CONTRACTS OF AGENCY

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        7'ps of target market

Once you've developed your marketing strategy, there is a "Seven P Formula" you should use to continually evaluate and reevaluate your business activities. These seven are: product, price, promotion, place, packaging, positioning and people. As products, markets, customers and needs change rapidly, you must continually revisit these seven Ps to make sure you're on track and achieving the maximum results possible for you in today's marketplace.

Product

To begin with, develop the habit of looking at your product as though you were an outside marketing consultant brought in to help your company decide whether or not it's in the right business at this time. Ask critical questions such as, "Is your current product or service, or mix of products and services, appropriate and suitable for the market and the customers of today?"
Whenever you're having difficulty selling as much of your products or services as you'd like, you need to develop the habit of assessing your business honestly and asking, "Are these the right products or services for our customers today?"
Is there any product or service you're offering today that, knowing what you now know, you would not bring out again today? Compared to your competitors, is your product or service superior in some significant way to anything else available? If so, what is it? If not, could you develop an area of superiority? Should you be offering this product or service at all in the current marketplace?

Prices

The second P in the formula is price. Develop the habit of continually examining and reexamining the prices of the products and services you sell to make sure they're still appropriate to the realities of the current market. Sometimes you need to lower your prices. At other times, it may be appropriate to raise your prices. Many companies have found that the profitability of certain products or services doesn't justify the amount of effort and resources that go into producing them. By raising their prices, they may lose a percentage of their customers, but the remaining percentage generates a profit on every sale. Could this be appropriate for you?
Sometimes you need to change your terms and conditions of sale. Sometimes, by spreading your price over a series of months or years, you can sell far more than you are today, and the interest you can charge will more than make up for the delay in cash receipts. Sometimes you can combine products and services together with special offers and special promotions. Sometimes you can include free additional items that cost you very little to produce but make your prices appear far more attractive to your customers.
In business, as in nature, whenever you experience resistance or frustration in any part of your sales or marketing activities, be open to revisiting that area. Be open to the possibility that your current pricing structure is not ideal for the current market. Be open to the need to revise your prices, if necessary, to remain competitive, to survive and thrive in a fast-changing marketplace.

Promotion

The third habit in marketing and sales is to think in terms of promotion all the time. Promotion includes all the ways you tell your customers about your products or services and how you then market and sell to them.
Small changes in the way you promote and sell your products can lead to dramatic changes in your results. Even small changes in your advertising can lead immediately to higher sales. Experienced copywriters can often increase the response rate from advertising by 500 percent by simply changing the headline on an advertisement.
Large and small companies in every industry continually experiment with different ways of advertising, promoting, and selling their products and services. And here is the rule: Whatever method of marketing and sales you're using today will, sooner or later, stop working. Sometimes it will stop working for reasons you know, and sometimes it will be for reasons you don't know. In either case, your methods of marketing and sales will eventually stop working, and you'll have to develop new sales, marketing and advertising approaches, offerings, and strategies.

Place

The fourth P in the marketing mix is the place where your product or service is actually sold. Develop the habit of reviewing and reflecting upon the exact location where the customer meets the salesperson. Sometimes a change in place can lead to a rapid increase in sales.
You can sell your product in many different places. Some companies use direct selling, sending their salespeople out to personally meet and talk with the prospect. Some sell by telemarketing. Some sell through catalogs or mail order. Some sell at trade shows or in retail establishments. Some sell in joint ventures with other similar products or services. Some companies use manufacturers' representatives or distributors. Many companies use a combination of one or more of these methods.
In each case, the entrepreneur must make the right choice about the very best location or place for the customer to receive essential buying information on the product or service needed to make a buying decision. What is yours? In what way should you change it? Where else could you offer your products or services?

