QR Codes

Everywhere you look QR codes are making their way into mainstream marketing.  Most recently I was waiting for the train and noticed that a signing of Heinz ketchup that  had a QR code.  Out of curiosity, I took out my smart phone and grabbed it. It brought me to the website of Heinz.  The page offered nformation and the ability to sign up for special offers. This is an example of direct response.

QR codes have appeared in mass thanks to smart phones and digital technology.  Entering a long URL into a web browser on your phone has become easier but still requires typing characters.  Enter the QR code.  With a simple free app you can click and button and be redirected to a web page.  I guess it's a good thing that we're  lazy, its the motivator for a number of technological advances.

 If you haven't run any promotions with QR codes, your goal should be to have one up and running in the next week or so.
I like to think of QR codes as the means to an end.  The functionality of a QR code is to get you to a web page. always think about the end goal which is to have your prospect complete a transaction of some kind.  This could be to provide you with an email address or make a purchase.

 What's the goal of your QR promotion?  What do you want people to do once they get to your  page?  What's in it for them?  Why should they take a snapshot of the QR code in the the first place?  One of the best strategies is to offer incentives to people who use the QR code to arrive at your landing page.  Have them sign up for special offers or something of value.  This is one of the more popular strategies that builds your list and grows your business.

I said that making a QR code is simple, after watching this YouTube clip it is!

Market strategy

I often ask myself about the art and science of a go-to-market strategy.  Although there's really not perfect plan when it comes to developing effective marketing programs for your products or services, I do believe that there are a number of key components to the best go-to-marketing programs.

If you're not familiar with a go-to-market strategy, it's really a road map for introducing your offering to the marketplace.  It's based on creating a unique position in the market which includes pricing, messaging, and promotional campaigns.  Essentials of a strong go-to-market plan include:

1.  Product positing.  Determine what your unique selling proposition is.  What is your differentiation and who are you trying to sell to?  Once you know just how different your products is and who your target is you can make decisions on price, packaging, and so on.

2.  Know your customer.  Do you have a clear picture of who will pay for your product or service?  Understanding the purchase decision process of your buyer - how they use the product, the need your product solves, what they are willing to pay for - makes all the difference.

3.  Segment by event.  Are there specific buying occasions that are important to your buyer?  In the past, most go to market plans were based on product launches .  Today, in order to be effective, you need to consider significant buying times for your customers.  What events are times of year drive behavior?  Knowing and capitalizing on these events is essential fr your go-to-market plan.

4.  Determine your sales strategy.  Before rolling our your marketing plans you need to consider the sales strategy.  Are you going to drive prospects to a face-to-face meeting, leverage your inside sales team, or move them into an online purchase funnel?  Consider all of the buying steps before going to market.

5.  Pilot your program.  The most effective programs are those which are tested on a small scale.  Before you put all of your marketing eggs into a single basket, consider rolling out your plans on a small test group.  This allows you to better control and test all aspects of your marketing plan while minimizing risk.

6.  Refine your go-to-market strategy.  Once you begin to roll out your plan, be mindful of what's working and what needs improvement.  The goal of marketing isn't perfect but continuous improvement.  Through measurement and refinement, you can get the most from your go-to-market plan.

7.  Test. Test. Test.  Don't settle for good.  Focus on great.  After you do the initial launch of your plan, document what works, what doesn't, and what you'll do differently next time.  Documentation is the key to avoiding mistakes in the future and building on your successes.

Go-to-market strategies always vary in size and timing.  But effective strategies have all considered the key elements of: positioning, knowing your customers, segmenting by event, sales strategy, pilot programs, refining and testing your plan. 

Growth In Mobile Marketing

We've heard about it for years, but it seems that 2012 might be the year that mobile marketing finally grows up and plays with the big boys.  Over the past year, growth in mobile marketing has risen dramatically on many fronts. With apps, mobile search advertising and now retail, the mobile marketing space is delivering the numbers.

In today's post, Pavel Webb from TextMagic gives us some global insights into mobile marketing.  If you're not using mobile as a marketer just yet, consider how quickly this marketing channel is moving.

