Blog 10: My Final Blog

Hi Everybody! 

Today I am writing my final blog post. As the semester comes to an end I can say that I definitely learned a lot about marketing and I hope that you did too.

In todays blog, I am going to take a look at some of the objectives and outcomes that my professor, Professor Nelson, laid out for us at the beginning of the semester. The objectives that I am going to focus on today are: (1) To examine and convey basic and emerging marketing concepts and terminologies, (2) To set personal and professional goals and positively contribute in an engaged class, (3) To have the opportunity to put marketing into action via team and individual projects, research, reports and presentations. The outcomes that I am going to talk about today is how through experiential learning, improve your knowledge and skills. I am also going to talk about how to analyze and evaluate basic financial statements and business formulas (profit, ROI, etc.).

1. To examine and convey basic and emerging marketing concepts and terminologies

This semester, I had so many opportunities to apply the marketing terminology and concepts that I was learning. We had so many group projects and activities in and out of the classroom that allowed me apply these skills while also enhancing them. We had a main group project that we worked on for the whole semester that allowed my teammates and I to test out these concepts during out simulation. We also had a few reports that we had to do where we needed to use the formulas that we learned in class to figure out certain things like Change in Sale, Change in Units, Return on Sales, the Break-even point and a few more. Writing this blog also allowed me enhance my understanding of certain terms and ideas. This was because I would pick out terms or ideas that I wanted to learn more about and then write a blog post on it to break it down for my readers, you, as well as myself.

2. To set personal and professional goals and positively contribute in an engaged class

Before I went into this class, I had already set a personal goal to work as hard as I can so that I could not only learn as much I can but to also get the best grade possible. At times throughout the semester this became very difficult because I had to deal with work in all of my four classes. I also wanted to try to engage in class at least once a week but with the goal of participating everyday. I hoped that by doing this I would be able to learn a lot more that would help me get good grades. While my grades are not where I had hoped they would be I did try my hardest for the most part, with a few slip-ups early in the semester, and I also participated in class multiple times a week. I guess you can say that I was somewhat successful with my personal goals. This class also gave me the tools to set goals for myself when it comes to the professional world, which will be a great help once I graduate and look for a job.

3. To have the opportunity to put marketing into action via team and individual projects, research, reports and presentations

The team projects really allowed me to put marketing into action throughout the semester. When doing the simulation this semester, we needed to create, sell and market a backpack to a specific target market.   We needed to decide how much to price the bag, where to sell it, and how to advertise our product. While doing this, we also need to do a few papers and presentations on what we have learned and what we were doing. The reports that we had to do required us to analyze the data that we received from the simulation in order to figure out if our business was successful. The presentations that we had to do allowed us to gain practice presenting out findings to a large group of people but to also focus on and learn more about certain marketing concepts that interested us.

4. Improve your knowledge and skills through experiential learning

This semester I had many opportunities to improve my marketing knowledge and skills through experience. The two experiences that I really learned from is definitely the Practice Marketing Simulation that I had to do as well as the through the Income Statement, Return on Sales and Market Share Analysis. The simulation allowed me to improve my decision-making skills because each week I needed to make a decision on what the next step was when it came to my backpack company. The Income Statement, Return on Sales and Market Share Analysis really helped me because I was not very good with Excel or with formulas. For this assignment we need to create formulas through Excel to form our Income Statement and to find out our Return on Sales and Market Share. It was also one of the first times that I was really able to create an Income Statement on my own which was really helpful because I will definitely need one in the future.

5. Analyze and evaluate basic financial statements and business formulas (profit, ROI, etc.)

Like I said right above this I to complete many financial statements and business formulas. Before this semester I was never really sure how companies calculated their profit or Return on Investment. As time went one I was able to figure out all of these formulas through practice as well as through having to use them in my Income Statement. When I graduate, I want to open a Lifestyle Clothing company so one day these financial statements and business formulas are going to very important so the fact that I learned how to complete them this semester is very important.

I just want to thank you all for staying will me all semester long and reading my blogs each week.

Thanks,

Chris

Blog 9: The Promotional Elements in Marketing (Part 2)

Hi Everybody!

I hope you enjoyed learning about the first two promotional elements that companies use to market themselves and their products. Today we are going to talk about public relations, sales promotion, and direct marketing.

Public relations is a type of communication management that seeks to influence the feelings, opinions, or beliefs held by customers, prospective customers, stockholders, suppliers, employees, and other publics about a company and its products or services. Most of the time, companies will have their own public relations department. These departments will often use tools such as social media, special events, and press conferences. Many people still believe that publicity is the most important and powerful tool that a public relations department has. Publicity is a nonpersonal, indirectly paid presentation of an organization, product, or service. The thing that separates publicity from personal selling and advertising is the fact that companies do not have to pay for then publicity. This is because it can be seen in many different forms such as news stories, reviews, and consumer’s social media accounts. The biggest advantage that companies gain from publicity is credibility while it’s biggest disadvantage is that companies cannot control what others are saying about their brand. We see examples of publicity every day when we go onto social media, watch the news, look online for restaurant reviews or even when we are talking to a friend. When if I see a friend or an athlete that I follow on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter post something about a company that I have never heard I will sometimes be curious and go look at that company’s page. Even when I go on vacation I find myself looking at the Yelp reviews of restaurants in the area to see which one seems like the best choice. My favorite piece of publicity that I have seen recently is when the man from the Boston area started to sell the snow from in front of his house to people all over the country. This story became very popular with news outlets and I even believe that it was trending on Facebook for a while. This guy started this company as a joke but then because of all of the publicity his company started to make a more sales then he expected.

