little marketing

Executive Summary Marketing's Contribution on a Board There is an unfortunate, not to mention utterly baffling reality occurring in organizations today of all different sizes, scopes and industries: the under-appreciation of the function of Marketing as a significant and valuable force in conducting successful business. Instead of seeing Marketing as it should be, that is, a powerful engine of research, innovation, development and communication, the Boards often misjudge it as a pseudoscientific art that has little impact on their bottom line. The Boardroom is where the overall business goals are introduced, discussed, reviewed and approved, and yet quite commonly, a Board Director with a background in the function that is the muscle power of developing corresponding strategies and tactics to achieve these very goals- i.e.: Marketing- is completely absent. Board Directors with the typical Financial, Operational or Legal backgrounds are not familiar with and therefore do not appreciate such vital activities as communicating directly with customers, developing brand image campaigns or conducting research on customer behavior in order to determine how best to position the product- a Marketing professional however is. Whilst Financial, Operational and Legal backgrounds are strong contributors on the Board, it is time to emphasis the missing gap: the strategy driving Marketing function. The root of the issue essentially boils down to an underlying misunderstanding and undervaluation of what a Marketing Board Director can contribute. Demonstration Of Marketing Value The Gap Of Undervaluation The article, A Seat At The Boardroom Table, mentions that Robert McLuhan, the Managing Director of Alexander McLuhan & Son, admitted he referred to Marketing as "practitioners of the dark arts."[1] My own father, Neil Merlot, CFO of Grace Worldwide, referred to Marketing as "The ministry of good times and novel contributions." In order for a Board to see the value of a Director with a Marketing perspective, the value of Marketing's contribution to organizational success must be correctly demonstrated. The time has essentially come to foster a culture that looks beyond the tainted reputation of gimmicks, give-always, cheesy jingles and pretty pictures that Marketing has unfortunately gained throughout the years, and instead rebuild a solid, respected reputation for the function as an arsenal of powerful, driving solutions for the ultimate benefit of the organization; only then will the Board Members believe that Marketing is an asset in the Boardroom. Marketing's negative reputation is compounded by the fact that, unlike other functions that are always on a Board, such as Legal Counsel and Finance, a Marketing Professional can often be seen as a practicer of pseudo science or an 'ace-in-the-hole' when the sales team need that little extra support to reach a set target. That's because Marketing is a function that isn't always accurately measurable or rational on paper- both at strategy and result levels. It's very difficult to justify an expensive communication campaign to raise brand awareness in a target market that is comprised of unique people. Scott Stratton describes it perfectly in his book, Narrating[2]. He says it's not solely ROI (Return On Investment), an accurate and commonly used measure, that drives business success; it's more ROHR (Return On Relationships) which Marketing cultivates that produces the greatest outcome; and that is really hard to calculate tangibly. Therefore, the buck stops with Marketing to overcome this 'gap of undervaluation': the Board won't decide to include and appreciate Marketing with no evidence- it must be proven and justified as an asset, both in and outside of the Boardroom. Marketing's role is to externally communicate to unpredictable Human Beings; you cannot plug in lines of accurate code with people to have them all behave in a way profitable to a business; some of the segment will reject the message, others will love it, more still will misinterpret the campaign and others will be too busy to even notice. There is no perfect solution to a problem when working with people, whether they are running organizations or individual consumers, hence the misconception and resulting undervaluation of the role of Marketing in an organization. Marketing: Helping Guide The Submarine Therefore, it's time to dispel these misconceptions and take Marketing off the side-line. Marketing needs to be seen not as an offshoot of support to the Operations/Sales teams, but as a strategic partner worthy of valuable contribution in the Boardroom. After all, due to the very nature of how Marketing works, it is the function with the finger on the pulse of the industry and its customers: how can a Boardroom steer an organization to greater heights whilst such an informed contributor is not present? Consider this analogy: It's like a submarine (the organization) without a periscope or sonar (Marketing), instead, relying on mathematical instruments (Finance) and a previously drawn map (Operations) alone to guide the course and hoping it reaches the destination successfully (Strategic Business Goals). What if the water current changes (market trends)? What if the depth is unpredicted (market demographics)? How can you keep an eye on other submarines (competitors) to ensure no collisions or direct attacks? Marketing cannot be on the beach, with a two-way radio to the Board Member crew; it needs to be there playing its role actively together with the rest of the crew. The world's industries are changing at an exponentially increasing rate and organizations cannot afford to wait to finally come to the realization that the role and importance of Marketing has never been greater. Marketing is the function that is researching the shifting trends and fluctuating demographics of an organizations' customers in order to predict and respond appropriately for the benefit of the organization. How can an organization rely on a Board with such a vital contributor is absent? Application Of Marketing Techniques Placing The Correct Value On Marketing: Contribution and Results As outlined above, Marketing revolves around creating and monitoring the essential flow of information to and from external sources and the organization, and in doing so, it defines, locates and retains customers for financial gain and organizational growth. The value of Marketing to the Boardroom therefore equates to both its initial tactical contribution at the goals and objective setting stage, and the measurable results and outcomes of its efforts. Marketing's Contribution To a Board planning and developing future goals and targets, Marketing's value lies both in: 1. The provision of information regarding external trends, characteristics, opportunities and threats that will effect these objectives, as well as; 2. The conceptualization of a marketing strategy which effectively harnesses the strengths of the organization, aligned to meet these set objectives. Referring back to the submarine analogy, a Board setting goals must appreciate and be aware of the current and predicted future market landscape. Marketing, as a function, should be a major asset here as their efforts lie directly in contact with the market itself. If a competitor is having a particularly strong effect on the market, the major consumers are becoming more