Brand Managers: LIFT your marketing

In the Digital Era: LIFT You Marketing Tools

Digital Marketing has offered a number of tools to reach to customers. The tools like Facebook, YouTube, Blogs, Periscope, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Direct mail system, and many more, helps to reach to customers. However, other than Website, which of the 5 tools most of companies employ. They use LIFT You tools for most of Digital marketing efforts.

LIFT a word we all are familiar and whenever we have to move vertical we use LIFT . So in marketing brand managers need to elevate their brands, they use various conventional & digital tools. Add You tube to it and make it LIFT You. So how do we LIFT  our brand digitally

Company Website- the ultimate information adda, 

Twiter- Mouthpiece of company, 

Linked In - a tool to connect with prospect employees, 

Instagram- Tool to share pictures, 

Facebook- share anything, 

Youtube- online video broadcasting service

Direct Mails- Share information with subscribers

Each of the above mentioned tools helps to reach the customers. Website and direct mailers are used for a long time, however in recent past social media has taken lead role in digital marketing. Companies are spending huge amount in LIFT You model.

Each of LIFT You tools serve a unique purpose and provide a unique way to increase the brand reach to audience. 

While Linked In has become a favourite source of connecting with new prospective employees and Informing the brand developments. Instagram helps in converting text messages in pictures and pictures are known to speak better than words. Instagram is often used to broadcast the messages in graphics and images. Instagram is increasingly becoming famous and brands are using this platform to convert words in pictures.

Facebook initially , crafted as a friends messaging service is converted in to corporate messaging platform. Each of major company has their facebook pages and the brand managers are working hard to get likes and the war is ON. Facebook is a unique medium to reach consumers through text, image and videos. It supports all three formats and make it interesting to managers to reach to consumers. Facebook also helps customers to reach to company and appreciate and complaint to brands.

Twitter, the Micro Blogging site is new way to make brand announcement and react/respond to market. The character limit makes it exciting and challenging for brand managers to communicate messages. 

Youtube, an alternative to Television is an experimental video messaging service. The low cost and targeted gives edge over traditional TV medium.

All the abve LIFT You mentioned tools have edge over conventional broadcasting mediums, these tools are agile and provide an opportunity for immediate modifications. The tools unlike conventional medium, are specific, target oriented and easily measurable. Brands are increasing their marketing budgets on digital media. If use efficiently these tools help in reaching the target customers in most effective way.

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Marketing resource Allocation Process

Marketing resource Allocation Process

The financial success of organisation largely depends how well resources are allocated. 

Marketing is considered as one of the four wheels for company growth. Along with Product, Human Resources & Quality;marketing may drive the companies to the pinnacle of success very soon. It is one of the most critical tools for inherent growth of the company. It involves huge resource investments in terms of both capital & human efforts.  And for that very reason, the marketing resources need to be optimally allocated.

Marketing Resource allocation is a complex process. It involves the resource allocation at various levels in various media vehicles, territories and sales force. Every day new vehicle  emerges and asks marketing manager for its share of the money. Digital Media, Print, Pay Per click, Radio, TV, OOH and many more are lined up and each of these vehicles excite a manger to invest in them, and thus makes the resource allocation decision very complex. The marketing resource allocation in common parlance is also termed as Drafting Marketing Budget.

This complexity of decision makes a marketing manager to play safe and opt for a time tested “percentage of sales” rule. The “percentage of sales” rule varies from industry to industry. Many Industry associations publish such details, which helps the organization to decide the allocation ratio. This kind of rule works well with smaller organisations. For example an organization operates in all 29 states of India and the 50 % of its business comes from Northern region and accordingly 50% of Marketing resources are allocated to Northern region while remaining 50% is allocated to other parts of the country. This model is also referred as the Advertising to sales model (A2S).

In some of the cases the company monitors the competition and act accordingly. Some time they choose the vehicles which are used by the competition and act according. This holds good for the geographical allocation also. The agencies like BARC, TAM, IRS etc. provide information about spending patterns of various companies on various vehicles and in different territories.

However for bigger organisations the process needs to be more systematic. On the basis of information obtained from various internal and external sources, the marketing budgets are drafted. The process of drafting a marketing budget is a function of desired level of awareness and the cost of various media vehicle to achieve that awareness. In addition, it has to be in line with the organizational objectives.

