When marketing a product or service, the first thing ought to be the development of an apparent approach to how it will reach both the current and would-be consumers. Particularly, marketers should determine the fundamental need that the service or product will satisfy. The marketers should then outline the target market where the business can succeed quickly and easily. Moreover, irrespective of the originality of the products or services, there will always be competitors in the market. Getting ready to combat the competitors and their major competitive benefit will enable a business to react suitably through such things as price reduction, increasing advertisements, and other marketing strategies. Most importantly, the company should develop an effective means of reaching and effectively communicating with the customers.
Marketing and revenue are two correlated essential aspects of every business. Both revenue management and marketing are geared toward increasing business revenue (Wang, 2012). Outstanding strengths and acumen, as well as close work relationships between marketers and revenue managers, usually translate to greater profitability in business. Companies should gather as much detailed information as possible and analyze it correctly to minimize uncertainties in the market and the marketing process. For this reason, marketing departments and revenue management departments should share business information to make decisions based on facts. The combination of such sharing of information with effective marketing will be of much help for revenue managers in coming up with comprehensive revenue strategies to increase sales and profitability. This paper aims at discussing various types of marketing strategies and the role of marketers and revenue managers in ensuring that business remains profitable or enjoys boosted revenues. It also indicates how marketing should be done and the effect of not doing it the right way.
Types of Marketing Strategies
Marketing strategies are processes in which companies use to direct their limited resources to the best opportunities to increase sales as well as achieve sustainable competitive advantage. These methods ought to revolve around offering maximum customer satisfaction. An effective marketing strategy should be an integral part of the organization’s strategy which defines the ways which an organization will use to engage its clients, target customers, and competitors successfully in the market. Marketers can adopt a wide variety of marketing strategies. Nevertheless, choosing the best model that fits a specific business remains trouble (Payne & Frow, 2014). A business can use one or more of the following marketing strategies:
Traditional Marketing
Traditional marketing is also referred to as offline marketing. In the past, this marketing strategy was seen as the sole way of advertising companies and their products. Radio, television, and newspapers are the main components of traditional marketing. Although some business owners and marketers see this approach an outdated way, it still has high efficiency and consistently leads to commendable results. Start-up businesses can use printed materials such as snail mails, posters, and fliers. Although they are very effective ways of reaching a large audience, advertisements on radios and televisions are suitable for businesses with a high advertising budget (Payne & Frow, 2014).
Word of mouth advertisement
Word of mouth advertisement is a form of advertisement where satisfied customers share their experiences with certain products or services with other people who possibly are not conversant with the good, service, or an organization. This is a cost-effective method since business only focuses on offering top-notch products, which customers will most likely fall in love with. These satisfied clients will be so excited after their needs are fulfilled, and they will help to recommend the products or services to their friends, relatives, or anyone around them who may be having a related need. People like to hear first-hand experiences about products, especially from unbiased sources since they treat this information as highly credible. Once customers trust a product, the entire business also seems trustworthy to them. As a result, a reliable organization attracts and retains many new and old customers. Consequently, companies that employ this strategy usually experience higher sales revenues as compared to those that rely on media-based advertisement as their sole marketing strategy. It is worth noting that word of mouth is not only verbal communication but also can be in the form of online product user reviews and opinions (Payne & Frow, 2014).
Online Marketing
Online marketing is the most recent and perhaps the most powerful marketing strategy. This form of marketing consists of a variety of ways of marketing for exploration by both established and new businesses. Blogging, content marketing, affiliate marketing, and social networking are some of the greatest ideas that a business can utilize. Just like traditional marketing, affiliate marketing can be used to market a product or service by putting banner advertisements on websites. Nevertheless, affiliate marketing can reach more target customers than traditional marketing. Article marketing and blogging can be used as direct service or product promotion strategies and indirect ways of promotion by driving traffic to websites. Social networking is an online platform that gives customers opportunities to share their experiences with certain products or services (Ryan, 2016).