The fourth promotional element is sales promotion, which is a short-term inducement of value offered to arouse interest in buying a product or service. A few examples of sales promotion are coupons, discounts, and contests and these usually used with personal selling and advertising. Its main advantage is that these promotions are usually very short but still stimulates a lot of sales. The thing about these promotions is that sales will usually increase but then drop once the promotion goes away. Companies will then used advertising to try to build brand loyalty from those consumers who bought their product because of the sale. Everyday my email inbox gets filled with promotions from different companies. One website that I have used a few times called seshday.com only sells discounted products. What makes this company different is that they are a members only website and they only sell other companies products. These sales will only last for a few days. Everyday I receive an email that tells me which sales are about to end, which ones are just starting and some upcoming sales. Seshday also carries a lower inventory of these products, which stimulates its customers to hurry up to buy that specific product.

The fifth and final promotional element is called direct marketing, which uses direct communication with consumers to generate a response in the form of an order, a request for further information, or a visit to a retail outlet. This communication can be in many different forms such as magazines, mail, phone calls, face-to-face selling and online marketing. It’s main advantage is that you can customize the message to fit the specific target market that you want to communicate with while it can be a disadvantage because it can cost a lot of money to fill up databases with the most up-to-date information about your target market. An example of direct marketing is how a couple of times a year, local companies will fill up every student’s mailbox with coupons or ads that are direct at them. Usually we receive stuff from local restaurants or letters from the ski resorts telling us that it is almost time to buy our season pass for the upcoming year.

I hope that you all enjoyed this post!

See you next time!

Chris

Works Cited:
Kerin, Roger A., Steven W. Hartley, and William Rudelius. Marketing. 11th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2013. Print.
Mailbox full of direct mail. Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2015. 

"Man Sells Boston Snow Online | NBC Nightly News." YouTube. NBC News, 2 Mar. 2015. Web. 15 Apr. 2015. 

Seshday. Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2015.

Blog 8: The Promotional Elements in Marketing

Hey Everybody!

Today I am going to talk about the five promotional elements that companies will use to communicate with their consumers. These five elements are advertising, personal selling, public relations, sales promotion, and direct marketing. Advertising, public relations, and sales promotion use what is called mass selling because they are used to communicate with groups of prospective buyers. The other two elements use what is called customized interaction because they target a specific customer. Personal selling is when the seller talks directly to the buyer through meeting, phone calls and emails, while direct marketing also uses customized messages to each specific customer.

Companies advertise when they pay for any form of nonpersonal communication about an organization, product, service or idea by an identified sponsor. This includes using mass media like TV's, radios, magazines and newspapers. It is important for a company to do their research before sharing their advertisement with the world. You want to know for sure that the consumer that you are targeting with see this advertisement and that the message will be clear. Just like anything else in the world, advertising has some strengths and weaknesses. The nice thing about ads is that they can get a person's attention very quickly and they can communicate specific product benefits to the potential consumers. The two big weaknesses of advertising is that it costs a lot to produce one and you do not receive that much feedback from consumers about your ad. I believe that the ad that you see right beneath this paragraph is really effective. It is showing us that when we over use water we can affect animals or people without even realizing it.

Another popular promotional element is personal selling. This is when there is a two-way flow of communication between a buyer and seller designed to influence a person's or group's purchase decision. The nice thing about personal selling that really sets itself apart from advertising is that it is usually face-to-face communication between the seller and consumer. This is important for businesses because they can control whom they are speaking with. This allows the seller to quickly receive feedback from the potential buyer, which they can't do through advertisements. This allows them to fix their message to better get their point across to their prospective buyer. One of the biggest disadvantages of personal selling has to be how much it cost to speak to each potential customer individually. Personal selling tends to be the most expensive promotional element because of the high cost. A good example of personal selling is when phone and Internet companies use sales representatives to sell their products to residential properties or other businesses. Comcast does this a good amount of the time. My uncle works for Comcast Business as a sales representative so basically he goes to a bunch of companies each day to see if they want to either renew their contract with Comcast or leave a competitors company for Comcast. I also know a little bit about this myself because I occasionally will sell custom die cut stickers and I always have to deal with customers complaining about the price of my product and because of this I usually end up having to change my prices depending on the feedback that the current customer is giving me as well as what customers in the past have said to me.

I hope that you guys enjoyed this post! Next time we are going to finish our conversation by talking about the last three promotional elements!

See You Then!

Chris

Work Cited:

Comcast Business Logo. Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2015.

Kerin, Roger A., Steven W. Hartley, and William Rudelius. Marketing. 11th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2013. Print. 

Promotional Elements. Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2015.

Save Water Fishbowl. Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2015.