Marketing Strategies
Marketing strategies match offerings with markets.
- Market Penetration Get existing customers to buy more existing products/services
- Market Development Get new customers (in new market segments) to buy existing products/services.
- New Offering Development Offer new products/services to existing markets
- Diversification Offer new products/services to new markets
Purchasing Decision Making Processes
Consumers will not simply go to a store or online catalog and spend their money in a rush.
Purchasing takes place usually as a result of steps of decision making processes.
- Awareness Consumers are aware of certain products/services.
- Information Gathering Consumers gather information regarding the products/services.
- Purchasing Decision Consumers will either buy or ignore your products/services based on value, price, pride, convenience and other factors.
Product Life Cycle
All products/services go through a life cycle of introduction, growth, maturity-saturation and decline phases.
Phase of a product in the life cycle impact marketing strategies and communications channels.
- Introduction New offerings are introduced into new or existing markets. Marketing demands significant
commitment of resources and coordination. Products/services are often offered at discount to encourage consumers to try the new products/services.
- Growth This is where Market Development strategy fill in.
- Maturity Stable marketing resource will generate stable revenues.
- Decline It's time to exit the market and eliminate the products/services, and start next life cycle for new products/services.
Marketing Channels
Products/services can be distributed directly or indirectly to consumers. Variations in distribution channels demand different channels for marketing.
The Internet has been dramatically shortened the distribution chain and saved large chunk of money for businesses.
- Brokers or Agents The marketing of offerings is outsourced to brokers or agents, who may in turn to sell the products/services to wholesellers, retailers or consumers.
- Wholesellers Products or services are distributed to wholesellers, who may in turn to sell the products/services to retailers. The wholesellers usually don't sell products/services directly to consumers to avoid conflict of interests.
This is a commonly used model for large corporations. A few wholesellers themselves are among fortune 500 companies.
- Retailers They sell the products/services directly to consumers.
- Ultimate Buyers Businesses prefer to offer products/services directly to consumers to cut the distribution cost.
The Internet and the Web have turned this dream to reality for many corporations.
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