What Revenue Managers Have and Marketers Want
As uncertainties dominate the current economic times, revenue managers and marketers often find themselves wondering how they can improve the performance of the businesses that they oversee, proactively increase demand, and offer appropriate prices to the right customers promptly. In the past, the marketing department and revenue management department carried their respective tasks without depending on each other. However, marketers and revenue managers can improve business performance and make themselves more competitive in the career world if both departments work hand-in-hand. Companies whose marketing and revenue departments work together record higher revenue, more market share, and higher demand throughout the year as compared to those whose departments do not collaborate. Given the teamwork between the two departments, an organization can provide suitable prices to the appropriate customers promptly. It is paramount to assess the strengths of each of the two departments to understand how they assist one another as well as the entire organization by increasing profitability (Wang, 2012). The following are some of the information that revenue managers have and wanted by marketers:
Precise Forecasts of Demand and Right Pricing Information
Demand forecasts are carried out at an organizational level and less often at the regional level. These projections can be great marketing resources. Anything to do with revenue must be more accurate as compared to other business projections, and so are the demand forecasts. Due to their high preciseness, demand forecasts assist marketers in accurately identifying the time a company requires to release market offers to meet the market demand precisely. Besides, revenue managers are the most knowledgeable about pricing as compared to other employees and managers in an organization. They make use of computer applications together with plans and ways of collecting and evaluating data to come up with rates for revenue optimization precisely depending on a variety of prevailing conditions and demands in the market. Marketers need to have the right revenue-generating information regarding the price of products because they will use it to come up with demand-driving offers and promotions (Chan & Yazdanifard, 2014).
Competitive Market and Transactional Data Information
Revenue managers negotiate and determine rates regarding their competitive market set every day and week. Marketers are also supposed to monitor the pricing information of their competitors keenly, but their information concerning the competitive approach is not as updated as the revenue managers’. Nevertheless, marketers can conduct more proactive and competitive promotions by getting more up-to-date information on the competitive market from revenue managers. Revenue department must come up with daily reports on transactional data, but this is not within the job scope of marketers. The information retrieved from the transactional data is useful in product promotions for increased sales revenue. Revenue managers can work with marketing departments to find out the number of profits that each marketing promotion earns for their organization. With these reports, marketers can identify effective marketing strategies and those that do not work well (Chan & Yazdanifard, 2014).
What Marketers Have and Revenue Managers Want
According to the point of view of a revenue manager, segmentation of customers is carried out at a level that is beyond marketing. The marketing department breaks down the existing high-level customer segments. Since revenue managers usually strive to come up with a variety of the right prices for the attraction of the right customers, they can collaborate with the marketing department to gain access to such information. Marketers also have an in-depth knowledge of the location of clients and their interests. Revenue managers can seek such demographic and psychographic information to come up with competitive prices that will attract more customers to their companies, thus increasing revenue. Marketers create demand for products by timely placing offers into the market. Revenue managers can come up with better and more precise demand forecasts by liaising with the marketing department to know the periods that marketers release market offers (Chan & Yazdanifard, 2014).
Effect of Under Marketing a Product
Under marketing, a product creates a situation where the marketers’ quest for increased returns results in poor outcomes. Marketing strategies act as ways of choosing and selling in the target markets that a business identifies for its products or services (Chari, Katsikeas, Balabanis, & Robson, 2014). A target market represents a group that has a high likelihood of purchasing goods or services from a business. Since marketing is vital to business success, it has to be adequately and effectively done. Under marketing signifies a condition where the promotion of a product generates low or no profits. In such a case, there is a different conceivable approach where the marketing of the product might be enhanced for increased reach.
Under marketing has the impact of leaving a product worse off compared to a situation where the marketers had not been involved. Such a product either attracts too many outlays or obtains minimal profits (Murphy & Knemeyer, 2015). Though under marketing may appear as an intentional failure, it could be misleading and difficult to discover easily. In contrast to what the term signifies, under marketing does not entail built-in flaws in the market financial system since there could be failures in the organizational approaches and plans such as budget preparation. Under marketing could result in the proceeds from the sales being less than the outlay hence causing losses in the company.
Effect of Over Marketing a Product
Although marketing is crucial for the success of a company, it might reach a situation of getting too much if it is overdone. For instance, in social media marketing, overdoing it, particularly for start-up businesses, may begin turning the readers off in terms of losing fans, likes, or even would-be clients. In this regard, marketers ought to establish a healthy balance in their endeavors devoid of over marketing the products to a point of making people get pissed off. Over marketing, a product shows that a company has forgotten that it does its things to assist customers and not merely to realize high profits (Chari et al., 2014). It may also make a business fail to care about the issues affecting the customers by developing the notion that it cannot succeed without creating some enemies. After all, since they will not lack a few customers, they might assume that things are still fine while in reality, the sales are greatly decreasing, which they will realize when too late.
