“Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”The American economy is hurting with:
a housing market that barely has a pulse
high unemployment
a government swallowing up massive losses from bad mortgages
billions in bailout money for ” to big to fail ” corporations
banks reluctant to help troubled underwater borrowers
no help for struggling small business owners
Is the tangled web beyond repair? When do you draw the line and say it’s time to start fresh?We’ve allowed our controllers way too much control. Our American dream, our pride, our independence and dignity have been compromised. Yet the dance continues. The song remains the same. I can think of lots more cliche’s while the politics and posturing continue at the expense of hard working poor and middle class Americans struggling to stay afloat.What would it take to right the ship?Perhaps it’s time to begin to understand that we are entrenched in a system that doesn’t work anymore. At least not for most Americans.The opportunities to address the deterioration of the housing market should have been the number one item on the agenda in heading off the financial crises. We were once a nation dependent on housing, we now are struggling to survive without it. Home ownership which was a brass ring has become a nightmare for many American families. Opportunities for those who may be in a position to buy a home are presently endless. With so many underwater borrowers it becomes a challenge to find the few that are solvent and are wanting to sell. Folks with equity in their homes aren’t terribly inclined to compete with the lowball prices of the foreclosure down the street or the neighbors short sale.Owning a home in America will surely be a privilege in coming years. Even a status symbol much like it was when I was a boy growing up in New York City. Mom and Dad had six of us and we were renters until I was about 12 years old. It didn’t mean much to me, but my father was probably as proud of buying that first house as anything he had done before or after.Today’s financially troubled underwater homeowner is truly only a renter with no equity and an out of touch landlord. After all how can you own a home without equity in it? Bad decisions were made by tempting borrowers with unrealistic amounts of money based on an inflated valuation of the real estate involved. Borrowers responded to relentless marketing and the belief that they were or could be sitting on a pile of cash. Banks of course had little concern after packaging and selling the loans to investors like government sponsored entities Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac. Today these 2 corporations, after being seized by the government, continue bleeding cash to the tune of $150 billion. Oh by the way “seized by the government” at taxpayer expense.Banks however continue to flourish and boast about improving stock prices and bottom lines while still paying out lavish bonuses. Those who created the mess go unpunished and even rewarded. i.e. Countrywide Home Loans.The tangled web may be beyond repair. The country needs fresh ideas with humble heartfelt leadership. Our greatest shortcomings may be that we want to believe in someone and that we go through life with tunnel vision. If America continues trying to fix things that can’t be fixed simply because it benefits a few than the majority will continue to struggle as a result and we will evolve into a nation without a middle class affecting everything within it.
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Using the Marketing Mix to Maximize Customer Returns
The traditional marketing mix used by businesses comprised of 4 key elements thought to be vital to the success of any business. However, with the passage of time and the variations in the kind of products and services offered, there are 7 key elements today in the marketing mix that require constant evaluation to ensure the best possible results. These 7 P’s are:
Product
Price
Placement
Promotion
Physical Evidence
Process
People
Businesses use a unique combination of all these elements in an attempt to achieve the highest customer satisfaction levels.In this article, we will discuss all the 7 elements in detail and will explain how businesses can make constant variations in their product mix to maximize their goals.Product
What distinguishes your product or service from other products? While there are standard quality and service components to establish performance, the product or service needs to be somehow unique, some way better than its competitor. This “unique selling proposition” is mission-critical to the business’s success. Customer satisfaction with your product or service is of utmost importance. Though it’s important to offer a high quality or a more economical price, better availability or quicker delivery time, it is also essential to make sure that your product or service has something that is unique and that sets it apart from the competitors in the market.Price
Consider if the target market sees the price of your product or service as affordable. If the target market is not willing or able to buy, there is no chance to build your business successfully. If the price of your products is higher than competition, it is imperative to convince the market the value of the price premium.Placement
In order to capture the market, make your products and services accessible and easy to buy. If the customer can’t find you, they can’t buy from you. If you offer online sales, carefully consider the process customers must go through to buy online. A difficult purchasing process is a barrier to sales. Know where your target audience lives and shops in order to put your product in front where they can see and learn about it.Promotion
Promoting your product through the right channels to ensure highest exposure is essential to the marketing process. A promotion on broadcast TV or radio is expensive compared to other channels; they will reach people who may have no interest or not be qualified to buy your products. The costly reach of broadcast media can waste valuable marketing dollars with little return. If the channel is online, use the internet – and search engine optimization – to your advantage. Find out the keyword search terms that will bring the most amount of traffic. Leverage the content and position of the websites that feature your product to its best advantage. If promotion is direct mail, give careful consideration to a targeted mailing list. Direct mail can be more focused and waste less resources, resulting in a more exacting approach to your target market.Physical Evidence
Think about all aspects of your organization that your prospective customer encounters. From the cleanliness of the selling floor and lavatories in a brick and mortar location to the ease of website navigation, the visit should be a pleasant and hassle-free experience for the customer. Polite, courteous and well-trained staff should be a priority to convey an image of quality from the product to the people who help sell and re-sell the product. The primary and secondary packaging can elevate a simple useful product and make it more desirable. Everything that the customer comes in contact with comes under the physical evidence.Process