Packaging

The fifth element in the marketing mix is the packaging. Develop the habit of standing back and looking at every visual element in the packaging of your product or service through the eyes of a critical prospect. Remember, people form their first impression about you within the first 30 seconds of seeing you or some element of your company. Small improvements in the packaging or external appearance of your product or service can often lead to completely different reactions from your customers.
With regard to the packaging of your company, your product or service, you should think in terms of everything that the customer sees from the first moment of contact with your company all the way through the purchasing process.
Packaging refers to the way your product or service appears from the outside. Packaging also refers to your people and how they dress and groom. It refers to your offices, your waiting rooms, your brochures, your correspondence and every single visual element about your company. Everything counts. Everything helps or hurts. Everything affects your customer's confidence about dealing with you.
When IBM started under the guidance of Thomas J. Watson, Sr., he very early concluded that fully 99 percent of the visual contact a customer would have with his company, at least initially, would be represented by IBM salespeople. Because IBM was selling relatively sophisticated high-tech equipment, Watson knew customers would have to have a high level of confidence in the credibility of the salesperson. He therefore instituted a dress and grooming code that became an inflexible set of rules and regulations within IBM.
As a result, every salesperson was required to look like a professional in every respect. Every element of their clothing-including dark suits, dark ties, white shirts, conservative hairstyles, shined shoes, clean fingernails-and every other feature gave off the message of professionalism and competence. One of the highest compliments a person could receive was, "You look like someone from IBM."

Positioning

The next P is positioning. You should develop the habit of thinking continually about how you are positioned in the hearts and minds of your customers. How do people think and talk about you when you're not present? How do people think and talk about your company? What positioning do you have in your market, in terms of the specific words people use when they describe you and your offerings to others?
In the famous book by Al Reis and Jack Trout, Positioning, the authors point out that how you are seen and thought about by your customers is the critical determinant of your success in a competitive marketplace. Attribution theory says that most customers think of you in terms of a single attribute, either positive or negative. Sometimes it's "service." Sometimes it's "excellence." Sometimes it's "quality engineering," as with Mercedes Benz. Sometimes it's "the ultimate driving machine," as with BMW. In every case, how deeply entrenched that attribute is in the minds of your customers and prospective customers determines how readily they'll buy your product or service and how much they'll pay.
Develop the habit of thinking about how you could improve your positioning. Begin by determining the position you'd like to have. If you could create the ideal impression in the hearts and minds of your customers, what would it be? What would you have to do in every customer interaction to get your customers to think and talk about in that specific way? What changes do you need to make in the way interact with customers today in order to be seen as the very best choice for your customers of tomorrow?

People

The final P of the marketing mix is people. Develop the habit of thinking in terms of the people inside and outside of your business who are responsible for every element of your sales and marketing strategy and activities.
It's amazing how many entrepreneurs and businesspeople will work extremely hard to think through every element of the marketing strategy and the marketing mix, and then pay little attention to the fact that every single decision and policy has to be carried out by a specific person, in a specific way. Your ability to select, recruit, hire and retain the proper people, with the skills and abilities to do the job you need to have done, is more important than everything else put together.
In his best-selling book, Good to Great, Jim Collins discovered the most important factor applied by the best companies was that they first of all "got the right people on the bus, and the wrong people off the bus." Once these companies had hired the right people, the second step was to "get the right people in the right seats on the bus."
To be successful in business, you must develop the habit of thinking in terms of exactly who is going to carry out each task and responsibility. In many cases, it's not possible to move forward until you can attract and put the right person into the right position. Many of the best business plans ever developed sit on shelves today because the [people who created them] could not find the key people who could execute those plans

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/70824#ixzz2sQf0O3wV

Chinese investment fear haunts Indian Railways FDI plan

Mail Today Bureau   |   Mail Today  |   New Delhi, February 3, 2014 | UPDATED 11:49 IST

 