While drafting Marketing Budget the economic impact of various activities are estimated. At the end of the period the impact of spends are evaluated and compared with respect to the planned activities.

The other way to look at marketing resource allocation is to allocate as per the opportunity available. The brand manager has to estimate the opportunity available in monetary terms and then decide the allocation of resources.

The process of allocation, as discussed initially. is a complex process. There are a number of tools available like the BCG Matrix in which four quadrants define the four stages in term of the relevant market share and growth rate, and accordingly the resource allocation.

Another model, Miles & Snow Typology helps in defining the existing status of organization in territories and then accordingly in  the resource allocation. They defined the status in 4 positions: Prospector, Reactor, Defender & Analyser. e.g. in a given territory, if you are in Prospector position, then you are willing to capitalize on emerging opportunities and increase investment. If you are a reactor in that geography, then you are willing to maintain the status quo and investments are limited. If you are defender in that territory then you want to invest in defending tactics While if you are in anylser position then you act to defend the existing markets and invests aggressively in emerging opportunity markets.

There are various resource allocation tools and the tool you chose depends upon the company strategy and its existing position with respect to competition. You may like to select any tools, but the key to its success is constant evaluation of resource allocation with respect to the planned goals and then correcting for the next cycle.

The process starts, like any other management process, with identifying the objectives and the resources required. After identifying the objectives, the organisation needs to monitor the competition and analyse the resources invested by them. Parallel they need to study their customers and their journey to purchase and buying behavior. The 4 Ps also play an important role in resource allocation. The companies need to invest as per the brand positioning they want in terms of pricing and brand stature. Once all these factors are analyzed the company can then effectively allocate the resources to achieve the desired organizational goals.

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Effective Resource Allocation

Evaluate Resource Allocation in Your Organisation

Rahim, MD of Asman Groceries, is not happy with some of his territories. While the northern region territoreis are performing well, the Eastern region territories are struggling.

He decides to stop investing in the eastern region and invest Eastern region resources in Northern region.

However his marketing manager Ashok is asking him to reconsider his decision and evaluate the resource allocation pattern. He believes that being the home market, Northern region get more attention and all other kind of marketing support including sales force, marketing campaign etc.

He believes that the Northern territories are over invested and eastern territories has not been allocated the resources, it needs, to pay required dividends. After carefully analysing the resource allocation process, Rahim found that Ashok is right and Eastern region needs to be given more attention and support. After correcting the resource allocation process and optimising the resources, Eastern region started to contribute more than what it was doing earlier.

Resource allocation in strategic marketing is the plan to use available resources. Marketing resources investment in Sales is the function of the potential of a territory, market share and historical sales performance data. And for optimally allocating the resources, one need to analyze the potential of the territory , the revenue contribution from that territory and how it behaved in past with the increase and decrease in marketing investment . For instance, analyze the below given graph for Asman Groceries. The X axis is for marketing investment and Y axis is for Sales. And centre line is devised on the basis of past historical data.

You may notice that the Northern region is in the top right corner while the eastern region is in left lower side which means that the none of the area is optimally resource allocated. The Northern territories are over invested in terms of sales force & marketing resources allocation. While Eastern territories are not provided with enough marketing resources. So Asman Groceries needs to optimized the resources. They need to pull out some of resources from Northern region and invest in Eastern territories. With historical data, it is noticed that by pulling out resources, sales in North will not get any hit. The resources were re-allocated and re-planned by analysing the historical data, sales revenue and sales potential of the all regions. Consequentially The results were visible and post rejigging the all regions were in linear line as per their resource allocation.

Hence it is very important that we all allocate our resources optimally to drive home the desired results. Most of us are tend to invest in the areas which are doing well, weather it is in any function, or territories or media vehicle. The resource allocation is an important function. It is the strategic plan for using available resources to achieve organisation goals. For Marketing manager it is very important to allocate its marketing resources judiciously. The marketing manager needs to employ scientific methods to analyse the historical data and then allocate the resources. Optimally allocated resources can surely lead to the achievement of desired organisational objectives.

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Evolution of Modern Marekting

Evolution of Modern Marekting

Marketing has been defined in many ways by marketing gurus. Some defined it as the set of activities to promote  & sell the products and services while other defined it as the process of management through which the goods reaches from production to consumption. 

Since the evolution of marketing when it was considered the goods will sell itself to the modern marketing- Relationship Marketing.

