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Marketing, not my thing

After 8 weeks of following marketing courses I can honestly say it is not in my blood. Saying that I just don’t like it is kinda weak, thus in this last blogpost I’ll try and explain why I think I am not fit for marketing.

The main reason is that I think I do not have ‘it’. Last week I wrote about salespeople being born or that they had skills that can be taught and yesterday I attended a guest lecture where this subject was discussed for a moment as well. I believe I can learn some tips and tricks, but I am not born with the ‘X-factor’ and honestly, I don’t feel like pushing people into buying something I know they actually don’t want or need.

I work at a cheesmarket and their main income are the cookies and postcards they sell to visitors. Since I honestly think these are nice souvenirs I always try to make people buy it, but as soon as I realize they really don’t want it, I won’t push any further. Pushy sellers always annoy me, so why would I do that to anyone else?

Of course marketing includes much more than simply selling products, but nothing we have discussed in class appealed to me. I even got annoyed by all the models in our book, people simply think too much about every move made by customers. People are complex and I think you cannot always pigeonhole them in those lovely categories in our book, even though you may want to.

One think I enjoyed during this course is creating a marketing plan for an entrepreneur. Why? Because I feel like I am truly helping someone and I actually enjoy working in a team. But then again, I wouldn’t need to focus on marketing to be able to consult people in the future. Maybe I even think differently about marketing in a year, we’ll see :)

Sales skills: can they be taught?

Source: CartoonStock

It’s the nature vs nurture debate all overagain, but with the focus on a nice tongue twister: Sales skills. Are people born a natural salesperson or is this a role you have to grow into? Well, first of all, I think most of the skills that a salesperson is required to have are interrelated with a few characteristics. The skills are a combination of both personal traits and, indeed, skills that are to be taught. At least, that is my opinion.

But what kind of skills are important for a salesperson in order to be successful? I have looked at various sites and noticed that some skills were named on more than one of these. The first skill, listed on almost every site providing tips, is listening. Listening is an obvious skill if you ask me, but I also think many people underestimate it. Many might think they are natural or good listeners. However, active listening is a difficult skill to master, but oh so important when you’re trying to sell something. You need to figure out what the customer wants by actively listening and trying to seek underlying meanings. You cannot just blurt out questions as if on automatic pilot.

Source: CartoonStock

Furthermore, a salesperson has to be verbally and non-verbally strong. Meaning that he should be able to present himself and the product in such a way that customers are persuaded into buying it. It is known that customers prefer honesty, so it is important for a salesperson to be associated with sincerity. Also, a salesperson should never leave a deal open-ended. If the customer cannot decide, a new deadline should be agreed on.

There are many more skills that are said to be important for salespeople, but I think most of them are so obvious, thus I will not elaborate more on it. Instead, I’d like to give my opinion on the nature vs nurture aspect of sales skills.

I think that as with many things in life someone can be naturally good and have all the required skills right from the beginning, while others need to take the time and practice the skills to grow into the role as salesperson. This means that the majority of people is capable of becoming a salesperson, some with a less hard work and with better quality than others. Of course charisma also plays a big role in this whole process, but unfortunately, that is something you cannot be taught.

Why would you say you’d make a good salesperson?

Tips for becoming a better salesperson: • Forbes • Fearless Selling • TOPO Blog • Mind Tools

Ugh, TV commercials

Source: Consequence of Sound

Commercials. When watching TV no one can escape the horror of watching all those terrible commercials that try to remind,persuade or simply inform you about an ‘amazing’ product or service. I always call many of these commercials bad, but what makes an advertisement bad and when is it good?

I think an advertisement can be said to have succeeded when the preferred influence is achieved and a bad one, naturally, when the goal is not reached. Also, it is important that the message is achieved correctly by the target group. So, I’d say it depends on several factors, but for me personally, a good commercial is one that has the right vibes. Unfortunately, my world would be better of without most commercials. Take for example this AXE commercial below:

Source: AXE

AXE always has these kind of commercials, all having the same message. It doesn’t matter how you look, as soon as you start using AXE deodorant, all women will come running to you. This commercial is so exaggerated and it always bothers me. Still, if someone would ask me to name a brand for male deodorant I would say AXE. Even though they’re commercial is not funny, creative or likable, they managed to create brand awareness and their product scored a nice spot in my top-of-mind awareness.