The Union Home Ministry and the Department of Economic Affairs have cautioned the government regarding relaxing the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) norms in the Indian Railways.
In its comment on the proposal of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), the home ministry, citing security concerns, said Chinese investments in such a sensitive sector should be viewed with caution.
The home ministry has pointed out that China is India's main rival on the economic front and the two countries have unresolved border disputes. Sources said keeping this in mind FDI from the neighbouring country in a core sector, like the railways, may pose a danger to national security. The ministry also clearly stated that Chinese investments should not be allowed in border areas such as Jammu & Kashmir and the North Eastern states.
The concerns from the two key ministries come at a time when there is already a divided house in the Rail Ministry over introducing FDI in the country's largest transport network.
The issue also came up for discussion during a General Managers' conference last month. Though the ministers seemed to be pressing for FDI in railways, the proposal did not garner much support from the Railway Unions that represent lakhs of employees at the lower level. In fact, some railway union leaders are of the view that FDI will lead railways into privatisation mode which will rob the system of its core objective- of being the most economic mode of transport in the country. Sources said there are even discussions over calling a strike to protest against FDI in railways.
Meanwhile, top government sources said that the MHA suggested the DIPP and the Ministry of Railways to set up a core group with technical and security experts to evaluate proposals in the sector. The Department of Economic Affairs has stated that the railway ministry should keep in mind the strategic and security sensitivity of remote locations while framing specific projects in those areas.
Mail Today had reported this issue in detail last Monday when Minister of State for Railways Adhir Ranjan Chaudhury said, "The opposition to FDI is unreasonable given railways' current financial condition. We already have Public-Private Partnerships going on for a lot of our projects. We need money and FDI looks like the only way out to carry out projects which need at least 4.5 lakh crore investment."
The DIPP has circulated a final note for consideration of the Cabinet to allow FDI in suburban corridors, high-speed tracks and freight lines connecting ports, mines and power installations.
"It's too early to comment as things will shape up only post 2014 general elections," a senior board official said.

For more news from India Today, follow us on Twitter @indiatoday and on Facebook at facebook.com/IndiaToday
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Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/chinese-investment-in-india-indian-railways-fdi-in-railways-home-ministry-security-concerns-dipp/1/341368.html

marketing 4 Ps

The Marketing Mix and 4 Ps

Understanding How to Position Your Market Offering

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How to use the 4Ps,
with James Manktelow & Amy Carlson.

What is marketing? The definition that many marketers learn as they start out in the industry is:

Putting the right product in the right place, at the right price, at the right time.

It's simple! You just need to create a product that a particular group of people want, put it on sale some place that those same people visit regularly, and price it at a level which matches the value they feel they get out of it; and do all that at a time they want to buy. Then you've got it made!
There's a lot of truth in this idea. However, a lot of hard work needs to go into finding out what customers want, and identifying where they do their shopping. Then you need to figure out how to produce the item at a price that represents value to them, and get it all to come together at the critical time.
But if you get just one element wrong, it can spell disaster. You could be left promoting a car with amazing fuel-economy in a country where fuel is very cheap; or publishing a textbook after the start of the new school year, or selling an item at a price that's too high – or too low – to attract the people you're targeting.
The marketing mix is a good place to start when you are thinking through your plans for a product or service, and it helps you avoid these kinds of mistakes.

Understanding the Tool

The marketing mix and the 4 Ps of marketing are often used as synonyms for each other. In fact, they are not necessarily the same thing.
"Marketing mix" is a general phrase used to describe the different kinds of choices organizations have to make in the whole process of bringing a product or service to market. The 4 Ps is one way – probably the best-known way – of defining the marketing mix, and was first expressed in 1960 by E J McCarthy.
The 4Ps are:

• Product (or Service)
• Place
• Price
• Promotion

A good way to understand the 4 Ps is by the questions that you need to ask to define you marketing mix. Here are some questions that will help you understand and define each of the four elements:

Product/Service

• What does the customer want from the product/service? What needs does it satisfy?
• What features does it have to meet these needs?
  
  • Are there any features you've missed out?
  • Are you including costly features that the customer won't actually use?
• How and where will the customer use it?
• What does it look like? How will customers experience it?
• What size(s), color(s), and so on, should it be?
• What is it to be called?
• How is it branded?
• How is it differentiated versus your competitors?
• What is the most it can cost to provide, and still be sold sufficiently profitably? (See also Price, below).

Place

• Where do buyers look for your product or service?
• If they look in a store, what kind? A specialist boutique or in a supermarket, or both? Or online? Or direct, via a catalogue?
• How can you access the right distribution channels?
• Do you need to use a sales force? Or attend trade fairs? Or make online submissions? Or send samples to catalogue companies?
• What do you competitors do, and how can you learn from that and/or differentiate?

Price

• What is the value of the product or service to the buyer?
• Are there established price points for products or services in this area?
• Is the customer price sensitive? Will a small decrease in price gain you extra market share? Or will a small increase be indiscernible, and so gain you extra profit margin?
• What discounts should be offered to trade customers, or to other specific segments of your market?
• How will your price compare with your competitors?

