Student Advice for Marketing Exams

The issue of exams usually frightens students to a point where logical thought seems impossible. Hopefully these simple tips will help you gain better marks in your marketing exam.

A few simple steps will help you to perform really well. The secret is in the preparation. Try to take each topic eg marketing tools, marketing communications etc. Then focus on each of the concepts such as the product life cycle, pricing and so on.

Usually revision shows that you can recall seeing the product life cycle the last time you looked at your notes. You know the stages and what happens in each. For many students revision stops there, that is the mistake.

Look for some really good examples of how that works in business. So if you work part time you can use that business. E.g if you work in a supermarket, follow that business. They have a huge range of products so you can chose. You might take say chocolate or white goods or books or insurance. If you have a particular interest such as music or snow boarding use that as your example. Once you apply the concept such as the life cycle to a real business it shows understanding. Also means that you are not trying to remember lots of stuff as that is hard to do. By applying it is so much easier.

Then you can examine how well that business is managing its new products or how well it builds the brand.

Hope that helps

5 Tips for Innovative Marketing Practice

The world is changing now perhaps faster than ever. Marketers need to be able to move quickly and be able to innovate and build best marketing practice. Here are my top 5 tips for 2010

1. Create networks, work with customers, suppliers, employees and yes competitors. Companies such as Procter and Gamble have used this approach successfully to develop new products.
2. Innovate. Don’t just think product and look at how you communicate and develop the range of marketing tools. See the earlier post about the new Fiesta
3. Be clear about your position in the market. That means you need to chose who your customer is and who you are competing with. Are you offering total, expensive solutions or streamlined and stripped down. You can make a business from either but be clear if you are the luxury chocolate maker or a volume business like Primark
4. Brand is key and think that everything your business does, builds that brand. Brands are not just the communications, logo etc it is the quality of the experience, the staff are a key part of building that brand. Make really good use of the best assets of the business. John Lewis is a good example of the partners delivering the service
5. Co-creation, where consumers build the product is a key trend.  U Tube is a good example but means that the business has to let the control move to the consumer and that can be risky.

Hope these insights into marketing practice offer a few ideas for your business. Let me know if you can add any more.

Marketing Practice- Social Media Luanches New Fiesta

Social media is all around us and marketer and business writers alike are suggesting that it is key part of the campaign and good marketing practice.

Ford are launching the new Fiesta in the US. They have taken social media to a new level. Instead of building a marketing campaign and incorporating social media into it. The launch is built on social media. This is taking the use of marketing practice to a whole new level.

They hunted for UTubers who wanted to build a community of their own, These people needed to be able to make videos and write the narratives. They needed to show orginality and take the launch of the car into a whole new world. The campaign is called Fiesta Movement. These story tellers are given a Fiesta which they taken into a range of different situations.

These situations were Fiestas having fun, going out, having an adventure, helping others. The story tellers used all the social media to build up the communities. They gained from the experience as did Ford, so a win win.

The result was 6.5 million uTube hits. Not bad considering there were only 100 story tellers, who were each given a car to use. This is an example of innovative marketing practice.

If you are sitting a marketing exam, use this an example of best marketing practice. Then, show that this generated 50,000 requests for information. The key to the marketing exam is to examine the conversion  from uTube views to actual sales.

Let us hope that the adventures were safer than the video below. Note that there is sound and that there is some bad language.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvp-MMsSleQ

Marketing-Practice in 2010

If you want to gain a quick insight into the best marketing practice in 2010 the posts I have planned will show you how a range of organisations are improving their marketing practice.

The posts will cover the usual b2b organisation but also revisit some of the best consumer marketing campaigns. Marketing to the consumer is a really tough business. Often the product is low cost and easy to switch. Frequently an impulse purchase. These businesses are trying to understand why we buy a product and often we don’t know ourselves.

I will also look at newer marketing practice and focus on services and charities to show how marketing is being applied in these organisations., Marketing charities or not for profit (NFP) is a big growth area in marketing practice.

Then there are other marketing genres. The ability to brand people and places are currently hot news. The development of travel marketing and also event marketing, such as the Olympics or Football World Cup is a huge marketing opportunity. This year will see golf as a topic with the Ryder Cup being held in Wales in October 2010.

This will help you with both your job and ensure that you are able to apply the best marketing practice. It will also help you with your marketing exam.

If you spot a topic you would like to see, just let me know

Reflection on 2009

I set up the blog in 2009 as a reponse to comments from my students.  The part time students are working and travelling and it is often difficult to attend a class. So I asked why they thought it was worth the effort to attend. Interesting comments that made me think from two students in particular, namely Chayya and Carmen, so thank you girls.