Source: Centraal Beheer

This is an example of a commercial I would say is good. It is about an insurance company and the company made plenty commercials like this. When these commercials were still being broadcast, everyone knew about them! It is a commercial that makes you laugh, one that you want to share with others which enabled them to reach a broad public.

Good commercial or not, I must admit commercials rarely persuade me into buying something. Maybe that is just me, but I often feel like I shouldn’t trust what they say in commercials. I am a high involvement customer and often do quite some research before buying anything. Only commercials about candy really get me.

What commercial annoys you the most?

Not everything is black or white

(Picture retrieved from Toothpastefordinner.com)

Today I’ll be talking about the grey market. Not white, not black, but grey. I wasn’t entirely familiar with the term, so to prevent any confusion let me explain it first. A greymarket product is basically something that is sold in a way, other than the official one. (Investopia) This doesn’t mean it is always necessarily illegal and is proven in the next example:

“A company sources games for use on popular gaming consoles from Eastern Europe. The UK based company proceeds to sell these games in their shop here in the UK. Because the company chose to source their products from overseas where prices are likely to be cheaper than sourcing from suppliers here in the UK, they are stocking and selling a grey market product.” (Biztips)

Grey market products are often sold for a lower price than authorized dealers can charge and thus firms have taken steps to discourage this kind of distribution. (Joel Kotkin) I encountered one of these steps a few years ago, without ever realizing.

(Source unknown)

Any idea what this is? Well, I didn’t until a few years ago, when I became a big fan of this show, Pretty Little Liars. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to download subtitles and get them working, so I ended up buying a DVD box from the internet. Before I did this, my sister warned me though. She told me to look at the 'regions' to make sure I bought the right DVD box. Why? I had no idea and couldn’t care less back then.

It is a pity, because now I know more about grey markets and I think it is a smart way of limiting the flow of goods between national markets. All DVDs have a region code, which prevents DVDs from, let’s say, the United States, to be sold in the Netherlands. Simply because DVDs with that region code won’t work here, as can be seen in the picture shown above. DVDs that bear the region code one can only be played in the red area, elsewhere, as in the orange area, they are pretty much useless.

Did you guys know about the region codes or did you find out the hard way?

Watch TV shows & movies anytime, anywhere.

Being part of generation Y (or Z, depending on whattimeframe you adhere), I’ve seen a lot of technological innovations. We’ve gone from floppy disks to smart devices you never could’ve imagined. These new innovations never really interested me though, it felt like we had something new every day and thus I couldn’t care less. Never did I realize how innovative these new goods and services actually were.

Netflix is supposedly one of world’s most innovative companies and this made me think. I never bothered to explore this cool, new service right away, but now I know it could’ve spared me so much trouble.

Before TV shows were popular in the Netherlands I had to think of ways to watch them. Online, downloading and eventually HBO.. I tried it all, but none satisfied my needs. It was always time-consuming, relatively expensive or had bad quality and what-not. Fortunately, Netflix came into my view.

Netflix is relatively cheap, especially since you can share your account with more people and offers just the right things. Good quality videos with subtitles, neatly organized and it even recommends you new shows or films, based on what you’ve watched. Netflix does not only focus on individuals, but looks at what the majority of people in a specific country like and adjust their offerings to that. This way, every country has their own offerings of movies and shows, even though Netflix says our taste has become pretty much global.

I think Netflix is perfect for this era. You can watch anything you like, anywhere you like. It is fast, easy and with the ever chancing offers, you’ll never be bored.

Do you have Netflix? And if so, what is the main reason?

Sources: Blogboss, Netflix, Forbes

Do us a flavor

There are plenty of ways toexpress our opinion nowadays and the internet has made it simple for us toshare this with the whole world. However, it remains a challenging task for companies to figure out what their target market wants and needs. Many people don’t respond to surveys and doing in-depth interviews might help a company to find trends and consumer preferences, but is time consuming and expensive. These are only two ways for a company to gather data. If a company has managed to gather all the data needed, the process doesn't come to an end. In fact, it is only part of the marketing research and doesn’t make the ideal product magically appear on the shelves in shops or makes the product known and wanted by consumers. It seems as if there is no easier way, no loophole in gathering consumer preferences. However, I have found a company that came with a smart solution.