Promotion

• Where and when can you get across your marketing messages to your target market?
• Will you reach your audience by advertising in the press, or on TV, or radio, or on billboards? By using direct marketing mailshot? Through PR? On the Internet?
• When is the best time to promote? Is there seasonality in the market? Are there any wider environmental issues that suggest or dictate the timing of your market launch, or the timing of subsequent promotions?
• How do your competitors do their promotions? And how does that influence your choice of promotional activity?

The 4Ps model is just one of many marketing mix lists that have been developed over the years. And, whilst the questions we have listed above are key, they are just a subset of the detailed probing that may be required to optimize your marketing mix.
Amongst the other marketing mix models have been developed over the years is Boom and Bitner's 7Ps, sometimes called the extended marketing mix, which include the first 4 Ps, plus people, processes and physical layout decisions.
Another marketing mix approach is Lauterborn's 4Cs, which presents the elements of the marketing mix from the buyer's, rather than the seller's, perspective. It is made up of Customer needs and wants (the equivalent of product), Cost (price), Convenience (place) and Communication (promotion). In this article, we focus on the 4Ps model as it is the most well-recognized, and contains the core elements of a good marketing mix.

Responsible Reading: Marketing Management

Seems every marketing book claims to offer the silver bullet—the marketing secret that guarantees incredible success. I’ve read 100′s of marketing books—including some great ones—but there are no shortcuts, folks.

To be a Responsible Marketer, you need a strong grounding in the fundamentals.

You won’t learn them in a three-day seminar, and probably don’t have the time to return to college, so what do you do?

Read Marketing Management by Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller.

Amazon’s description is spot on:

Kotler/Keller is the gold standard in the marketing management discipline because it continues to reflect the latest changes in marketing theory and practice.

Topics covered include brand equity, customer value analysis, database marketing, e-commerce, value networks, hybrid channels, supply chain management, segmentation, targeting, positioning, and integrated marketing communications.

For marketing professionals who place special emphasis to creativity and imagination in marketing management.

At 816 pages, this book is huge, but don’t let the size fool you. It’s filled with diagrams and case studies that make it an easier read than many textbooks. This book will back-fill the things you don’t know and give you a great foundation to build on.

Though it’s expensive ($120 at Amazon with a $53 discount!) I’d suggest owning a copy to use as go-to marketing reference (I do).

If you are serious about Responsible Marketing, you should read it, at least once, cover to cover.

So, if you could recommend just one good foundational marketing book, what would it be?

Market Your Way to Growth: 8 Ways to Win

"Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. It is the art of creating genuine customer value."
                                                       -Philip Kotler          

Market Your Way to Growth: 8 Ways to Win ... new book

  

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

The United States, the European Union, and other developed countries now face years of continuing low economic growth, so low that job creation will fall far short of the growth of the workforce. With the developed world facing an excruciating slow-growth economy, successfully competing for a limited customer base means using creative marketing strategies.
Market Your Way to Growth shows you how to survive these rough economic waters. The book details nine megatrends that will offer new opportunities throughout this decade, including a global redistribution of wealth, urbanization, an accelerating green global economy, rapidly changing social values, and more. Evaluate your business's readiness to navigate this shifting economic landscape using these eight growth strategies:

• Build Your Market Share: Outperform your competitors and grow your market share.
• Develop Enthusiastic Customers and Stakeholders: Attract fans and develop dedicated supply chain partners.
• Create a Powerful Brand: Design a powerful brand that serves as a living platform for your organization's strategy and actions.
• Innovate New Products, Services, and Experiences: Develop a culture of innovation and think freshly about new offerings and experiences.
• International Expansion: Identity international macro and micro markets of high growth and enter them successfully.
• Acquisitions, Mergers, and Alliances: Grow via attractive partnering opportunities through acquisitions, mergers, alliances, and joint ventures.
• Build an Outstanding Reputation for Social Responsibility: Improve your company's social character to win more respect and support from the public and stakeholders.
• Partner with Government and NGOs: Successfully bid to provide services and products that governments all over the world need.

These are the most perilous times since the Great Depression, yet growth is still possible. Learn how to implement these proven strategies, and achieve growth rates that your competitors will envy.