price-inelastic, or a recent breakthrough has made certain products redundant, Marketing can not only share this vital information with the Board, it can explain what impacts this will have on the current organizational objectives and suggest multiple options and tactical strategies to circumnavigate detrimental hurdles, as well as appropriately pursue advantageous and innovative opportunities. This is the benefit of inviting Marketing to participate in the Boardroom: such critical information should not be discounted or dismissed entirely. Such an oversight is an unnecessary detriment to organizational success. Why would an organization, therefore, think to exclude Marketing on the Board? Are the Board are willing to forego such advantages as already described above? Marketing's Reciprocal Obligation Expectantly, it is a two-way street for Marketing to be included in the Boardroom. A Board with a Marketing member can assess and evaluate the Marketing concepts and strategy to ensure that the function has fully appreciated the other functions' roles, responsibilities and perspectives. The Board can also actively interpret and ensure that the Marketing Okapis' align with budget, organizational and financial objectives, essentially removing the 'practicing of the dark arts' perception: by inviting Marketing to the Boardroom, the organization shines a large light over Marketing's efforts, which in effect, will assist with dispelling the pseudo science misrepresentation. Marketing's Outcomes and Results Pinning down Marketing's often intangible outcomes and results can be a difficult task- one that significantly adds to the under-appreciation of the function itself. However, it isn't as shrouded as it may seem to other Board members, should a Marketing Board member be included. Every function's responsibility essentially lies with their direct impact and performance success on the organizations' business plan and marketing is no exception to this. All functions are tasked with their objectives to make their appropriate contribution to the organizations' goals and, in Marketing's case, that is tangible and intangible corporate value. Tangible value is the most solid due to the hard facts. In reality, straight hard figures reverberate the most in the Boardroom setting and include metrics such as direct customer responses to advertising, revenue growth, statistics from traceable online advertising, and figures from such activities as Product Familiarization/Loyalty Programs. However this is scratching the surface: as mentioned, it can be the intangible Return On Relationship (ROHR) results that demonstrate Marketing's effectiveness, however measuring these can be difficult. This in mind, a Boardroom can invite Marketing and focus on the value leveraged from the concept of marketing assets[3]. Marketing Assets are the leverage able value from intangible marketing elements, such as profitable good-will, reputable brand names, successful brand image, deep brand awareness penetration, the discovery of a profitable niche, a compelling advertising campaign, contributing marketing intelligence and so on. The issue here is that, often a Board vaguely accepts the value of these Marketing Assets, but fails to truly appreciate the scope of their impacts on organizational success and profitability. You cannot put a yearly mathematical depreciation formula on a brand name, for example. Therefore, by including Marketing in the Boardroom, the vagueness can be removed by an explanation of how to assign correct metrics to such Assets in order to demonstrate the impact they have. These metrics are best assessed in a dynamic way by comparing continual past and future results of each Marketing Asset each time the Board meets. By viewing the value of each asset over several periods, unusual outliers and unexpected circumstances 'smooth out' and true value can be calculated. For example, Marketing can provide intelligence about competitors in the market through their research. This can be valued by the Board based on how such ongoing knowledge not only allowed the organization to be better prepared over the last few quarters, but how well the developed Marketing Strategies assessed such threats and turned them into opportunities. Another example is the value and contribution of a Brand. Brand awareness and perception are difficult to mathematically assess, however dynamically comparing unprompted and prompted consumer response to a brand, as well as its relevance in the market will indicate the potential earning capability it could generate. For example, Apple as a technology brand was seen as a technological leader and innovator in the market from around 2010 to 2012, and therefore, Apple's Board, with a strong appreciation of Marketing, could accurately assess high profitable return to be leveraged off this good-will. However in 2013, to their detriment, Apple's Board could view the Brand was weakening in the market now due to aggressive competitors and a far less innovative brand offering[4]. The Late and Former CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, was always a strong advocator of the value of Marketing at Board level toward organizational success[5]. The Apple example provides a good basis for the argument. The Board can assess past Marketing and organizational efforts that strengthened the Brand in previous periods (2010-2012) and investigate why a change has occurred in more recent periods. The Board, with Marketing present, would most likely determine that there was a distinct and direct correlation between the decline in their Brand's strength and their falling market share, due to their recent Apple products being far less ground-breaking and their marketing campaigns far less unique and consistent with Apple's funky, fresh image. Therefore, the next time the Board meets, the role of Marketing can be appropriately valued and more aggressively targeted to boost the next period's results. By including the Marketing function in the Apple Boardroom, the Executive Team are better equipped to appreciate the decline and re-evaluate the organizational goals and strategies to address the treats to the business. Organizational Synergy: A More Complete Boardroom A successful Boardroom contributes best when it correctly appreciates all of a business' separate systems: this should definitely include Marketing, not because it is a budget-draining misunderstood 'pseudo science' of unproved, unpredictable and immeasurable efforts, but a powerful contributor and resource. A Boardroom with a Marketing member that understands this will be better equipped to value, manage and utilize the function for the extremely valuable contributions it can produce. ---- References [1] Linder, J. A Seat At The Boardroom Table. Business Review Weekly. August 1-7, 2013. PG 47-49. [2] Stratton, S. (2012) Narrating. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [3] Australian Marketing Institute. Deloitte. Marketing's role in the boardroom- An evaluation framework for boards and directors. July 2013. Page 10. [4] Marketing Mag. Corporate Reputation Index: Apple falls, Toyota Rises and banks bite back. 22 April 2013. Accessed 24/08/2013. [5] Reynolds, G. Steve Jobs on marketing and identifying your core values. October, 2011. Accessed 27/8/2013. Christopher Merlot Merlot Media: Freelance Copywriting http://melottimedia.com.au