Over marketing, a product will result in a situation where a company will concentrate its efforts on advertisements and promotions, a position of just evading the wrong places instead of focusing on the best strategy. The problem is that companies may end up believing that overusing a given successful marketing approach will progressively continue generating more customers, but sadly it does not. A company has to keep identifying the customers’ needs and creating products and marketing strategies that tackle such requirements clearly (Mullins, Ahearne, Lam, Hall, & Boichuk, 2014). The best means of achieving success in marketing is to keep carrying out thorough customer development regularly.
Over marketing, a product could result in a devastating impact on the business. On this note, companies ought to engage in just the right level of marketing to ensure constant success as people will most probably become bored with reading the same advertisement at all times. Therefore, the rate of marketing that a business undertakes is not what matters in its success but how effectively it does. Too much marketing may lead to marketers seeking to center on added values rather than the main product. In such a case, many marketing funds could be misused, and this could translate to a negative effect on the balance sheet. Marketers ought to ensure that a product delivers the preferred functions and profitability by balancing the requirements of the customers and business (Mullins et al., 2014).
To avoid either under or over marketing a product, a company should often engage in market research. In such research endeavors, companies should seek to know the changes that the customers would like. Moreover, the research should quantitatively assess whether the sales of the product are increasing with enhanced marketing. A company should boost the marketing approaches once they establish that a product is satisfying the needs of the customers. There is a situation where if a company engages in more marketing of a product, it could end up losing money (Chari et al., 2014). That is, although they might add a few customers, the marketing cost is much higher when judged against the profits realized from such clients. In some instances, new businesses may center on sustained facilitation of marketing to scoop a wider market share without mulling over the profits realized. Such businesses may overspend on marketing, run out of money, and go broke in a shocking way.
Increasing Profitability
Promotion is a vital marketing strategy that a business may use to enhance sales of products or services in the target market hence increasing profitability. Irrespective of how excellent the business appears, lack of promotion and seeking to attract more customers could result in poor sales and minimal or no profits. Promotion seeks to draw the right customers to use and reuse the products or services. A business could engage in different promotion approaches or combine a couple or more of them to generate a cost-efficient advance; these encompass branding, advertisements, and offering discounts to mention a few (Mullins et al., 2014). In this regard, it is evident that effective marketing strategies center on the means of increasing sales through finding and retaining customers. Successful marketing strategies assist a business in engaging in the best approaches to increase sales and maximize profits.
To draw a high number of customers and increase profitability, businesses can apply integrated marketing communication. Integrated marketing communication acts as a strategy for planning notions that offer organizations the ability to improve campaigns and decrease marketing outlays. Through the incorporation of tools such as social media, sales promotions, trade fairs, and telemarketing, businesses offer clarity, consistency, and utmost communication authority. Integrated marketing communication offers a planning progression that is intended to make sure that every brand obtained by a client is pertinent to the person and is constant with time. Integrated promotions employ similar communication tools for the reinforcement of one another and enhance marketing efficiency. In an incorporated campaign, businesses can make use of advertisements for the facilitation of awareness of products, as well as the generation of successful sales outcomes (Mullins et al., 2014).
Conclusion
In the course of marketing a product, the first thing ought to be the advancement of an apparent means into the approach in which it will reach both the existing and would-be clients. Predominantly, marketers should establish the essential need that the service or product will gratify. The marketers should then delineate the target market where the business can thrive fast and effortlessly. Revenue management and marketing are both inclined towards boosting business revenue as they are two correlated vital aspects of every company. Marketing strategies denote practices that businesses employ to direct their ventures to the best opportunities for the intention of increasing sales in addition to achieving competitive benefits. Some types of marketing strategies include traditional marketing, word of mouth advertisement, and online marketing. The knowledge that revenue managers possess and desired by marketers encompasses accurate forecasts of demand and excellent pricing information, and aggressive marketing and transactional data concerns. Both under and over marketing could lead to the profits from the sales being lower when judged against the expenses hence causing losses in business. Effective marketing strategies help a business in involving in the finest approaches with the rationale of increasing sales and profits.
References
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