Rabu, 01 Mei 2013

Taming Customers though Promotional Marketing


If a business firm id able to control the minds of million of customers, it will earn billions as profit. It is impossible to do that. But using some promotional strategies, the mind of the consumer can be tamed by influencing their decision making power. They can be presented with material, which can be motivating and persuading. There is no magic involved in this; only the psychology of the human mind is to be studied and played with. Human mind reacts to different situations in different ways.  Some key psychological aspects can be studied in promotional marketing to get overwhelming customer response.

Curiosity is the want to explore the unknown. Humans are always in pursuit of knowledge. They want to know more than what others know. Secrets are simply hard to be kept. This desire can act as an attractive force in marketing. Like customer won't be that interested if they are told that they can be provided with successful diets. Instead they want to hear the secret of the diet plan which is being provided.

The information shouldn't be let out easily. Obviously it is important to catch the attention of the customer by interesting heading, but the content, too, should be as interesting so as to retain the interest of the reader till the end. In case of cross-titles or sub-titles, the initial ones will always have the advantage of developing more curiosity than the following sub-titles.

If the content speaks about why the customer should select so and so company or product, it will be easier for them to relate to it. Let the matter speak out and give the explanation by itself. Like supposing a company wants to sell some product before the expiry date and it's the slowest time of the season, plain advertising won't do the trick. Customers are smart enough to think that the company wants to get rid of the old stuff. Instead if the customers are provided with a discount or a limited time offer, a believable reason, they will be more attracted. Every action should have a solid reason.

Customers are greedy from a marketing point of view.  By understanding the need of the customer, a basis can be prepared for the content. Their greed should be taken into consideration while preparing the content. They should be shown how the product or company would benefit them. They want to buy benefits in the form of products. Suppose when advertising for a camcorder, say that it displays all the colors that can be seen with naked eye, instead of saying it supports 16-bit color.

Just specifying that the memory card have a memory of 2 GB isn't catchy. Instead it should be quoted that the memory card can store over 500 pictures, 100 audio songs and 50 videos. This surely will increase the customer enthusiasm. The benefits should be clearly mentioned to the customer and later other information about the product can be discussed, incase if they are looking for more. This is called listing the product features. Features reveal what the product has and benefits describe the advantages that can be derived from those features. Each feature can have more than one benefit, depending on different situations and customer needs. Lots of benefits and fewer features should always be the way to go.   


 

Marketing and Selling on Internet

 Marketing on the Internet involves online advertising to reach out to potential customers. It requires creativity like designing, development and technical aspects like marketing and advertising. Affiliate marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing and interactive advertising are all different facets of Internet marketing. It also includes sales, public relations, information management and customer service. Ever since the advent of Internet, it is widely used for all kind of purposes. Among the advantages of Internet, some helps in doing business, shopping, etc, from the comfort of the house. According to a research, a quarter of the Internet users shop online. It has also helped grow electronic commerce and Internet marketing is a part of electronic commerce. 

Direct marketing techniques like radio and television commercials, mails, and newsletters are the inspirations for Internet marketing, which involves direct response marketing strategies and is rapidly growing. Business-to-business, also known as B2B, and business-to-consumer, also known as B2C, are the two business models to which Internet marketing can be linked. B2C companies were the first to start when Internet marketing originated. They are companies that sell directly to the customers. B2B companies are meant to do business with each other.

Websites built for Internet marketing are slightly different than others. There are peer-to-peer modeled websites which are used to exchange products and services between each other. Other is name-your-price, where the customers have to specify their price range that they can spend and select products that fall in that price range. Priceline.com is an example of such a website. Amazon.com is a website which is based on find-the-best-price model, where customers can find the lowest prices. Last are online auctions sites, where items are bid. Ebay.com is an example. 

The companies who use Internet marketing are at an advantage. They don't need to put in huge amounts of energy and time in Internet Marketing like other traditional methods. With the help of only few resources national and international markets can be reached. Because of very low investment, even small businesses are turning to online marketing. Websites and blogs have been developed for this purpose. Internet marketing is advantageous in the sense that the data is easily available on the Internet. Newsletters can be directly sent to customers and if it doesn't contain the information they are looking for, they can search for information about the product online, make a decision and purchase it online itself.

One of the factors that hinder the growth of online marketing is delayed loading of the page. The web pages that take a lot of time to download test the patience of the consumer. To add to that, if the businesses design complex web pages with lots of graphics and animations, it will slow down the speed even more. Another minus point of online marketing is that the customers cannot feel, taste, smell or try products in order to make a good decision. To over come this, some of the online stores have created liberal return policies with the help of which the customer satisfaction is guaranteed.

Another biggest threat of online shopping is identity theft. Paying online using credit cards, e-checks are susceptible to hackers and information can be stolen and used. Many hackers and websites have been caught who were involved in buying and selling of personal information. Most of the websites have taken measures and incorporated good security on their websites. One of the best methods is encryption. When the data is being transferred between two computers; there is a possibility of a hacker intercepting it. So the data is changed by applying some encryption algorithm and is sent through the network and upon receiving, the decryption algorithm is applied to bring back the data to its original form.

Online selling is influencing all kinds of businesses like banking, advertising, music, etc. Instead of going to a store for buying cassettes and CDs, music can be bought online. Bank transactions like depositing, withdrawing, transferring funds, and paying bills are all performed online. Billions of dollars are invested every year in online advertising alone.