Marketing does cost a lot particularly if lots of resources happen to be committed to the marketing strategy. Internet marketing via web-site otherwise known as an internet marketing website doesn't need lots of funds. Exactly why costs are less in internet marketing is simply because there aren't any expenses for stuff like transport classes for marketing a good product, the only real section of concern in internet marketing would be the expense of placing the cost and working with a search engine marketing company to guarantee that it is highly ranked. There's even no demand for considering budgeting for billboard, television and newspaper marketing.

An internet marketing website could be linked directly into seriously popular web-sites that can make it fully visible. The visibility of a website may be the main part of concern when it comes to marketing with an internet site. Reason why this linking is done is because there's a lot of traffic in social network blogs and having an internet site linked to such a web site will offer higher probability of being accessed. A well balanced and successful search engine marketing company contains the knowledge and experience of linking up these websites together for purposes.

Nearly all target market groups are reached to by online marketing web pages. A business site will draw in a considerable amount of investors and even fellow entrepreneurs. Social networks and shopping websites will entice the youth and even adults. So an online marketing website can be built in this manner that it may reach peoples of all age brackets. This erases the necessity of having to create various sites for various target groups. A single website could be used up also it would likely still serve everyone who visits it particularly if they've one common product or service which gives them a common goal. A search engine internet marketing company might help set such a website up.

Since a lot of consumers are constantly using the web due to rapid rate of technology change, then an internet marketing internet site is much more offered to them. Internet campaigns are manageable and trying out an internet marketing strategy will only require an ad server. A search engine marketing company will set in the server and monitor the internet activity and thereafter determine whether the strategy is working or not. With online marketing, the vital part is to make sure that the web site gets extremely ranked. When this happens, then the web-site is going to be noticeable.

An additional factor that some internet marketing tips don't get into enough is market research. You could be able to see who your biggest competitors are by doing a simple search, however what about your secondary keywords? There is a good chance that competing websites are outranking you for a lot of important reasons, and it might have nothing to do with back linking. Is your rebound rate too high, or even are you not didn't develop a mailing list? Unless you have tried to interest your visitors by utilizing every angle that you can think of, you won't ever outrank your competition. Hopefully, you are able to make use of these helpful internet marketing tips and see a marked alternation in your traffic amounts.

For more information about Internet Marketing visit: http://www.internetmarketingy.com/for/internet-marketing-experts

Gaining the attention of your target clients is very vital in driving up sales. This is why each business, big or small, requires some very powerful internet market strategies to service the red-hot competition in this age. Sometimes it occurs that you are running on a very tight budget. This means you might not be in a good position to hire a top-notch marketer. However, there are a few simple yet effective tips which you can employ to give just the best competitive edge that you require. Now here are very effective, in fact, proven inexpensive strategies to get you going with your marketing goal.

