Marketing Techniques Are Used to Market Products

P1 – describe how marketing techniques are used to market products in two organisations’ Marketing is the activity and process for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchange a product or service; which has values for the customers/clients. Overall it is an integrated process which builds customer relationship and creates an identity for their customers and themselves.

However, marketing can be separated into submarkets – Business to Consumer marketing and Business to Business marketing.

Business to Consumer Marketing:

This is the process by which companies create a value for customers and build a strong customer relationship.

Importance of creating a customer relationship is for the business to capture a return value from the customer; (e.g. Newsagent to Consumer).

Business to Business Marketing:

This is creating a value, solution, and relationship either for a short term or a long term with a business or a brand. This process generates a strategy that motivates sales techniques, business communication, and business developments; (e.g. Wholesalers to Newsagents).

The main aims and objectives of a private sector business are to make profit and survive. Examples are: Ford, Nokia and Armani.

Public Sector:

Businesses in the public sector are owned or controlled by the government or regional authorities. Public sector businesses aims and objectives are not necessarily aiming to make a profit; most of their money comes from funds that are acquired through tax revenue. These types of business organisation for example are: NHS, Fire Services and State Schools.

Voluntary Sectors:

Businesses in the voluntary sector raise money to support particular cause or provide a service to those in need. Even though voluntary sector businesses do not aim to make a profit, they do aim to make a surplus after all costs have been covered. Another aim voluntary sector businesses may have is to increase service provision. Examples of this type of business are: Save The Children, Cancer Research UK, RSPCA.

However, public and voluntary organisations have similar aims to the private sector; which is to run efficiently.

The three sectors can plan their objectives by using SMART:
Specific – making sure the objective is clear and readable.
Measureable – for example, the data can be quantified.
Achievable – if the objective is possible to be attained.
Realistic – make sure the objective is real depending on the current stature of the business.
Time Bound – making sure the objective can be achieved in an associated time period.

Marketing strategies define objectives, plan and produce the way the business is going to satisfy customers in the chosen market. Using market strategy, businesses set marketing goals, define target markets and describes how the business should work to achieve the positioning to have an advantage over its competitors. The process used for marketing strategy has three steps, which are shown below:

1.Research and Planning

During this period, the business/organisation first develops an understanding and gathers a clear picture of their target customers. As well as understanding the customers, the firm also analyse their market and competition. This gives them a view of what the markets are wanting and what the market needs and also they can follow the steps of the competitors. With this information they can then plan and start developing their market strategy.

2.Developing The Market Strategy

This is the next step after collecting data from analysing the market and competition and also understanding the market’s needs and wants. Next steps are to refine the distribution; so what would be the best way to deliver the product or service to the target customer. The firm at this point identify their objectives and choose the right path to exploit any opportunities seen during the research stage.

3.Determining Actions and Controls

Final stage is when you implement the strategy. So to implement the strategy; the organisation has to analyse the financial costs by creating a budget and evaluate the costs. After having this data calculated, the marketing strategy is then put into action and during the period of the activation of the strategy the firm will continue to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy and either start planning for a new one or extend if there may be any faults in the recent strategy.

Now looking at the two businesses given; Brodie’s Beer and Cadburys plc; they both are private sector businesses with Brodie’s Beer having aims to survive and maximising profit and Cadburys plc’s aims is to increase growth in market share and maximising profit.

Cadburys Plc

One of Cadburys’ products called Fuse was being developed and Cadburys had an objective set while working on their new product. Their objectives were:

To grow the market for chocolate confectionary.
To increase Cadburys’ share of the snacking sector.

So when developing the product, the objective “increase Cadburys’ share of the snacking sector” was set to make sure that when Cadbury launched another product; it had a USP (Unique Selling Point. Fuse is a snacking and chocolate bar and was developed to bolster the position of Cadburys against the consumer trend towards snacking. Cadburys had a target market of ages from 16-34 when launching the fuse bar and had launched a ‘Fuseday’ campaign for the release of the chocolate/snacking bar Fuse. They had used Direct Marketing by having sponsorship from the Daily Mirror and Live TV and also Public Relation campaign involving national TV, radio and press coverage.

The product Fuse; was the first national product launch from Cadburys in over 20 years and due to the high marketing commitment; over 40 million bars were delivered to trade in the first week of launch. Branding technique was used for all the marketing of the Fuse bar and the campaign called ‘Fuseday’ – it produces a positive image and presents an awareness of the product and company through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme. There are also other marketing techniques that are used for new or existing products in a new or existing market, these techniques are: growth strategies, survival strategy and relationship marketing.

Brodie’s Beer Ltd

Brodie’s Beer is a private limited company in the private sector. They brewer their own beers and also sell them. One of the beers they have is: Stillwater, Premium 45, 8.5% – Belgian Malt Liquor. 50% Corn and Massive dry hops of Galaxy, Citra, Kohatu Brodie’s Beer market their products by launching an event which allows the public to examine and ponder round in the brewery looking and tasting the different types of beer – free samples. This is one sort of relationship marketing and giving away free samples is an attractive way to advertise their products and the business itself to the open public. This allows customers to have a ‘test drive’ of the products that the businesses want to promote.

The long term of free samples is that the customers will remember this act and will start purchasing the products. Free samples also bring in new customers and new products into the market and this gives Brodie’s Beer the opportunity to gain new loyal customers – which is the benefit of relationship marketing. The only drawback to this is the financial investment. All the money spent in brewing the alcohol and then giving most of it as tasters is a drawback as the time and money spent can go to waste if those customers are not going to purchase any beer in the future. However giving away free samples is a win-win strategy for the business as well as the consumers.