Instead of spending money on researching different flavors, testing if consumers will like it and so on, Lay’s makes the consumers do all the work. Lay’s came up with the idea for a competition called “Do us a flavor”. This competition gives consumers a chance to create their own flavor of crisps, something they would like to see in the stores and people get to vote on their favorite flavor. Why would people take time to create a flavor or vote when there is only a small chance they'll win? Well, Lay’s gives the creator of the winning flavor a large sum of money and even the voters get a chance to win a prize. After a period of voting, three flavors will actually be brought to the stores, so that they can be tested by the consumers who get to vote again.

Of course everyone who joins the competition wants to win and makes sure to share their amazing flavor on all social media while they dare their friends to make a better one. This way Lay’s is able to reach a large public. When the three finalists are brought to the stores everyone wants to taste them, sometimes just to see if it is really that nasty as it sounds, because really.. Chicken & waffles doesn’t sound appealing to me. I don’t think the flavors wanted by the target market is something Lay's would've come up with themselves or that the crazy crisps would’ve been so popular if Lay’s had just brought them to the market. If there is, all of a sudden, a strange flavor of crisps on the shelves next to the all-time favorites natural and paprika, why would you pick the odd one out with the chance of it being really nasty?

Did this competition make you try a flavor you would otherwise never have tried? And what do you think is the main reason for that?

Both pictures and the video belong to Lay's.

Impulsive Buying

Imagine you’re walking in a supermarket. You just got all the stuff you need and then there’s that terrifying, walk of shame towards the cash registers. You’resurrounded by candy, to your left the chocolate, to your right the cookies and in front of you? Candy, candy everywhere. Are you going to give in to these temptations to quickly throw something extra in your cart?

I am a real sweet tooth and for me it is so tempting to just quickly grab a Milka chocolate bar. Why? Because I feel like it, because it is a new flavor, because I deserve it since I bumped my toe into the table the morning before. There’s always a lame excuse for impulsive purchases and the trick is not to always give in to it.

I rarely make impulsive purchases, even when products are cheap or when there’s an incredible discount. This is simply because I don’t want all these products lying around in my room, while I never, ever actually use them. Sometimes I do let myself make an impulsive purchase though.

When I got a credit card I noticed that it is easier to give in to impulsive buying than when I was younger and still paid with cash. Paying with cash has its advantages. You can literally see and feel your money disappearing and you can’t spend more than you have with you. (Except for those 10 cents that always seem to be living in your bag and pockets)

With a credit card you don’t really experience it as if you’re spending money , until you’re trying to buy something and you realize you don’t have enough money and need to wait until the end of the month. Again..

So, do you guys often make impulsive purchases? And if so, do you actually use the product?

Unethical marketing?

Hi andwelcome to my blog. My name is Simone and I’ll be posting on this blog weekly. My posts will be marketing and sales related, starting today with a blogpost about ethical marketing. Thinking of ethical marketing I immediately thought of companies targeting children, since it had been on the news here in the Netherlands. It was about the fact that people thought it was unethical that supermarkets put their products for children, think of cookies with princesses and superheroes on the wrapping, on the lowest shelves. I could be wrong though, since it is a long time ago that I saw this, but it still made me wonder. It is true that products for children are always placed lower on the shelves, but is it unethical to do this? To obviously lure children in buying unhealthy products, or is it simply smart marketing? For me, a market strategy can be called unethical when a product or service that is being offered doesn’t live up to the promises made in the advertisements. Also, a market strategy in which a clearly vulnerable group is being targeted, for example people with mental illnesses such as down syndrome, is a good example of unethical marketing for me. However, even though children are a vulnerable group, I don’t think it is unethical for producers of unhealthy products, such as cookies and candy, to target children. The main reason for this is that I don’t think a lot of children, and I am talking about children up until the age of about 8, go to supermarkets to buy one thing or another on their own. Maybe the number of children actually doing this has increased over the last years, but they often still tag along with their parents who go grocery shopping.

So, who buys the products? In the end it is the parents who actually buy the products, even though the children are being lured to these unhealthy products, it is up to the parents if they want to buy it or not. I also think that it is important for parents to educate their children in what products are unhealthy and why, how they shouldn’t believe everything that is being said in advertisements and so on. Even if there are children of a young age that go shopping on their own, it is still the parents who can prevent them from buying these unhealthy snacks. If children are being taught on a younger age that they shouldn’t believe everything said in advertisements and to withstand the temptation to buy unhealthy, but delicious snacks, it might even help them in the future. In the end, everywhere we go, there are always temptations we shouldn’t always give in to. For me targeting children isn’t unethical, but I’d also like to hear your opinion on this

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