*** IN THIS ISSUE ***

– Marketing - What is it?
– Permission Marketing
– Relationship Marketing
– Conversation Marketing

Marketing - What is it?

Marketing is one of the most powerful concepts in business. You experience it every day in one way or another. Most often you’ll find yourself the recipient of marketing as a consumer. Sometimes you’re the marketer while wearing your business owner cap. So naturally, it is a subject that I write about often and it is the focus of this edition of our business brief.

In its most popular usage the term “marketing” refers to the promotion of products, especially advertising and branding. Marketing is many time used in a manner that is more customer centered. Products are often developed to meet the desires of groups of customers or even, in some cases, for specific customers. E. Jerome McCarthy divided marketing into four general sets of activities. His theory has become so universally recognized that many business manuals now refer to his four activity sets as “the Four P’s of marketing.”

The four P’s are:
Product: The product aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual goods or services, and how it relates to the end-user’s needs and wants. The scope of a product generally includes supporting elements such as warranties, guarantees, and support.

Pricing: This refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts. The price need not be monetary - it can simply be what is exchanged for the product or services, e.g. time, energy, psychology or attention. Pricing may be the subject of a JV type exchange.

Promotion: This includes advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and personal selling, and refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company.

Placement: or distribution refers to how the product gets to the customer; for example, point of sale placement or retailing. This fourth P has also sometimes been called Place, referring to the channel by which a product or services is sold (e.g. online vs. brick and mortar store), which geographic region or industry, to which segment (young adults, families, business people), etc.

These four elements are often referred to as the marketing mix, which a marketer can use to craft a marketing plan. The four P’s model is most useful when marketing low value consumer products such as digital art sold to hobbyists.

There are numerous types of marketing campaigns and many times digital scrapbooking professionals find themselves participating in multiple marketing activities at the same time. For example we may be involved in interruption marketing, relationship marketing, conversation marketing, and permission marketing all while we are also heavily engrossed in product promotion.

So it’s the wise entrepreneur who recognizes the many forms of marketing, and when, and how each can benefit them.

Permission Marketing

Permission Marketing is a phrase that was coined and popularized by Seth Godin. It is the opposite of traditional interruption marketing. Instead, permission marketing centers around obtaining customer consent to receive information from a company. Permission marketing has been hailed as a way for marketers to succeed in a world increasingly cluttered with marketing messages. Both RSS and Email lists are used heavily in this form of marketing. That’s because in both cases the prospect customer subscribes to the information source, giving you their permission to market to them. When the lead no longer wishes to participate in the marketing they cancel their subscription to the RSS feed or email promotion.

Relationship Marketing

Relationship Marketing is a philosophy of doing business, a in a manner that focuses on keeping and improving relationships with current customers rather than on acquiring new customers. With this marketing style you use a wide range of marketing, sales, communication, and customer care techniques and processes to identify your named individual customers, then create a relationship between your company and these customers. Building your referral business is part of relationship marketing. You can read about the top two reasons for building your referral business on our blog and get a better understanding of how relationship marketing can benefit your company.

The primary goal of relationship marketing is to build and maintain a base of committed customers who are profitable for theorganization.

Conversation Marketing

Conversation marketing is the presentation you make in a networking situation. It includes the way you make your first impression. It also includes how you look, the message you are delivering, and how you handle yourself in a group situation. We engage in conversation marketing in live networking meetings as well as in online environments, such as on our blogs, in forums, and in chat rooms.

Because conversation marketing involves a great deal of personal branding it is important to learn how to handle yourself when you are in a conversation that may impact a sale in your business.

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The forms of Marketing I discussed in this edition of our business briefings will be a subject written about in more detail at DSD-Pro in the blog and our community forums.

I hope this issue has given you some good food for thought for when you are working on the marketing campaigns for your digi-scrap businesses.

Very Respectfully,
Cindy Angiel (aka - Paint Chip)
paintchip[at]dsd-professionals[dot]com