PRODUCTION MARKETING: THE PRODUCT WILL SELL ITSELF

The 19th century witnessed industrial revolution which made the products available in plenty. And hence in 18th century & early years of 1900, the marketing was considered as a process of facilitating the distribution of products and it was assumed that a good product will sell automatically. This type of marketing is still valid in many B2B kind of business like selling of Aircrafts or Electrical Transformers or any other Industrial Products. But this type of marketing changed soon for consumer products

PRODUCT MARKETING: OVERCOME THE CUSTOMER RESISTANCE

Soon the customer had access to many products and had all needed information about the products. around 1920s, the need  to convince the consumer to buy the products was felt. Accordingly creative ad campaigns were created and consumers were exposed. The ads were created to overcome the resistance of consumers and tackles the competition as well. Apple's I Phone is the best example of this, the product is loaded with a no, of features and expected to sell itself, however still to overcome the resistance of other brand loyal consumers it spends heavily in the advertising campaigns.

CONSUMER MARKETING : CONSUMER IS KING

Post 1950, the consumers become chooser; courtesy to informative advertising of brands and various products choice available to them. And here comes the Customer is King concept. This lead to increased emphasis on consumer research to find what consumer exactly needs and then fulfill that needs. The advts were creatively designed to emphasize that the product fulfills the consumer needs. 

The customer was treated as King and his needs were considered as most prominent. The mobile company marketing campaigns are best example of it, where n number of plans are designed and promoted to suit the individual needs of customers.

RELATIONSHIP MARKETING: BUILD LOYAL CUSTOMERS

Off late the marketing reached to new heights and it was identified that for long term marketing success, it is very important to have relation with consumers . To create a long relation with customer, companies introduced Brand Loyalty Programs. The Post Sales departments were created in organisations, who keep in touch with consumers and build post sales relations with consumers.  The consumers are asked to give their feedback on services and rewarded for long term usage of products/services. The marketing campaign highlights "how much valued you are!" and Customer is treated as more than A King. Automotive companies are an example of this, they create nice creative campaigns around the Happy Family concept and then backed up by world class post sales services.

FUTURE OF MARKETING: EXPERIMENTAL MARKETING

Going forward the future of marketing is experimental marketing, Under experimental marketing the consumer would be convinced to first experiment the products and services, evaluate it and the buy the products and services, which will be backed up by best of post sale services.The experimental marketing will help in word of mouth communication also which will lead to increase in sales volume.

The marketing has evolved in last two centuries and is still evolving, Marketing Managers are finding the best way to overcome the consumer resistance. Marketing has evolved a lot and yet it has to be refined and evolve a lot. And in future we will see more colors of it.

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Management : How do we define?

MANAGEMENT: THE DEFINITION

The father of modern management, F W Taylor defined Management as the "art of knowing what is to be done and seeing that it is done in best possible manner", while the father of scientific management, Henri Fayol defined Management as "to forecast, to plan, to organize, to command, to coordinate and control activities of others".
Traditionally Management is defined as " The art of getting work done through others". For long it has been termed as the application of art and individual skills to handle the people and getting the work done. Management is also defined as a " Process of Planning, Organizing, Directing and Controlling". Each of the management guru has defined this in his own way and unique style. In simple language "Management is to get the people to work together towards accomplishment of common objectives and goals". Management involves planning and directing resources and people for the attainment of organisational targets. Management is an Art or Science Some people call management a Science while others define it as an Art.
Art is defined as application of human creative skill and imagination. In Management also one apply its managerial skills in organisation to manage the people & resources. Science is defined as the set of activities for studying various things and then application of learning made out of the study. In management also people and techniques are studied and then applied in day to day managing activities.

Management is a Process?

Management is also defined as the process of Planning, Directing, Organizing and Controlling resources and actions to achieve the organisational goals.

Decoding Management in Letters:

The management can be decoded as follows: M= Manager A= Architect N= Navigator A= Administrator G= Guide E= Efficient M= Men E= Energy T= Tactfully
So management can be decoded as the process of Managing, Architecting the plans & processes, Navigating an organisation to its goals, Administering & Guiding Efficiently its Men with full Energy and Tactics. So what is Management? Management can be defined in various ways, however the basic essence remains the same. It can be easily summed up as a process or an art or a set of activities which involves application of human skills in creative and scientific way to achieve the organisational goals.