A lead generation process happens from the time your marketing is seen or heard by the customer until they take advantage of your call to action. The sales process starts from that call to action until the product or service is successfully delivered and paid for. Is the process well-tested and reliable? Is the experience the same from the customer’s point of view each time they interact with your company? How efficient is the sales process? If the process can be delivered from lead to sales in the optimum amount of time, conserving resources and expense, it can be replicated over and over to build more sales revenue.People
From the people who answer the phone, greet the customer, handle problems, process payments, follow up on the sale, and manage the team to the president of the company, all actions contribute to an image of quality and service. It’s common to hear companies say we have great customer service in today’s world, but how they deliver the great service is what holds great significance to the customer.How Companies Use the Marketing Mix
The marketing mix experiences a lot of variations throughout a product’s lifecycle stage. For example, if we look at the category of health supplements, a lot of the brands started off as delivering nutritional supplements to men and women in the market. However, in the development stage of the product’s lifecycle, brands were focusing more on gaining exposure through lower introductory prices and different promotional packages. As the brands crossed the Introductory stage and moved on to growth stage, businesses started catering to more specialized categories such as Teens, Men, Women, and the above 50 and began developing more products for each category. These line extensions are typical of a business in the growth stage. When a company is in the mature phase of their lifecycle, it is common to re-launch their products with innovation to capture the surge of business experience in the development stage. In the category of health supplements, many brands identified the opportunity of attracting customers looking for exercise and athletic supplements for enhance performance. This new market segment opened the doors of a completely new marketing niche for businesses that focused on diversifying the market and on increasing the market for this new category.Conclusion
Experienced marketing consultants such as 1st Straw Marketing ask a lot of questions to dive deep into the different aspects of business. Getting to know the perception of the market and the internal workings of the company selling products and services is essential to developing a strategic and tactical plan that can be successful. Depending on each stage of the product’s lifecycle and the influence of the market, business leaders and professional marketers are constantly evaluating their marketing mix and making changes to serve their target market better. Planning, review, evaluation and research goes into determining every element of the marketing mix and is vital to the overall success of a business.
How Business Networking Can Help Launch Your Small Business From the Ground Up
What is key in any business success story is an adequate networking plan–a plan that can help launch your small business from the ground up.Generally, it is hard for a new business to become noticed, and even harder to gain your first few clients without any success stories to back up your claims. Your formal marketing plan should therefore project the right networking mix. The right networking mix is about being proactive-in a sense that you leverage your business and personal connections to bring you regular supply of new customers. The whole idea about business networking involves relationship building-and it must be strategic and focused on networking for business growth.Professional Network ServicesWith business networking, you step up to the challenge to find avenues of opportunity that you may have otherwise never discovered. You really do not want to start your business to fail due to the decisions that you the owner makes. In other words, for your enterprise to grow, you have to be prepared to work hard, make decisions, and spend money where it matters. For instance, you may consider using a few prominent networking organizations who have successfully created models of business networking activity. A few notable examples of professional network services include LinkedIn, Viadeo, XING, and WiseStep. Using these professional network services can, in fact, be most effective in terms of generating business opportunities than advertising or public relations efforts.Online business networking can also be a cost effective method of launching your small business. Businesses are today increasingly using social networks as a means of growing their circle of contacts and promoting themselves and their business online. And with the global expansion of businesses, social networks make it easier to keep in touch with other business contacts around the world.Small Business AwardsFurther, face-to-face networking through referral business clubs also have the potential for higher quality business relationships. There are also a vast majority of awards given to businesses locally, countrywide, and globally. The different type of these awards, such as, but not limited to, small business awards, innovation awards, new business awards, local and entrepreneurial awards, are a great way to project your business accomplishments to a wide range of community of prospects. For instance, for more than 50 years, National Small Business Week has recognized the outstanding achievements of America’s small businesses for their contribution in their local communities and to the nation’s economy. The range of National Small Business Week award categories include:· Small Business Person of the Year Award· Small Business Exports of the Year Award· Small Business Development Centre Excellence and Innovation Award· Veterans Business Outreach Center Excellence in Service Award· Women’s Business Center of Excellence AwardThe US Chamber of Commerce also hosts the Dream Big Small Business of the Year Awards Program sponsored by Sam’s Club. The other National Small Business Awards you can win cash for, gain national recognition and valuable networking opportunities include:· The SCORE Awards· The American Business Awards· Inc. 500/5000 Awards· Ernst & Young Entrepreneurial Women Awards· Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award· The Better Business Bureau Torch Awards for Marketplace Trust· The SVN Innovation AwardsApplying for some of these awards is crucial when it comes to recognition. Research is vital when trying to find awards you fit into. Researching far ahead of time and making a list is probably the best way to enter into as many awards as possible. Even though some awards have fees, enter any way, because the reward for your business would be huge. And when you get any awards, you get to put the award on your website and social sites as show of early accomplishments.