Effective Marketing Strategies by Mrrak

Lets take a quick look at types of effective marketing strategies:

The PUSH MARKETING STRATEGY in marketing strategies ‘pushes’ the advertised product into the market by using all available distribution.

The PULL MARKETING STRATEGY works through direct interaction with the end user.

Pricing is a critical factor in marketing strategies. How you will offering the prices?

If your offering has adequate significant differentiation to justify a high price, and you prefer quick cash to substantial control and market penetration, then you set your prices very high. If your goal is quick market penetration, and short term income is not a primary objective, then you can fix your prices at a lower end.

If your market influence is limited, the market leaders would have already created an ‘anchor price’ in the buyer’s minds. To state the obvious, you must effectively promote and advertise a product or service to ‘sell’ it, and there are many ways of doing this. If your offering stacks up better when comparing features with a similar product, then a product comparison ad can be advantageous.

If you want to promote your offer without comparing with your competitors, or your product is one-of-a-kind, then the product advantages ad is the right approach. The product family ad can be of benefit can be used if your offer is part of a group or family that can be of benefit to the customer as a group. Marketing a variety of offerings to a broad market will benefit from promoting your business brand or identity rather than a particular offering and selecting the distribution methods you will use.

These could include:

1. Direct Sales involves using an in-house sales organization that sells through the Internet, telephone or mail order contact.
2. On-premise Sales involves visiting the customer’s premises to make the sale.
3. Wholesale Sales uses middle-men to distribute product or service to the retailers.
4. Full-service Retail Sales involves a full service retail distribution channel.
5. Self-service Retail Sales implies using self service retail methods of distribution.

In implementing your marketing strategies, making a decision about pricing, promotion and distribution is strongly influenced by:

1. Environmental factors 
2. Government regulations or actions
3. Demographic changes
4. Emerging technology

The potential for market penetration involves:

1. Whether you are targeting old customers or new prospects, how well the prospects know your offerings, extent of competition, demographics and industry growth rate.
2. If your offering provides a better solution to the problem.

The time needed for a prospect to make a ‘buy’ decision is affected by the prospects trust in your offering, the number and quality of competitive substitutes, the urgency of the prospect’s need, the gamble involved in making the purchase and the number of decision-makers involved.

Product value, as perceived by the buyers, is determined by their awareness of competitive pricing, credibility of the offering, their ability to pay and their need for the product’s features such as quality, reliability, durability, and ease of use.

In considering your effective marketing strategies, it is important to be familiar with the components that help establish products/services as strong contenders in the marketplace; for example, is some or all of the technology for the offering trademarked by the enterprise, how the offering differs from the competition and the benefits to the prospect.

How To Achieve Sales Targets by Kevin Sinclair

Sales personnel often ask themselves how to achieve sales targets? Prospects are more savvy now when buying products and there is a wider choice of products in the market place. What can sales people do to achieve these targets?

1. Selling Is About The Value The Customer Gets  

Many sales people study very well the features and functions of the products and services that they sell. What is more important is to understand what value the product or service brings to the person who buys it.

For a given product, different people buy it for their own unique reasons. It is therefore necessary to know what are the kinds of needs that the product or service serves. You can then find out the needs of the prospect first and then only present your product or service in the light of their requirements.

This approach will not only help you close the sale with the prospect that you are dealing with. It will help to increase referral sales that you can get.

2. Serve Before Selling   

Sales people can be so focused on selling that they may not realize that this approach is normally seen as very aggressive by the prospect. To understand the prospect needs and to serve the prospect with no expectation of selling is actually proving to be a much more effective way of selling.

Once you know the prospect needs, be generous about tips on how the person can meet their needs. One of the options, of course, is to use the product or service that you are selling. This approach is subtle and non-threatening.

Even if the prospect did not buy, the chances that they will refer you to someone else is high. In addition, they may later decide to buy your product. So, do remember to give your contact details even if you do not make a sale.

3. Strategize And Follow Your Strategy

When you are faced with a question of how to achieve sales targets, the first step must be to strategize. Without a strategy, you will be aimlessly going through actions not really knowing if you can achieve your target. Then, of course, follow your strategy.

In following your strategy, monitor the results to check if your strategy is working the way you intended it to. If it does not, then it is time to evaluate and make adjustments based on your findings. This simply means that you have mini-targets and dates against which you track your progress. While strategies are high level, they are still not cast in concrete. It will be pointless pursuing a strategy that you realize is not making headway.

4. Develop A Plan Based On Your Strategy

It is important that a strategy is converted into a working plan with dates and expected results or deliverable at each of these dates. In the event that other people are involved, clearly state who is accountable for each of these actions. Identifying results or deliverable is important as these will indicate if the actions have been successfully completed. Use these results and deliverable as a basis to make any adjustments to your action plan or even to the strategy if required.

5. Enjoy The Journey

Make sure that the whole process of achieving sales targets is an enjoyable journey for you. If you find that it is not, you may want to find ways of creating some fun along the way. There are people who use fun stationery when planning and tracking their work. Even strategizing can be fun when using colors and pictures. Mind maps are a great way to get your creative juices flowing. Another way will be to reward yourself not just at the end of achieving your objectives, but also at milestone achievements.

These do not have to burn a hole in your pocket. While you could take a holiday at the end of the project, at milestone achievements, you might want to reward yourself with watching a movie or buying that new pair of shoes. It could even be as simple as having that ice cream only when you achieve the milestone.

Steps on strategizing, planning, tracking and rewarding are common thoughts on how to be successful at sales. Add to this the concepts of serving before selling and the value you bring to the customer, and you will have a winning strategy on how to achieve your sales targets.