorter periods (that could be minutes or days).

Business-to-business generally requires an upfront investment whereas business-to-customers does not need a business to spend money on infrastructure.

The last difference mentioned here is that in B2B they have to deal with back-office connectivity and invoicing a number of different partners and suppliers, while B2C results in more seamless transactions as options, such as cyber-cash, allows the business to accept a wider variety of payment options.

B2B, as there are normally bigger amounts involved over longer periods of time, usually have higher costs than B2C which tends to consist of quick, daily transactions.

In B2B, the brand the reputation depends on is the personal relationship between the businesses.

On the other hand, in B2C, the business's reputation is often fuelled through publicity and the media.

In many cases, the overall volume of B2B (Business-to-business) transactions is much higher than the volume of B2C transactions.[5][6][7] The primary reason for this is that in a typical supply chain there will be many B2B transactions involving subcomponents or raw materials, and only one B2C transaction, specifically the sale of the finished product to the end customer.

For example, an automobile manufacturer makes several B2B transactions such as buying tires, glass for windows, and rubber hoses for its vehicles.

The final transaction, a finished vehicle sold to the consumer, is a single (B2C) transaction.

B2B involves specific challenges at different stages.

At their formation, organizations should be careful to rely on an appropriate combination of contractual and relational mechanisms.[8] Scholars in strategic management and supply chain management have also noted the role of these governance mechanisms in case of B2B conflicts.[9] Specific combinations of contracts and relational norms may influence the nature and dynamics of the negotiations between firms.

"Matesourcing" is the phenomenon where businesses seek business support from family and friends rather than obtaining business services from other businesses on a commercial basis.

In 2011, UK business PC World published research commissioned from Trends Research which found that British SME's are increasingly asking family and friends for IT problem-solving and purchasing advice services.[10] Vertical B2B is generally oriented to manufacturing or business.

It can be divided into two directions -- upstream and downstream.

Producers or commercial retailers can have a supply relationship with upstream suppliers, including manufacturers, and form a sales relationship.[11] As an example, Dell company is working with upstream suppliers of integrated circuit microchips and computer printed circuit boards (PCBs).

A vertical B2B website can be similar to the enterprise's online store.[11] Through the website, the company can promote its products vigorously, more efficiently and more comprehensively which enriches transactions as they help their customers understand their products well.

Or, the website can be created for business, where the seller advertises their products to promote and expand transactions in an intuitive and convenient way.

Horizontal B2B is the transaction pattern for the intermediate trading market.

It concentrates similar transactions of various industries into one place, as it provides a trading opportunity for the purchaser and supplier, typically involving companies that do not own the products and do not sell the products.

It is merely a platform to bring sellers and purchasers together online.[12] The better platforms help buyers easily find information about the sellers and the relevant information about the products via the website.

Marketing automation

Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations to more effectively market on multiple channels online (such as email, social media, websites, etc.) and automate repetitive tasks.[1] Marketing departments, consultants and part-time marketing employees benefit by specifying criteria and outcomes for tasks and processes which are then interpreted, stored and executed by software, which increases efficiency and reduces human error.

Originally focused on email Marketing automation, Marketing automation refers to a broad range of automation and analytic tools for marketing[2] especially inbound marketing.

Marketing automation platforms are used as a hosted or web-based solution, and no software installation is required by a customer.

The use of a Marketing automation platform is to streamline sales and marketing organizations by replacing high-touch, repetitive manual processes with automated solutions.[3] Marketing automation is a platform that marketers use to plan, coordinate, manage and measure all of their marketing campaigns, both online and offline.

It is often used along with lifecycle marketing strategy to closely manage and nurture generated leads, aiming to convert leads into customers.[citation needed] Marketing automation is a subset of customer relationship management (CRM) or customer experience management (CXM) that focuses on the definition, segmentation, scheduling and tracking of marketing campaigns.

The use of Marketing automation makes processes that would otherwise have been performed manually much more efficient and makes new processes possible.

Marketing automation can be defined as a process where technology is used to automate several repetitive tasks that are undertaken on a regular basis in a marketing campaign.

A tool that allows an individual to design, execute and automate a time-bound marketing workflow can be called a Marketing automation platform.[citation needed] Marketing automation platforms allow marketers to automate and simplify client communication by managing complex omni-channel marketing strategies from a single tool.

Marketing automation assists greatly in areas like Lead Generation, Segmentation, Lead nurturing and lead scoring, Relationship marketing, Cross-sell and upsell, Retention, Marketing ROI measurement.

There are three categories of Marketing automation software: As of 25th May 2018 the General Data Protection Regulation came into effect, [5] this has had a large impact on the way marketing teams and organizations can manage their consumer data.

Any organization using Marketing automation tracking is required to ask consent from the consumer as well as provide transparency on how the data will be processed.