The idea was that by my explaining the concepts it helped to clarify the points. That is what tutors do. My question was what else could I do to help. That was to offer the short case studies to give examples. Students tend to work on their own businesses but liked the idea of seeing other ideas to give inspiration.  Then the idea of the video was born. That was to be able to see the explanation when they are at home.

Setting up the blog has taught me a great deal. So thanks to Yaro Starak for giving the idea of Wordpress. The techie side was a real challenge for me and without Joel the Blogtech Guy I would have abandoned ship.

2009 saw the start of the blog. For 2010 the aim is to build and offer more in terms of courses and the opportunity to learn more about marketing if you are working in the business already. Or perhaps you just have an interest and want to explore ideas. If you have any ideas or things you would like to see, simply post up a comment and let me know

So just a thanks to all of my readers and hopefully 2010 will be a good year for marketing

Top ads 2009

Marketing practice says that ads should be memorable and engage with its consumers. Here is the top 10, some of the usual suspects and innovative with ways of telling the story some with humour. The success of campaigns that create an imaginative view of insurance deserve the ratings

Marketing Exam, how to avoid failing

On the new Marketing Exam page I have developed an outline answer for a typical marketing exam question. It is based on marking hundreds of marketing exam papers.

It follows the stages of the ‘magic formula’.  Watch the video to see how that works. It offers structure and helps you to achieve higher marks. Most students are worried about failing and find that this technique is really useful in the marketing exam.

Let me know what you think

Marketing Practice 2010

Marketing practice in 2010 will see even more change. The underlying principles will remain. Focus on the customer, understand their needs but also to look into the problems your customer faces. Maybe they need help to conform to environmental pressures or to outsource or to manage their stock better. Get inside their business and learn what bothers them on a daily basis. The first step in best marketing practice is to really build that relationship and understanding

Then, the way in which we implement is probably going to be the biggest change in marketing practice. This greater understanding means we will customise and tailor our product/service to those needs. This will mean more local solutions. This will be led be technology and here mobile communication. Imagine you are looking for a restaurant in a town. This can be accessed by the mobile phone. You will be able to then communicate quick updates to your customers and focus on the specific information needs.

Marketing practice in 2010 is shaping up to be exciting and fast moving with better  insight into customer needs. This will be implemented by more creative use of mobile technology. Head over to www.mashable.com for a few ideas.

Marketing Capabilities

Marketing practice aims to build competitive advantage. To be successful and differentiate the business, needs to be built on clear capabilities. The analysis of those capabilities is a fundamental part of the marketing audit.

Try to look at the range of skills that the organisation possesses. Some businesses spend time talking about the ‘product’ but it is much more than that.  Of course the ‘product’ needs to meet standards required by the target customer.

From here look more broadly at the transferable skills that lead to the development of the ‘product’. This could be based on service and delivery, quality, understanding of customer needs, brand, innovation. In many cases it is not one single thing that determines the capability. Usually it is a blend of a few aspects and often it is tissue paper thin. It is only when these capabilities are merged that the source of competitive advantage is developed.

Take O2 for example. They have a brand, a network but they work to understand the customer and develop new ways of delivering the customer experience. The acid test of any organisation is to ask why will anyone buy from me?  That is where you can start to examine the source of competitive advantage and start to take the business forward

Social Marketing

Marketing has developed from being associated with traditional consumer goods such as chocolate, washing powder and the like. Marketing in the business to business sector is critical. If you are a big name brand, say Cadbury’s for example. Of course there are the end consumers who enjoy chocolate. I am one of them. If I stopped buying it today doubt Cadbury’s would notice. They are concerned with the customers ie the key accounts such as the big superstores.

From here marketing is now touching every type of business. Sport, travel, music etc are all busy trying to market their products and services.

The world of social marketing is a key growth area for marketers. Charities and not for profit organisations are fast becoming marketing orientated. The Alzheimer’s Society has just launched a campaign. It features celebrities to attempt to raise the profile. The way an organisation like this operates is to really understand all of those people who are touched by this illness.

Of course the patient, the family and then the carers. The health service and doctors as providers of care are a key ‘customer’ of the Society. From there the Society will attract funding not only from donations but also from grants for research. This sheds a different light to stress the business angle to ensure that the Society attracts funding. The market for money is very competitive. Then there are the volunteers who are another key stakeholder and key to the support it offers.

The challenge is to build the brand of the Society so that it delivers to the patient but also to society as a whole. It should aim to remove the stigma and improve understanding of the illness. That is social marketing at work. Of course it will develop the aims of revenue, growth etc.

The difference here for social marketing and an example of marketing practice is to bring the Society to the forefront and to be a leader in research into the illness