Win with Adwords Strategic Decisions

I make myself tiring when i say to my friends and colleagues again and again that what is missing nowadays is not skill, but critical thinking. Strategic insight and then tactical implementation. Marketers are not an exception. Now, if we think Adwords from a marketer’s holistic point of view, caution is necessary; otherwise our campaign is doomed to fail. What else could we put emphasis on, apart from grouping the keywords correctly, using optimized settings and then sitting back to drink scotch (or soda if you prefer), thus leaving our account to run without intervention? Ignoring our Unique Selling Proposition USP stands...

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Monozukuri for Sustainable Brands in the 21st Century

The word Monozukuri has only been in use for almost 15 years. In 1998, the Japanese Prime Minister’s Office set up a "Monozukuri Kondankai", in order to reverse the trend of deindustrialization and hollowing out that Japan was experiencing after the end of the Japanese financial bubble by affirming Japan’s strengths in manufacturing. In general, monozukuri  is the "art, science and craft of making things." While monozukuri is used to describe technology and processes integrating sustainable development, production and procurement, it also includes intangible qualities such as unique craftsmanship and dedication to continuous...

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Competitive dynamics for marketing strategists

Time for strategic decisions. Strategic marketing primarily revolves around the application of a great deal of common-sense. Dealing with a limited number of factors, in an environment of imperfect information and limited resources complicated by uncertainty and tight timescales. Use of classical marketing techniques, in these circumstances, is inevitably partial and uneven. For most of their time, marketing managers use intuition and experience to analyze and handle the complex, and unique, situations being faced, without easy reference to theory. A good marketing strategist should be drawn from market research and focus on...

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A Facebook for my Brand : Fan Pages and KPI's

Facebook fan pages can be regarded  as a virtual brand community. They are specialized, non geographically bound communities and they are based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand. Therefore the theoretic explanations for a brand community are also suitable for explaining the fan page phenomenon. Social identity and  symbolic interactionism theories show that interaction with members of a reference group can lead to a strong feeling of belonging to this group (in this case the brand community) which in turn can lead to stronger buying behavior and positive brand attitude. But how can we be sure...

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5+1 mistakes B2B marketers should avoid

1. TARGETING THE WRONG LEADS Many marketing campaigns are simply targeted at the wrong people. Completely understandable, given that the companies we are marketing into may have a hundred thousand employees or more. Being a "data junkie” is the key here – make sure you’re obsessed by the data the campaign will be sent out to. Its relevancy and its quality. In a B2B company, LinkedIn and sometimes Facebook and Twitter are necessary; these channels are so popular that most people assume a company doesn't exist if they are not on social media. Also, take the time to build a brand strategy. You may be on all...

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Synergistic Marketing Campaigns

There are probably two important developments that helped evolve the media mix concept into what we now think of as multi-channel synergistic marketing campaigns: • A transition by marketing and advertising professionals toward integrated communications.  This marked a shift in focus from transactions to customer relationships. Even outside the marketing arena, engineers and statisticians were contributing by following the lead of successful Japanese industries that re-engineered business processes around customers’ needs. Power was then shifting to the consumer and the management of  communication processes was being...

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Vertical Marketing Systems and Retail Industry

Vertical integration in a distribution channel places into focus the factors of cooperation such as the distribution of income among partners, the distribution of risk depending on the marketing functions and activities assumed, as well as margin increase through the cost reduction. The problem is to identify the model which is, from a theoretical point of view, based on gradation of integration and the retailers’ power. For efficient retail, it is necessary to adjust the retailer’s and the supplier’s distribution models, and this homogeneous structure represents a unique model of cooperation between...

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