In order to effectively aid marketers in fully understanding customers and subsequently developing a strategic marketing plan, Marketing automation tools (MAT) are designed to perform eight key tasks:[6][verification needed]

Guerrilla marketing

Guerrilla marketing is an advertisement strategy in which a company uses surprise and/or unconventional interactions in order to promote a product or service.[1] It is a type of publicity.[2] The term was popularized by Jay Conrad Levinson's 1984 book Guerrilla marketing.

Guerrilla marketing uses multiple techniques and practices in order to establish direct contact with the customers.[3] One of the goals of this interaction is to cause an emotional reaction in the clients, and the ultimate goal of marketing is to get people to remember products or brands in a different way than they are accustomed to.

As traditional advertising media channels—such as print, radio, television, and direct mail[4]—lose popularity, marketers and advertisers have to find new strategies to get their commercial messages to the consumer.

Guerrilla marketing focuses on taking the consumer by surprise to make a big impression about the product or brand.[5] This in turn creates buzz about the product being marketed.

It is a way of advertising that increases consumers' engagement with the product or service, and is designed to create a memorable experience.

By creating a memorable experience, it also increases the likelihood that a consumer, or someone who interacted with the campaign, will tell their friends about the product.

Thus, via word of mouth, the product or service being advertised reaches more people than initially anticipated.

Guerrilla marketing is relatively inexpensive, and focuses more on reach rather than frequency.[citation needed] For guerrilla campaigns to be successful, companies don't need to spend large amounts, they just need to have imagination, energy and time.[6] Therefore, it has the potential to be effective for small businesses, especially if they are competing against bigger companies.

The message to consumers is often designed to be clear and concise.

This type of marketing also works on the unconscious mind,[citation needed] as purchasing decisions are often made by the unconscious mind.

To keep the product or service in the unconscious mind requires repetition, so if a buzz is created around a product, and it is shared amongst friends, it enables repetition.[7] The term "Guerrilla marketing" is traced to guerrilla warfare, which employs atypical tactics to achieve an objective.

In 1984, the term Guerrilla marketing was introduced by Leo Burnett's creative director Jay Conrad Levinson in his book Guerrilla marketing.[8][9][10] The term itself was from the inspiration of guerrilla warfare which was unconventional warfare using different techniques from usual and small tactic strategies used by armed civilians.

It involves high imagination and energy to execute a Guerrilla marketing campaign.

This kind of marketing is purely focusing on taking the consumer by surprise, creating a greater impression and eventually leading to buzz through word-of-mouth or social media platforms.

Guerrilla marketing is perfect for any small or medium size businesses to bring their product or services to its consumers without investing more money on advertisements.

This has also been used by large companies to show the difference from its competitors and to make use of social media campaigns.

Lately, individuals use unconventional methods of job hunting or to work more.[11] As a result, the concept of street marketing was born.

It has evolved from being only the application of activities on the streets, to be the development of innovative practices of promotion.[12] For example, one method used by many enterprises to promote their products or services on the streets is the distribution of fliers.

This activity does not focus on creativity, but on making publicity on the streets.

However, with the passage of time, companies have developed more unconventional techniques to catch the attention of the clients.[13] Ambient communication is advertising presented on elements of the environment, including nearly every available physical surface.[14] It is a compilation of intelligence, flexibility, and effective use of the atmosphere.

These kinds of ads can be found anywhere and everywhere from hand dryers in public bathrooms and petrol pumps through to bus hand straps and golf-hole cups.[15] Ambush marketing is a form of associative marketing, used by an organization to capitalize upon the awareness, attention, goodwill, and other benefits, generated by having an association with an event or property, without that organization having an official or direct connection to that event or property.[16] It is typically seen at major events where rivals of official sponsors attempt to build an association with the event and increase awareness for their brands, sometimes covertly.

For example, Nike during the 2012 London Olympics created 'find your Greatness' spots where they featured athletes from several locations called London (but without showing the real London or referring to the Olympic games) which was intended to build a strong association between London Olympics and Nike.[17] Stealth marketing is a deliberate act of entering, operating in, or exiting a market in a furtive, secretive or imperceptible manner, or an attempt to do so.[18] Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence.

Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as "word-of-mouth", "creating a buzz", "leveraging the media", "network marketing", But on the Internet, for better or worse, it's called "viral marketing".[19] Similarly, buzz marketing uses high-profile media to encourage the public to discuss the brand or product.[15] Buzz marketing works best when consumer's responses to a product or service and subsequent endorsements are genuine, without the company paying them.

Buzz generated from buzz marketing campaigns is referred to as "amplified WOM" (word-of-mouth), and "organic WOM" is when buzz occurs naturally by the consumer.[15] Grassroots campaigns aim to win customers over on an individual basis.