Free Gifts To Celebrities For Endorsement
Politicians get endorsed in the campaigns. They know what it means to be endorsed by a celebrity or a respected member of the community. As a marketer, you need endorsement for your products so that you can get more people asking for it. Now, if you are running on small budget, of course you might not get those global celebrities to your side easily. But you can use you local celebrity. In your backyard is a teacher or dog-trainer who people talk about most. Get them to them to say something about your products. Just send free gifts to them and follow up with them in a few days to seek their honest opinion about the gifts you sent them. If they return an approval, let your target audience know that your products carry the endorsement of that famous dog-trainer or teacher.

Strong Social Media Presence
Today every marketer knows that the people they need are on social media. You too should aim to hit this gold mine with a bang, only that you should be choosy. It is not just that Twitter or Facebook account that will get things moving your way. No, think outside the box. As mentioned earlier, every marketer is baying for the attention and nod of people on the big social media platforms like the ones already mentioned. But you can take a different route, for instance, create a LinkedIn group. Post useful and fresh content for your professional network and link this to your marketing page so that you can channel traffic there. The rule of the game is that you should not hard-sell on your professional network, doing this can dent your image.

Tap into the power of popular niche blogs
In your industry, there are already bloggers who rule the online atmosphere. Do not be jealous about their fat traffic. Instead, tap into that resource. You can offer free gifts to the bloggers so that they can tryout and write a post on it. Also, you can ask them to allow you write a guest post on their platforms and then backlinks to your own page. This is a very effective away to drive target eyeballs to your marketing page.

Tap the potential of video sharing platforms
YouTube a lone has nearly 1 billion unique visitors on a monthly basis. And there are several video sharing platforms besides YouTube, so if you can create a powerful marketing video clip of your product, there is no way you can fail to drive a good chunk of these visitors to your marketing landing page. Avoid lengthy videos, just show something that would excite someone to action and there you have it. even if you are running on a tight budget, you can get someone to do a good promotional video for you for less that $10. Just get to the freelancing sites like lance and Freelancer.

Using e-book for marketing campaign
The most storied marketers out there understand the power of e-books. First, they are easy and cheap to create. Just like video marketing, you can get someone on the aforementioned freelancing sites to create you a powerful e-book. Basically, you can just convert your own blog posts into an e-book and then offer it up for sale on platforms like Amazon.com. Remember you aim is not to generate profits from cover prices; instead, you are looking to squeeze the traffic juicy part of it. So be sure to include links to your site on the first few pages of the book.

As you can see, these strategies may look very familiar; however, it is the approach you take that would let you make the most out of them. Remember that as your competitors will be sinking huge dollars into their marketing campaign, you can get all these done without spending a dime. And this makes enough business sense.

In today€™s ever-changing marketing world, field marketing or experiential marketing has become an inevitable part of any marketing activity. Now, companies frequently hire Melbourne promo staff in order to help boost their brand image, use them at marketing events, and steer sales and traffic for their company. It is always advised to hire a reputable, esteemed promotional staffing agency only. By doing this, you will realize what difference good quality promo staff can bring to your endorsement, as opposed to inexperienced staff. An experienced and reputed promotional staffing agency will sign up first-rate promotional and product sampling staff only, so that they can leave a positive impression on their customers. You can hire promotional models at different kinds of marketing events, including trade shows, corporate functions, product launches, exhibitions, street-based promotions etc.

What good Melbourne promo staff can do?

By hiring Melbourne promo staff from a reputed agency, you will be able top create genuine connections with your customers, and leave a long-lasting impression for your company. With their flexible lifestyle and outgoing nature, experienced promotional staff will be able to go down well with your varied promotional pursuits. If you aim at maximizing your company€™s impact and success, it is always advisable to hire a viable and experienced promo staff only. They will have a sense of perfection in everything they do, so that your prospective customers receive a clear-cut message about your company, including its products and services. They will be able to create an authentic link with your consumers, and the results that you receive can not be better.

What bad promotional staff will do?

If you hire novice, inexperienced, unprofessional promotional staff for your company€™s marketing, they may do irreparable damage to your company€™s overall reputation. Ultimately, the consumers may ultimately guess that your brand is not reputed in the market, and not good enough to satisfy their requirements and expectations. You can avoid this sorry situation by hiring Melbourne promo staff from a reputed promo staffing agency. With their expertise and experience, they will be able to carry your brand image and company message more effectively. Hiring apt promo staff that can successfully catch up with your brand will often produce positive results for your company.

Promotional models engaged at a reputed promotional staffing agency will intend at bringing positive differences to any marketing event, no matter how small or large scale it is. Best promotional staff is the one that can comprehend the importance of each and every customers that comes to your event, and make a long-lasting impression on his or her mind. With their sense of self assurance, sales panache and product affinity, they will just do the things that are favorable for your company€™s sales and reputation. You cannot deny the significance of having an experienced Melbourne promo staff at your event, as it will play a significant role in promoting your company, increasing your client base, and making you a success in the industry.

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