What about Marketing ?

Hi again Guys!

As every week, now we speak about business in that blog! The last week we focused on communication skills and abilities in the business world. The topic of this sunny week is quite different, and much more interesting:  welcome in the international marketing world!

What do you know about Marketing? Such a weird word, isn’t it? For beginners, marketing is a specific and very important skill which aimed to develop and create the customer demand for a specific product/service. In that way, marketers try to know as much as possible about their market, their likely customers and behaviours, competitors and strategies, and lots and lots of other pretty cool things! Be careful, Big Brother is watching you! 

By the way, an efficient and successful marketing campaign needs to focus on 4 main areas: the famous “4 P’s” or " marketing-mix"!! 

          - First one, the Product: we speak about the formulation, recipe, format, packaging, the design and others information directly printed on the packaging…

           - Second one, the Price: what is the right price for this product, as well as for the customers as for the company, I mean, we need to create cash too!

           - Third, the Promotion or how to promote and communicate about my new product, and all of the discounts and rebates can we apply to highlight the product on the shelves for example…

            - And finally, the Place: where could I distribute my product, it means in which channel of distribution and for what?

It that you can find in the theory of marketing (in old books!), but in the everyday life is not so easy for marketer to segment their markets, to correctly position their products… they need to think a lot about all of the Opportunities and the Threads they could face, but also the Strength and the Weaknesses of their products in the aim to find the best way (and, as much as possible, the most efficient one) to distribute and boost sales of their products! You know, it’s as fun as playing a Mastermind game, but in the real life, and with a lot of real competitors :) 

Anyway, it’s perhaps more easily for you to understand all of this weird stuff with an example of good marketing campaign. In my opinion, to succeed a marketing campaign you need to use all of the channel you can, and strongly try to build a 360 degrees communication campaign to support your product (mostly for a launching, but also for a re-launch or to fight a new incoming competitor). 

I can easily speak about Coca-Cola as example, which manage and operate very well its marketing campaigns all over the world. Anyway, just have a look on the streets, on the TV, on the radio, on the Internet, on your favourite social media platform, on YouTube, Instagram, on the cinema too, but also directly on the product… you can find a lot of way how Coca-Cola communicate in a same time! It is that we call 360 degree communication. Moreover, in support you would find in-store communication and testing, with huge rebates and discounts on the product (direct discounts or postponed discounts, buy 2 get 1 free, and other kind of in-store discounts). We can also focus on the last Coca-Cola “viral marketing campaign” named “share a Coca-Cola with…”, I mean that one in which you could find your name (if you are a lucky boy/girl)  directly printed on the bottle (or pay for... if you really need a "selfie bottle" !!). This special bottle was released all over the world at the same time, and supported by a specific website which aimed to develop as much as possible the viral effect of this related campaign (http://www.shareacocacola.si/Wall).

               

Finally, just think about international marketing. I mean, you must cope with all of these constraints plus all of the targeted overseas market ones… Like specific laws, regulations and customs prohibitions.  Also, you will face to new competitors, very well implanted in their home country, with different consumption behaviours and customs. It’s really difficult to market abroad without any help as a foreign agent or a domestic-based subsidiary.  And all of this without taking in account all of the internal constraints as financial producing or shipping constraints! (I am sure you know what I mean, like lots and lots of languages on the same packaging, in the aim of reducing the unit production cost...).

And, for sure, do not forget to share a coke with your friends, family, relatives, teachers, girlfriend/boyfriend and others people you can meet ! :)