A successful grassroots campaign is not about the dissemination of the marketing message in the hope that possible consumers are paying attention, but rather highlights a personal connection between the consumer and the brand and builds a lasting relationship with the brand.[20] Astroturfing is among the most controversial Guerrilla marketing strategies, and has a high risk factor for the company marketing the product or service.[21] Astroturfing derives from artificial “turf”, often used in stadiums or tennis courts – also known as fake grass.

Hence, fake endorsements, testimonials and recommendations are all products of Astroturfing in the public relations sector.[21] Astroturfing involves generating an artificial hype around a particular product or company through a review or discussion on online blogs or forums by an individual who is paid to convey a positive view.

This can have a negative and detrimental effect on a company, should the consumer suspect that the review or opinion is not authentic, damaging the company's reputation or even worse, resulting in litigation.[21] Street marketing uses unconventional means of advertising or promoting products and brands in public areas.

The main goal is to encourage consumers to remember and recall the brand or product marketed.

As a division of Guerrilla marketing, street marketing is specific to all marketing activities carried out in streets and public areas such as parks, streets, events etc.

Street marketing also encompasses advertising outdoors, such as on shopping trolleys (shopping carts, in the US), public toilets, sides of cars or public transport, manhole covers, footpaths, rubbish bins, etc.[22] Street marketing isn't confined to fixed advertisements.

It is common practice for organisations to use brand ambassadors who distribute product samples or discount vouchers, and answer queries about the product while emphasizing the brand.

The brand ambassadors may be accompanied by a kiosk which contains the product samples or demonstration materials, or they may be wearing a "walking billboard".

The physical interaction with consumers has a greater influencing power than traditional passive advertising.[23] Street marketing is understood as mobilizing not only the space of the streets but also the imagination of the street: that of street culture and street art.[24] The Y-generation broadly consisting of young urbanites (15 – 30 years old), is often put forth as the most susceptible target for the campaigns due to its associations with the culture of the street.[25] According to Marcel Saucet and Bernard Cova,[13] street marketing can be used as a general term encompassing six principal types of activities: This activity is more traditional and is the most common form of street marketing employed by brands.

This consists of personalizing a high-traffic space using brand imagery.

The idea is to create a micro-universe in order to promote a new product or service.

The goal of such actions is to create a space in which the brand's message is communicated through human activity.

This form of mobile presentation is based on the development of means of transport: Taxi, bike, Segway, etc.

These activities involve the customization of street elements.

These activities take the form of spectacles, such as flash mobs or contests.

The idea is to promote a product, service or brand value through organization of a public event.

First, enterprises identify the public places where the campaign can be developed such as beaches, cultural events, close to schools, sporting events and recreation areas for children.[26] Next, companies have to develop a plan to get close to different media and the target market.[14] In order to attract attention, street marketing events not only involve unusual activities, but use technology as part of the events.

The purpose is to increase the value of the campaigns and get potential consumers' attention.[27] Besides, the plans that companies develop take into account that guerrilla or street marketing involves global communication and interaction not only with the customers or the media.[28] They are also developed to identify opportunities and collect enough information about products, markets and competitors.

For example, for business it is important that customers stay with them, instead of choosing the competitors’ offers.

They implement innovative strategies with which they will not lose position in the market, and they consider supplementation with other advertisement through other mediums, such as radio and television, when using street marketing.[29][full citation needed] There are various examples of strategies that are used in Guerrilla marketing.

One of them is to provide offers to increase sales.

In many cases, businesses do not only supply their products or services to be recognized, but they also offer other things for free.

Another instance is to present a fundraiser offer.

The point of this strategy is to help other organizations, such as schools, by offering them money.

Most companies implement this method not only to increase their sales, but to improve their reputation and image among the community.

Finally, there is a strategy called "team selling" that consists of conforming groups of people, the majority of them young, who go knocking the doors of different houses in a neighborhood.

They do this in order to help companies promoting and selling their products or services.[citation needed] When doing Guerrilla marketing or street marketing, organizations also consider focusing on the psychological approach.

For many companies, this implies if they are having success or not.

Street marketing focuses on some psychological aspects to know customers' behavior and preferences.

For example, certain psychological areas study how people's brains are divided: 45% of people are left-brained, 45% are right brained, and 10% are balanced.

Left-brained persons tend to be logical, right-brained ones tend to be emotional, and the rest combine the two.

Then, according to the product or service that enterprises provide, and also the kind of customer, businesses decides the way they are going to manage their street marketing campaigns.

Besides, almost all the enterprises base their street marketing campaigns on repeating the messages they spread among their customers.

Repetition is related to the unconscious part of the mind.

This is the one in charge of making decisions.

It lets people know what they are going to choose, as well as what they are going to buy.

Businesses follow the principle that establishes that, the more people paying attention to the campaign, the more possibilities that campaign has for being remembered.

When a company decides to do a Guerrilla marketing campaign which could be anything out of viral, ambient, ambush, street or stealth, the focus for them is to meet the objectives.

