Discover Different Systems used to Market Products and Services
Marketing is organised in different ways by different enterprises. In small organisations, marketing tasks may be shared by all staff, or delegated to one member of the staff. In other setups, marketing is contracted to outside organisations (eg. an advertising agency or public relations firm may be employed to handle marketing). Medium-size or larger organisations may develop departments within their organisation to handle marketing.
In this course, you'll learn about the basics of marketing, and how these may be used by marketing departments at specialty agencies or within a small to medium enterprise. An excellent course for new ventures, or businesses seeking a new direction.
Course Duration: 100 hours
Course Structure
There are 10 lessons in this course.
- Marketing Systems
- Innovation
- What is a marketing system
- Choosing the right system
- Types of customers
- Pure competition
- Monopolistic competition
- Oligopoly
- Monopoly
- Globalisation
- Internet marketing: demographics, promotions, targeting internet users
- Supply systems
- Retailing Systems and Strategies
- Types of retail systems: shops, markets, traveling salesmen, pyramid schemes, shows, telephone sales, etc
- Retail life cycle
- Factors influencing retail strategy
- Terminology
- Wholesale Systems and Strategies
- Self marketing
- Cooperatives
- Agents
- Regulated systems
- Independent intermediaries
- Manufacture owned intermediaries
- Agricultural marketing legislation and marketing boards
- Livestock selling systems -case studies
- Product Presentation and Packaging
- Specialist marketing services: packaging, labelling, display, signs, public relations
- Merchandising
- Principles to follow when buying
- Selling: credit or cash?
- Personal service, mail order or self service?
- Shop layout
- Packaging and labelling
- Branding
- Negotiation Skills
- Understanding customers and markets
- The local environment
- Personal selling skills
- Marketing Organisations
- Distribution enterprises
- Advertising agents or departments
- PR enterprises
- Sales enterprises
- Marketing tasks
: Market research, Merchandising, Promotion, Transport, Records
- Marketing strategies
- Diversification
- International Marketing I
- Introduction
- Why enter the international marketplace
- Alternative ways to trade internationally
- Degrees of export marketing
- Pitfalls
- Significance of the internet
- Analyzing the Market Market analysis
- Trend analysis
- Market research
- Analysing the Market
- The Marketing Mix
- Marketing mix and checklist
- Strategic planning
- Tactical planning
- International Marketing II
- Selecting countries
- Restrictions to international marketing
- Economic communities
- Strategies
- Market entry strategy
- Implementing a strategy
- PBL project
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Understand the Marketing Mix, then Develop a System to Suit the Product, Place and Time
The Marketing Mix refers to the key elements of marketing: Product, Price, Promotion and Place (distribution). A balanced consideration must be given to the marketing mix. A poor decision in just one aspect of marketing can impact on the overall result, and make good decisions elsewhere worthless. For example, if you try to sell good beef at the right price but in the wrong place, it doesn't sell. If you sell it in the right place, at the right price, but don't advertise it, potential buyers might not know it is available, hence it still doesn't sell.
Digital Marketing
The internet has dramatically changed prospects for marketing. It allows communication to occur in many different ways, between larger numbers of potential customers than ever before. In doing so however, it brings about significant changes to the market place.
Demographics
The internet market is less likely to be local or even regional. It is most likely to be global. It is possible to focus on a national market through the internet; however it is almost inevitable that you will draw some degree of attention from people outside of your country, no matter what you do (eg. If you promote a product in a local newspaper, it is highly unlikely that people outside of the local area will hear about the product; but if you promote a product on the internet, it is highly likely that you will raise interest in many different countries, even if you do not intend to do so.
Thus, it is difficult to differentiate target markets according to locality. The internet does however allow you to differentiate and target certain markets, according to speciality. Addresses are categorised on the internet according to different interest groups, and that feature allows a marketer to target a particular group (eg. It is easy to make contact with people interested in photography, or education, health, or any other particular field of interest).
Promotions
There are protocols (i.e. a type of informal law) that are followed by the vast majority of internet users. One of the most important protocols is “that the internet should not be used for spamming. (Spam is an internet term that encompasses hard selling with mass mailing with of “junk mail” type promotions.) In short, protocols on the internet make it difficult for marketing to apply some of the same approaches that are used outside of the internet.
If a business is perceived to be spamming, or marketing in some other inappropriate way, it is likely that other internet users will mount a campaign to disrupt that business. There are many internet users who have taken it upon themselves to police such situations. They are not paid by anyone. They are simply driven by a passion for the morality which should apply on the net. Such people have developed many ways to disrupt businesses they are not pleased with (eg. they may run automatic programs to send thousands emails to you, to disrupt your business; or they may mass email warnings to others, telling them to avoid dealing with you).
Some “anti spam” campaigners may be considered unreasonable or even libellous at times. There have been instances of such people being taken to court by businesses they have targeted (charged with libel). Court action can be both costly and risky though, and should not be entered into lightly.
Getting an email address and web site are generally the first steps in marketing on the net; however, these are no more effective than buying a post office box or printing leaflets, if the details are not seen by a large number of people.
To get the site seen and the email address known, you need to:
- Promote your web site and email address on the internet
- Help people find information on the internet largely through the internet
People commonly find information be either undertaking a search, or by surfing. Searching involves typing a word or words into a directory, which then scans listings and shows a catalogue of relevant sites, arranged in order of relevance. Surfing involves looking through sites of interest, and finding references to other related sites that can then be moved to. Either way, you need to optimise listings on internet sites if you are to increase the chances of people finding your site.
Guidelines for successful promotion on the internet are always changing. If you want to get a high profile for a site you need to continually work at it, and keep up to date with what works and what doesn’t. For example, search engines and directories continually change how they decide on what to list, and what to give priority to.
Swapping links with other sites can contribute to your promotion as well. New ideas and techniques are always being thought of for getting your site listed elsewhere; but often as soon as these become widely known and used, their impact is lost; and the idea is replaced by another.
All letterhead, business cards, brochures, advertisements etc. should list your email address and web site. This may not bring a huge response alone, but in the long term, it does pay off.