Everywhere you look you see more on the power of mobile marketing.  As a field, mobile marketing has been growing faster than almost any other marketing segment from both a user and advertising standpoint.  Until now yo may have been considering mobile marketing but haven't yet integrated it into your marketing mix.  There are a number of ways to get started and the best way is to see what industry leading brands are doing.
With over 300,000 apps developed in the last three years and with a predicted 29 billion app downloads this year alone, the demand for apps is rising and is expected to peak around 2013.  Brands have realized the power of being able to push their content out to mobile users with many well-known retail companies, utilities and restaurant chains jumping onto the handset with their own branded apps.

SMS marketing is most effectively used as a way to engage customers by offering a level of service via reminders, notices and coupon codes. As well, various countries show a preference for opt-in SMS marketing, especially the UK and France.

Senseo: the marketing of a smart machine

Last weekend I had a sleep-over at my niece. The first thing we did was trying out her new Senseo machine. We wanted to drink latte macchiato, so she already bought some ‘crups’, those are little things to put in the machine that will make your favorite coffee. The krups from Senseo are the only ones that fit in the machine and are exclusively sold at the Bijenkorf or the Senseo store.
While we were making the coffee, we were talking about the fact that Senseo’s selling and marketing strategy is so well conceived that almost every household has one. That is asking for more research. How did Senseo create this special coffee moment for us that we are not willing to buy another machine?

Douwe Egberts said in the introduction: "Pot moments will be cup moments''. That did not immediately was the best slogan for the rusty Dutch coffee at home to change and re-conquer. Nevertheless, it was a big gap in the market to exist for that coffee was introduced by Philips. Moreover, the coffee drinker rather had a fresh cup of coffee than refills kept warm in a pot of coffee.

Philips and Douwe Egberts discovered by the survey carried out at today’s lifestyle a way of making coffee should be. They wanted a better quality more easily and also quickly.
The leaders of coffee and coffee machines (Philips and Douwe Egberts) had devised a whole new concept: Senseo Crema. That stood for top quality coffee from a super fast machine.

Philips and Douwe Egberts developed a sophisticated marketing strategy together. Their target group consisted women and men from 20 to 49 years. Their goal was, in the first year, that one of every six sold coffee machines should be Senseo coffee machines.

In developing the pricing, the alliance between Philips and Douwe Egberts was of strategic importance. The coffee machine is absolutely nothing without the krup or the pad. That gave them the opportunity to play with the price of the machine and the coffee.

The promotion strategy is obviously very important. That was really well thought out. Advertising campaigns, which the best coffees come forward so that you (even I, when I did not like coffee at all) yearns for the picture we see.
 Large-scale samplings resulted in a resounding success, because you as a consumer tasting at the discretion of a product almost cannot say no to a product. Because the personal contact with the seller is large, so that they can properly respond to your needs and can take away the possible drawbacks.

The goal was clearly stated that the Senseo was there, increasing the brand awareness.

Clearly Senseo a great marketing success. Douwe Egberts Coffee sells doubled the price than before the Senseo machine! For me, it is a coffee revolution, an innovation in the traditional market!

Senseo is well known for having the mouth watering commercials where the coffee seems perfect every single time! 

Social media as a marketing tool

Today, 96% of young people using social media. They blog, tweet, share / upload videos and photos. Imagine that they are talking about your service or product. Social media is a fundamental change in the typical way we communicate.S

The definition of social media is''online platforms with the feature that the users themselves provide the content, with little or no intervention of a professional editorial''
Examples include stats such as weblogs, services like Twitter where his activities at some point want to share with his "followers" by posting messages and YouTube where videos of themselves and / or others places (well known today because this discovered by talent scouts), social networks like LinkedIn (this can create a profile to which employers can see what their candidates do), Facebook and Hyves (this is a site where your personal profile, create and respond photos, videos and status updates to place and with others internationally to communicate).

If the target of an organization is adolescents to adults than they focus on the social networking sites like Facebook and Hyves. Would it be  the mass organization, then it will use a site like YouTube where young and old every day and watch movies upload. As users of the site may not realize is that this is an excellent means of communication which they influenced.For example when opening a video on YouTube usually advance a short film plays with the aim of promoting a product or service. The viewers are in the first few seconds required to look at it then, to inquire on what happened that watching an unconscious stimulus gets skewed.
Was an example of social media can do for society, for example, the donor week on social network Hyves. Last year, the donor also successful week. Then he handed a Facebook action in the first month immediately 25,000 new organ donors. All Facebook users got when their page on whether they wanted to save someone's life. Then they could register as donors.
What many organizations are doing now is creating themselves a social network profile on MySpace and Facebook. If costumers 'like' the page, it will automatically update in the future with information about new products or services, discounts and pricing actions on their time line. To bring costumer service at a hight level, social media gives the oppurtunity to ask questions directly from this site, without long waiting. This saves the consumer the step where it should be called first so that they remain satisfied.