The main objectives for them are: Through the experience and the ephemeral feelings shared between the company and the target, advertisers and agencies generate a feeling of intimacy that resonates beyond the encounter.

This feeling of nearness becomes all the more lasting as the affected individuals relive this encounter on the internet through social media.[30] The Guerrilla marketing promotion strategy was first identified by Jay Conrad Levinson in his book Guerrilla marketing (1984).The book describes hundreds of "Guerrilla marketing weapons" in use at the time.

Guerrilla marketers need to be creative in devising unconventional methods of promotion to maintain the public's interest in a product or service.

Levinson writes that when implementing Guerrilla marketing tactics, smaller organizations and entrepreneurs are actually at an advantage.

Ultimately, however, guerrilla marketers must "deliver the goods." In The Guerrilla marketing Handbook, the authors write: "...in order to sell a product or a service, a company must establish a relationship with the customer.

It must build trust and support the customer's needs, and it must provide a product that delivers the promised benefits..."[31] The web is rife with examples of Guerrilla marketing, to the extent that many of us don't notice its presence - until a particularly successful campaign arises.

The desire for instant gratification of internet users provides an avenue for Guerrilla marketing by allowing businesses to combine wait marketing with guerrilla tactics.

Simple examples consist of using 'loading' pages or image alt texts to display an entertaining or informative message to users waiting to access the content they were trying to get to.

As users dislike waiting with no occupation on the web, it is essential, and easy, to capture their attention this way.

Other website methods include interesting web features such as engaging landing pages.

Many online marketing strategies also use social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn to begin campaigns, share-able features and event host events.

Other companies run competitions or discounts based on encouraging users to share or create content related to their product.

Viral videos are an incredibly popular form of Guerrilla marketing in which companies film entertaining or surprising videos that internet users are likely to share and enjoy, that subtly advertise their service or product.

Some companies such as Google even create interactive elements like the themed Google logo games to spark interest and engagement.

These dynamic Guerrilla marketing tactics can become news globally and give businesses considerable publicity.

There are various organizations who have implemented the guerrilla and street marketing strategies.

The majority of them are small companies, but there are also big companies that have involved in the guerrilla and street marketing environment.[32] Most of the examples of the strategies that both small and big enterprises have put into action include costumed persons, the distribution of tickets, people providing samples, among others.

As stated before, one Guerrilla marketing conventional method that is used by many businesses is to provide fliers.

The goal is to create awareness on the customers about what the enterprise is doing.

One example of this took place in Montpelier, Vermont, where the New England Culinary Institute (NECI) sent a group of students to a movie theatre to hand out 400 fliers.

Those fliers had coupons in which NECI was inviting people to go to its monthly Theme Dinners.

Another company, Boston's Kung-Fu Tai Chi Club, chose the option of disseminating fliers instead of placing its advertisements on the newspapers.

The purpose of the fliers was to promote the company's self-defence classes for women.

Other businesses apply the technique of sending disguised people to promote things on the streets.

For example, match.com organized a street marketing activity in the “Feria del Libro” (“Book Fair”) in Madrid.

It consisted of a man dressed like a prince who was walking among the crowd looking for his “real love”.

He had a glass slipper and even got to try the shoe on some people.

A woman behind him was giving bookmarks to the people which contained messages such as “Times have changed; the way to find love, too” or “You have been reading love stories all your life; experience yours on Match.com”.

Also, in Madrid and Barcelona, Nokia developed a campaign called “Avestruz” (“Ostrich”) to promote the 5500 and 5700 mobiles.

In the campaign, a group of real-size ostrich puppets tried to interact with young people in order to let them know these mobiles provide a high-quality MP3 playback.

The puppets were holding their own telephones and listening to the music.

When a young person appeared, the puppet tried to catch his/her attention to show him/her the quality of the mobile.

The reason why Nokia decided to use ostriches was that they are big animals, so people could easily look at them.[32] There are enterprises that disseminate passes or tickets to different events.

For example, Sony invests on joining promoters and tells them that they have to infiltrate in public meetings.

What they have to do is to distribute free tickets to concerts and other musical events sponsored by the company .

Another instance is the Spanish company Clickair (an extension of Iberia airlines), that developed a campaign in which a group of five people had to walk through Barcelona streets dressed as Euros.

The group was supplying approximately 3,000 tickets to promote different Clickair destinations.

The people who first sent a text message with the required information would get free tickets to go on a trip.

In the end, the company received a total of 3,390 messages.

Along with these examples, there are other street marketing techniques that are even more unusual.

Lee Jeans, a French company dedicated to the selling of jeans, promoted the opening of their new store in rue des Rosiers in Paris.

The method they applied consisted of distributing denims, as well as denim accessories, on the different streets of the neighborhood.

Furthermore, in Italy, the members of the company Nintendo put into action a campaign in which they used post-it's to promote the Wii console.

They pasted several post-it with the shapes of some characters from different video games.