From the Back Cover

If you think that companies can't grow in a low-growth economy, Market Your Way to Growth will change your mind. Most companies anchor their growth plans in one or two strategies, often adopted before the world became so globalized and technologically-advanced. Companies now need to examine all eight strategies that might promise fresh growth. Is your company innovative? Is your brand as strong as it could be? Are your customers satisfied and loyal? Are you able to wrest share from competitors? Have you moved into China, Brazil, or some higher growth markets? Have you done acquisitions and built new alliances? Have you been winning new customers by showing your deeply felt values? Have you partnered with governments and NGOs on new projects? See what dozens of other companies are doing to achieve higher growth in a low-growth world economy or industry.
A large number of CEOs, senior executives, and scholars have endorsed this book. Open the book and see what they say.
Mukesh D. Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries Limited, India
Shumeet Banerji, CEO, Booz & Company
Ram Charan, business consultant and coauthor of Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done and other bestselling business books
Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and Built to Last
Marshall Goldsmith, the #1 executive coach and author of bestsellers, MOJO and What Got You Here Won't Get You There
Wenbo He, President, China Baosteel Corporation
Qian Sheng Jin, CEO, China (Yanliang) National Aviation Hi-tech Industrial Base
William R. Johnson, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, H.J. Heinz Company
Robin Li, cofounder, Chairman, and CEO, Baidu, Inc.
N. R. Narayana Murthy, Chairman Emeritus, Infosys, India
Hermann Simon, Chairman of global consultancy Simon-Kucher & Partners and author of Hidden Champions of the 21st Century
Prijono Sugiarto, CEO, Astra International, Indonesia
Xiu Guo Tang, founder and CEO, SANY Group
Peter F. Volanakis, former President and COO, Corning Inc.
Shi Wang, founder, Vanke Group
Katharyn M. White, Vice President of Marketing, IBM Global Business Services
Guang Quan Wu, CEO, AVIC International
Hang Xu, CEO, Mindray Group
Yuan Qing Yang, Chairman and CEO, Lenovo Group
Rui Min Zhang, founder and CEO, Haier Group

About the Author

PHILIP KOTLER is one of the world's leading authorities on marketing, and his writing has defined marketing around the world for the past forty years. He is the author of Marketing Management (14th ed.), Marketing 3.0, Ten Deadly Marketing Sins, and Corporate Social Responsibility, among others. He is also the S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. The Financial Times ranked him the fourth most influential management guru, and the Wall Street Journal ranked him the sixth most influential business thinker.
MILTON KOTLER is Chairman of Kotler Marketing Group USA, headquartered in Washington, DC, and Kotler Marketing Group China, headquartered in Beijing and recognized as the #1 marketing strategy consultancy in China. He is also author of A Clear-Sighted View of Chinese Business Strategy and a frequent contributor to the China business press.
If you think that companies can't grow in a low-growth economy, Market Your Way to Growth will change your mind. Most companies anchor their growth plans in one or two strategies, often adopted before the world became so globalized and technologically-advanced. Companies now need to examine all eight strategies that might promise fresh growth. Is your company innovative? Is your brand as strong as it could be? Are your customers satisfied and loyal? Are you able to wrest share from competitors? Have you moved into China, Brazil, or some higher growth markets? Have you done acquisitions and built new alliances? Have you been winning new customers by showing your deeply felt values? Have you partnered with governments and NGOs on new projects? See what dozens of other companies are doing to achieve higher growth in a low-growth world economy or industry.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. -- Albert Schweitzer ---------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------- If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us. --Jim Rohn ---------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------- If you envy successful people, you create a negative force field of attraction that repels you from ever doing the things that you need to do to be successful. If you admire successful people, you create a positive force field of attraction that draws you toward becoming more and more like the kinds of people that you want to be like. --Brian Tracy ---------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------- Every evening, write down the six most important things that you must do the next day. Then while you sleep your subconscious will work on the best ways for you to accomplish them. Your next day will go much more smoothly. -- Tom Hopkins ---------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------- To attract attractive people, you must be attractive. To attract powerful people, you must be powerful. To attract committed people, you must be committed. Instead of going to work on them, you go to work on yourself. If you become, you can attract. -- Jim Rohn ---------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------- Recipe for success: Study while others are sleeping; work while others are loafing; prepare while others are playing; and dream while others are wishing. -- William A. Ward ---------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------- The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work. --Unknown ---------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------- The road to success is always under construction. --Unknown ---------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------- Listen a hundred times, Ponder a thousand times, Speak once!" -- Unknown