Using social networking as a marketing tool had some benefits and some disadvantagedsBenefits:-Organizations can enjoy many of the so-called free publicity. Free publicity is like a free listing of media attention in the form of an article in the newspaper, Internet or positive word of mouth. When users find a good product, they usually post to a place, sometimes with a picture there. This makes others curious about the product or service they want and perhaps purchase yourself.-Organizations increase their brand awareness by having their ads exposed to an bigger audience.Disadvantages:-It may also be that consumers have a negative experience with a product or service has. When a negative experience they will post it on sites like twitter and facebook.In summary, it's not about how social media is used as a marketing tool, but on how well social media is used. 

Below is a little clip about the so called ''Social Media Revolution 2011''!

Blue Monday..

Today is Blue Monday!

Blue Monday is a name given to a date for the most depressing day of the year. The British psychologist Cliff Arnall, which is a depression specialist invented a, according to him, scientifically sound formula that showed that the third Monday in January is the day when most people are sad or depressed. This would have to do with the fact that the good intensions for the New Year failed, the holidays seem far away and the days are dark.

In marketing words: The best day to draw attention!

An example is the attempt ‘laughing’ is successful. The old record was 415 people who were laughing and today there were seven more. The biggest ‘laughing meditation session in the world’ was held in Amsterdam today.  The attempt was an idea of the aid organization Doctors of the World, to call attention to help children and young people with deformities such as cleft lip or burns in developing countries.
The pictures of the event were on almost every (social) media.

Using an event as a marketing instrument, what free is, is one of the best ways to promote things like mother’s day, fathers day and Christmas. What marketers do is promote their products massively to reach a huge public. What we are noticing is that we spend a lot of money on those days and that is the reason we’re getting a little bit depressed after the holidays at the end of the year.

Eventually  it is all about how the consumers feel when they are purchasing. Why not make the experience fun every year!

THE BLACK BOX

You are probably thinking of the magic box of a magician. But you are wrong!
The black box model is used to describe how consumers make decision regarding a product.
A lot of ads about products are thrown at us every day that is the ‘insert’. What our mind does with it happens in the black box because every person perception is different. What comes out of the black box is the consumer behaviour.

Insert →          black box           → emission

With the Black Box method, we assume that behavior is always a response to a stimulus. These can be internal stimuli that display the internal state and external stimuli that may be through one or more senses is reached.

The essence of the model is that it suggests consumers will respond in particular ways to different stimuli after they have 'processed' those stimuli in their minds.


It is called the ‘black box model’ because we still know so little about how the human mind works. We cannot see what goes on in the mind and we don't really know much about what goes on in there, so it's like a black box. As far as consumer behaviour goes, we know enough to be able to identify major internal influences and the major steps in the decision-making process which consumers use, but we don't really know how consumers transform all these data, together with the stimuli, to generate particular responses. 

What is keeping me awake at night?

Last week I went shopping. One thing that I wanted really badly was a new curling iron. I did not care about the brand, just the size and it had to be within my budget (that was €50).
When I arrived at the store, one thing I noticed that they had a whole wall with curling irons with the size I wanted. But when there is so much choice and the prices did not differ much, I was clueless which one to buy. After approximately 2 minutes a woman came to me with the magic words ‘’Can I help you with anything?’’
After I explained what I wanted she recommended one that was revolutionary because it had a unique feature that prevents your hair from becoming really dry, but a little bit over my budget. She gave me information about how to use the product, walked with me to the counter and eventually said goodbye.

When I was at home reading some articles for school about marketing I recognized something in her behavior. She was exactly following the ‘traditional’ steps of marketing how to sell a product to the costumer according to the guru Verhage!

His theory:

Recognize the problem
↓
Translate the problem in the products
↓
Translate the product in the needs of the costumer
↓
Taking away all the doubts
↓
Building a relation

After reading this I was feeling a little bit like ‘a victim of excellent marketing’. But after seeing so many  campaigns about this product on television I was again really satisfied with the product.
What the campaigns did according to Verhage is taking away my cognitive dissonance.

When someone thinks they are never going to be a victim of a good marketing strategic they somehow already are.