Those images were placed as if they were billboards on the streets.

“Wii not forget”, the name of the campaign, and a brief explanation of it, were the words written on the post-its.

In some cases, some street marketing may incite the ire of local authorities; such was the case in Houston, Texas, when BMW's ad agency (Street Factory Media in Minneapolis)attached a replication, made from Styrofoam, of a Mini-Cooper to the side of a downtown building.[33] For the cost of a small city-issued fine, the company received front page advertising on the Houston Chronicle.

Sony Ericsson used an undercover campaign in 2002 when they hired 60 actors in ten major cities and had them accost strangers and ask them: "Would you mind taking my picture?" The actor then handed the target a brand new picture phone while talking about how cool the new device was.

"And thus an act of civility was converted into a branding event.[34] Guerrilla marketing is not just exclusive to small companies.

For big companies it is a high risk, high reward strategy.

When successful it can capture even more market share, but if it fails it can damage the company’s brand image.

One successful Guerrilla marketing campaign is the Coca-Cola ‘Happiness Machine”.

In January 2010, Coca-Cola, with the help of Definition 6, filmed a reaction video of a Coke vending machine dispensing ‘doses’ of happiness to unsuspecting students in St.

John's University.

A seemingly normal vending machine surprised students by dispensing items that were more than they bargained for.

The students received goodies ranging from extra coke, pizza, flowers, to even a twelve-foot hero sub.

“Coke’s goal to inspire consumers through small, surprise moments of happiness” said Paul Iannacchino Jr., Creative Director, Definition 6.

With a budget of only $60,000, the video generated 500,000 views in the first week.

It now has over 7 million views to date.

The campaign was so popular that a 30-second edit of the footage was featured during American Idol's season finale.[which?] The Coca-Cola “Happiness Machine” also went on to receive the CLIO's prestigious Gold Interactive Award at the 51st annual awards dinner held in New York City.

After the campaign's success, Coca-Cola decided to continue with the ‘Happiness’ theme and has released similar videos since then.[35] Because of the nature of Guerrilla marketing, the message and objective must be clearly defined in order to avoid being misunderstood.

Misinterpretation by the targeted audience of the message intended to be promoted is a risk.

Word-of-mouth advertising does not always stay focused enough to present the intended message.

The rumor-like spread of word-of-mouth marketing is uncontrollable once released, and can result in a misrepresentation of the message or confusion about a brand.

Another risk involves wrongly timed (or wrongly placed) events, which may actually be perceived to be against the interests of the consumer.

For instance, in an ill-conceived promotion which took place on January 31, 2007, several magnetic circuit boards—each with an flashing LED cartoon figure—were attached to metal surfaces in and around Boston, Massachusetts to promote the animated series, Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

The circuit boards were mistakenly taken for explosive devices.

Several subway stations; bridges; and a portion of Interstate 93 were closed as police examined, removed, and (in some cases) destroyed the devices.[36] Some Guerrilla marketing may incite the ire of local authorities.

Then risks are assessed and may still be considered worthwhile.

Such was the case in Houston, Texas, when BMW Auto's ad agency, Street Factory Media, attached a replica of a Mini-Cooper (made of Styrofoam), to the side of a downtown building in January 2013.[37] For the small cost of a city-issued fine, the company received front page advertising in the Houston Chronicle.

Another problem presents itself if marketers fail to properly execute an undercover campaign.

They run considerable risk of backlash.

An example of this can be found in Sony Entertainment's on-line debacle with Zipatoni.

The company attempted to promote Zipatoni through a stealth marketing campaign, which was quickly detected by the internet community, resulting in Sony immediately experiencing a backlash from video game enthusiasts.[38] Street art is thus a subversive activity, hijacking public places and inventing rather paradoxical forms of expression that reformulate ways of communicating,[24] all of which inform street marketing practices.

Thus marketing in the street, given that it is inspired by the work of such artists, brings with it constraints and statutory risks for which agencies and advertisers are generally not prepared.[39] The main problem is that, by definition, street mobilization campaigns require the use of public space, and that use must be authorized by government authorities to be legal.

This is just as true for simple operations like distributing flyers as it is for mobilizing products or people and, of course, for a disguised campaign.[40] The authorizations necessary to carry out such a campaign are often very difficult to obtain within the time allotted for bringing the plan to fruition.

Numerous potential operations have failed to obtain authorization for safety reasons, and in certain urban areas it is even expressly forbidden to undertake a Guerrilla marketing campaign.

In such cases, many agencies and advertisers will simply go ahead with the operation, meaning that they choose to act without authorization.[32] How is such a choice reached, and on what bases? How is it justified? What impact does this choice have on the performance and costs of the operation? What transformations does this choice bring to the agency–advertiser relationship? These are the main questions posed in the development of street marketing operations today.[32] In a declining economy, Guerrilla marketing is an increasing solution to giving companies the comparative edge over others.

During times where companies are downsizing and cutting costs, companies look to Guerrilla marketing as a cheaper strategy than conventional marketing.

Instead of investing money in the marketing process, guerrillas invest energy, time and creativity.[41] If done successfully, companies will be able to reach conventional goals for profits and growth with a smaller marketing budget.

One such example is the Blair Witch Project.

A group of film students filmed an amateur horror movie.

By setting up an internet campaign devoted to spreading rumors about the fictitious 'Blair Witch', it created a lot of interest for the film.

With a budget of $50,000, the movie grossed $250 million worldwide.

According to Jay Levinson, Guerrilla marketing emphasizes strongly on customer follow-up rather than ignoring customers after their purchase.

Focusing on customer follow-up is a cheaper strategy because the cost of selling to a new customer is six times higher than selling to an existing customer.

During a tough economy, it is important to focus on building relationships rather than sales, and aiming at individuals instead of groups.

This promotes repeat sales, referrals and increased size of purchase.

The use of telephone as a follow-up tool is helpful in improving customer relationships.

Email is also another inexpensive tool for maintaining relationships.

Emails can be used to direct people to the company website.

The site can be then used to provide information and to advance sales.[42] Honesty is an important attribute when marketing to customers during tough times.

When companies show that they are fully aware of the economic situation and why they have priced their products accordingly, this earns the customer's respect.

Explaining the current situation and the risks and the steps the company is taking to the customers will give the customers assurance and also maintains their trust.

One example is the Las Vegas tourism board.

During the 2008 recession, Las Vegas was one of the cities hit the hardest.

They released an ad campaign showing people they were fully aware of the recession, yet, in a dramatic way, showing 'that regular people are coming here and having a blast'.

This piqued a lot of interest which led to an increase of tourism in Las Vegas during the recession.[43]

Distribution (marketing)

Distribution (or place) is one of the four elements of the marketing mix.

Distribution is the process of making a product or service available for the consumer or business user who needs it.

This can be done directly by the producer or service provider, or using indirect channels with distributors or intermediaries.

The other three elements of the marketing mix are product, pricing, and promotion.

Decisions about distribution need to be taken in line with a company's overall strategic vision and mission.

Developing a coherent distribution plan is a central component of strategic planning.

At the strategic level, there are three broad approaches to distribution, namely mass, selective and exclusive distribution.

The number and type of intermediaries selected largely depends on the strategic approach.

The overall distribution channel should add value to the consumer.

Distribution is fundamentally concerned with ensuring that products reach target customers in the most direct and cost efficient manner.

In the case of services, distribution is principally concerned with access.[1] Although distribution, as a concept, is relatively simple, in practice distribution management may involve a diverse range of activities and disciplines including: detailed logistics, transportation, warehousing, storage, inventory management as well as channel management including selection of channel members and rewarding distributors.[2] Prior to designing a distribution system, the planner needs to determine what the distribution channel is to achieve in broad terms.

The overall approach to distributing products or services depends on a number of factors including the type of product, especially perishability; the market served; the geographic scope of operations and the firm's overall mission and vision.

The process of setting out a broad statement of the aims and objectives of a distribution channel is a strategic level decision.

Strategically, there are three approaches to distribution:[3] Summary of strategic approaches to distribution In consumer markets, another key strategic level decision is whether to use a push or pull strategy.

In a push strategy, the marketer uses intensive advertising and incentives aimed at distributors, especially retailers and wholesalers, with the expectation that they will stock the product or brand, and that consumers will purchase it when they see it in stores.

In contrast, in a pull strategy, the marketer promotes the product directly to consumers hoping that they will pressure retailers to stock the product or brand, thereby pulling it through the distribution channel.[7] The choice of a push or pull strategy has important implications for advertising and promotion.

In a push strategy, the promotional mix would consist of trade advertising and sales calls while the advertising media would normally be weighted towards trade magazines, exhibitions, and trade shows while a pull strategy would make more extensive use of consumer advertising and sales promotions while the media mix would be weighted towards mass-market media such as newspapers, magazines, television and radio.[8] Distribution of products takes place by means of a marketing channel, also known as a distribution channel.

A marketing channel is the people, organizations, and activities necessary to transfer the ownership of goods from the point of production to the point of consumption.

It is the way products get to the end-user, the consumer.

This is mostly accomplished through merchant retailers or wholesalers or, in the international context, by importers.

In certain specialist markets, agents or brokers may become involved in the marketing channel.

Typical intermediaries involved in distribution include: A firm can design any number of channels they require to reach customers efficiently and effectively.

Channels can be distinguished by the number of intermediaries between producer and consumer.[5] If there are no intermediaries then this is known as a zero-level distribution system or direct marketing.

A level one (sometimes called one-tier) channel has a single intermediary.

A level two (alternatively a two-tier) channel has two intermediaries, and so on.

This flow is typically represented as being manufacturer to retailer to consumer, but may involve other types of intermediaries.

In practice, distribution systems for perishable goods tend to be shorter - direct or single intermediary, because of the need to reduce the time a product spends in transit or in storage.

In other cases, distribution systems can become quite complex involving many levels and different types of intermediaries.

In practice, many organizations use a mix of different channels; a direct sales force may call on larger customers may be complemented with agents to cover smaller customers and prospects.

When a single organisation uses a variety of different channels to reach its markets, this is known as a multi-channel distribution network.

In addition, online retailing or e-commerce is leading to disintermediation, the removal of intermediaries from a supply chain.

Retailing via smartphone or m-commerce is also a growth area.

The firm's marketing department needs to design the most suitable channels for the firm's products, then select appropriate channel members or intermediaries.

An organisation may need to train staff of intermediaries and motivate the intermediary to sell the firm's products.

The firm should monitor the channel's performance over time and modify the channel to enhance performance.

To motivate intermediaries the firm can use positive actions, such as offering higher margins to the intermediary, special deals, premiums and allowances for advertising or display.[5] On the other hand, negative actions may be necessary, such as threatening to cut back on margin, or hold back delivery of product.

Care must be exercised when considering negative actions as these may fall foul of regulations and can contribute to a public backlash and a public relations disaster.

Channel conflict can arise when one intermediary's actions prevent another intermediary from achieving their objectives.[5] Vertical channel conflict occurs between the levels within a channel, and horizontal channel conflict occurs between intermediaries at the same level within a channel.

Channel conflict is a perennial problem.

There are risks that a powerful channel member may coordinate the interests of the channel for personal gain.[11] Channel-switching (not to be confused with zapping or channel surfing on TV) is the action of consumers switching from one type of channel intermediary to a different type of intermediary for their purchases.

Examples include switching from brick-and-mortar stores to online catalogues and e-commerce providers; switching from grocery stores to convenience stores or switching from top tier department stores to mass market discount outlets.[12] A number of factors have led to an increase in channel switching behaviour; the growth of e-commerce, the globalization of markets, the advent of Category killers (such as Officeworks and Kids 'R Us) as well as changes in the legal or statutory environment.

For instance, in Australia and New Zealand, following a relaxation of laws prohibiting supermarkets from selling therapeutic goods, consumers are gradually switching away from pharmacies and towards supermarkets for the purchase of minor analgesics, cough and cold preparations and complementary medicines such as vitamins and herbal remedies.[13] For the consumer, channel switching offers a more diverse shopping experience.

However, marketers need to be alert to channel switching because of its potential to erode market share.

Evidence of channel switching can suggest that disruptive forces are at play, and that consumer behaviour is undergoing fundamental changes.

A consumer may be prompted to switch channels when the product or service can be found at cheaper prices, when superior models become available, when a wider range is offered, or simply because it is more convenient to shop through a different channel (e.g.

online or one-stop shopping).[14] As a hedge against market share losses due to switching behaviour, some retailers engage in multi-channel retailing.[15] The emergence of a service-dominant logic perspective has focussed scholarly attention on how distribution networks serve to create customer value and to consider how value is co-created by all the players within the distribution chain, including the value created by customers themselves.[16] This emphasis on value-creation is contributing to a change in terminology surrounding distribution processes; "distribution networks" are often termed value-chains while "distribution centres" are often termed customer fulfillment centres.

For example, the retail giant Amazon, which utilises both direct online distribution alongside bricks and mortar stores, now calls its despatch centres "customer fulfillment centres".[17] Although the term, "customer fulfillment centre" has been criticised on the grounds that it is a neologism, its use is becoming increasingly mainstream as it slowly makes its way into introductory marketing textbooks.[18] Disintermediation occurs when manufacturers or service providers eliminate intermediaries from the distribution network and deal directly with purchasers.

Disintermediation is found in industries where radically new types of channel intermediaries displace traditional distributors.

The widespread public acceptance of online shopping has been a major trigger for disintermediation in some industries.

Certain types of traditional intermediaries are dropping by the wayside.[19]

Marketing communications

Database marketing

Lead generation

In marketing, Lead generation (/ˈliːd/) is the initiation of consumer interest or enquiry into products or services of a business.

Leads can be created for purposes such as list building, e-newsletter list acquisition or for sales leads.

The methods for generating leads typically fall under the umbrella of advertising, but may also include non-paid sources such as organic search engine results or referrals from existing customers.[1] Leads may come from various sources or activities, for example, digitally via the Internet, through personal referrals, through telephone calls either by the company or telemarketers, through advertisements, and events.

A 2015 study found that 89% of respondents cited email as the most-used channel for generating leads, followed by content marketing, search engine, and finally events.[2] A study from 2014 found that direct traffic, search engines, and web referrals were the three most popular online channels for Lead generation, accounting for 93% of leads.[3] Lead generation is often paired with lead management to move leads through the purchase funnel.

This combination of activities is referred to as pipeline marketing.

A lead is usually allotted to an individual to follow up on.

Once the individual (e.g.

salesperson) reviews and qualifies it to have potential business, the lead gets converted to an opportunity for a business.

The opportunity then has to undergo multiple sales stages before the deal is won.

A lead usually is the contact information and in some cases, demographic information of a customer who is interested in a specific product or service.

There are two types of leads in the Lead generation market: sales leads and marketing leads.

Sales leads are generated on the basis of demographic criteria such as FICO score (United States), income, age, household income, psychographic, etc.

These leads are resold to multiple advertisers.

Sales leads are typically followed up through phone calls by the sales force.

Sales leads are commonly found in the mortgage, insurance and finance industries.

Marketing leads are brand-specific leads generated for a unique advertiser offer.

In direct contrast to sales leads, marketing leads are sold only once.

Because transparency is a necessary requisite for generating marketing leads, marketing lead campaigns can be optimized by mapping leads to their sources.

An investor lead is a type of a sales lead.

An investor lead is the identity of a person or entity potentially interested in participating in an investment, and represents the first stage of an investment sales process.

Investor leads are considered to have some disposable income that they can use to participate in appropriate investment opportunities in exchange for return on investment in the form of interest, dividend, profit sharing or asset appreciation.

Investor lead lists are normally generated through investment surveys, investor newsletter subscriptions or through companies raising capital and selling the database of people who expressed an interest in their opportunity.

Investor Lead lists are commonly used by small businesses looking to fund their venture or simply needing expansion capital that was not readily available by banks and traditional lending sources.

Business leads are often grouped into segments to the level of qualification present within an organization.

Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) are leads that have typically come through Inbound channels, such as Web Search or content marketing, and have expressed interest in a company's product or service.

These leads have yet to interact with sales teams.

Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) are leads screened by salespeople, oftentimes Sales Development Representatives (SDRs), for appropriate qualifying criteria to be followed-up with.

Qualifying criteria include need, budget, capacity, time-frame, interest, or authority to purchase.

Online Lead generation is an Internet marketing term that refers to the generation of prospective consumer interest or inquiry into a business' products or services through the Internet.

Leads, also known as contacts, can be generated for a variety of purposes: list building, e-newsletter list acquisition, building out reward programs, loyalty programs or for other member acquisition programs.

With the rise of social networking websites, social media is used by organizations and individuals to generate leads or gain business opportunities.

Many companies actively participate on social networks including LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to find talent pools or market their new products and services.[4] Email remains one of the main ways that businesses communicate with clients & vendors.

Because of this, marketers often send messages to users’ inboxes.

Many leads are generated every day with cold email campaigns and warm email campaigns.

For the foreseeable future email campaigns remain a great email marketing tool.

There are three main pricing models in the online advertising market that marketers can use to buy advertising and generate leads: Recently,[when?] there has been a rapid increase in online Lead generation: banner and direct response advertising that works off a CPL pricing model.

In a pay-per-acquisition (PPA) pricing model, advertisers pay only for qualified leads resulting from those actions, irrespective of the clicks or impressions that went into generating the lead.

PPA advertising is playing an active role in online Lead generation.

PPA pricing models are more advertiser-friendly as they are less susceptible to fraud and bots.

With pay per click, providers can commit fraud by manufacturing leads or blending one source of lead with another (example: search-driven leads with co-registration leads) to generate higher profits for themselves.

A GP Bullhound research report stated that the online Lead generation was growing at 71% YTY[when?] — more than twice as fast as the online advertising market.

The rapid growth is primarily driven by the advertiser demand for ROI focused marketing, a trend that is expected to accelerate during a recession.[citation needed] Common types of opt-in ad units include: A common advertising metric for Lead generation is cost per lead.

The formula is Cost / Leads, for example if you created 100 leads and it cost $1000, the cost per lead would be $10.

Many private healthcare organizations use online Lead generation as a way to contact their existing patients and to acquire new patients.

"The number of Cyberchondriacs has jumped to 175 million from 154 million last year, possibly as a result of the health care reform debate.

Furthermore, frequency of usage has also increased.

Fully 32% of all adults who online says they look for health information "often," compared to 22% last year." said Harris Interactive in a study completed and reported in August 2010 with demographics based in the United States of America.[5] Lead nurturing is the process of continuously contacting the potential buyer to update information and to improve the knowledge of the customer throughout the buying process.

All lead information tends to change or become obsolete as time passes.

To keep the information up to date, the Lead Manager needs to continuously contact the leads' contact to update the information, to deepen the information in a are often grouped into segments to the level of qualification present within an organization.[6] Lead nurturing Process is the set of actions that the marketing team makes in order to nurture the leads.

They can be both manual or automatic.

Marketing channel

Small Business Marketing

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