A Few Tips on Marketing

1. Customer's Reviews Define tools in your marketing plan to get accurate feedback of customers. Attempt to know what the customers think about you. Attempt to hear the facts. Hearing praises alone is not useful. This is part of the evaluation process. It is not possible to say what the whole market thinks about you, you need to know the feedback of each group separately. One tool of market analysis is the same feedback. Attempt to recognize and examine the customer feedback separately based on the target market characteristics such as gender, age, income, geographic area, and culture and language; these features would affect people's feedback and opinions, and it is impossible to evaluate the opinions of all people identically. Here are two important tips to note: z First, acquire the maximum feedback. z Second, analyze the feedback based on the segments of your target market.

Evaluate results of the marketing plan through printed or online evaluation forms or in any other forms possible. Assess your movement as you proceed to any step of the program. It is an important issue to know how to adjust the form and administrate the evaluation form. This requires a solid and workable plan. Customer relationship management2 (CRM) is another tool for acquiring customer feedback. Of course, CRM is mostly used in B2B. Nowadays, with social networks, websites and cell phone applications, the customer-supplier relationship is a mutual interaction and communication, and gathering information is easier, faster, and more updated. Use the power of customer's reviews in your advertisements. Record the customer reviews on a product and propagate the positive feedback. Do as the theater groups do; they interview people who come out of the movie theater, ask for their opinions about the play and publish excerpts of it. This is a simple advertisement. They show this on TV and use the power of customer reviews in advertising. Customer satisfaction must be continuously measured, and information must be continuously collected through social networks, websites, and CRM software.

One way to acquire feedback and reviews is to develop a customer club. Do not stick to positive feedback since the main goal at this stage is to provide the real market analysis. We intend to know the real opinion of the customers. Ultimately, the collection manager must use such information. Currently, with modern tools, it is possible to present feedback in the form of a summary statistics to be more tangible for the management. The management unit should know that the marketing department is one of the most important departments that can guide the collection since it provides the method to supply the products in the market. The difference between customer feedback and reviews is that feedback is used for analysis, but reviews can be used by customers who intend to purchase. The reviews of other customers and buyers would help them make decisions. Feedback analysis sometimes would lead to review implementation methods. One of the prerequisites of smart marketing is flexibility. After analyzing the feedback, if you find it necessary to change the implementation method, do it. Another usage of customers' reviews is to attempt to meet their needs based on the feedback received, and this will lead to customer loyalty.

2. The Client Engagement The constant interactive communication with customers is engaging them in the process of achieving company goals and branding. You must get the customer to accompany you. The reason for the success of most of TV shows is to get the viewers to accompany. Through various methods such as text-to-win contests or poll-taking, they allow the viewers to participate in the program. As the viewers do that, they get to follow the show and become highly interested in the show. In the McDonald's example, when you peel a label off, the work is not over. You must insert the number on the McDonald's website or application. The customers are not left after inserting the numbers. They should refer to the website or app to find if they win or not. This means that the customer accompanies you. The example of McDonald's was mentioned to let you consider the importance of engaging customers and getting them accompanied by the company. Even a brand with such power that is known all over the world seeks to get customers engaged, and in fact, the customers follow the company in different ways. This means that their interaction is not restricted to the purchase of the product, but this cooperation is an ongoing process and the company directs customers to its website or application by inserting specific codes. Use every tool to get your customers engaged, whether through creating a fan club or building out an attractive character

Adidas, Nike, and Coca-Cola use celebrities to get the customers engaged, which is different from customer participation. Rewarding is also a technique of engagement. As it was mentioned, in smart marketing, you must look at the issue from a new perspective. You might think that all the examples discussed are ordinary, but when you consider marketing smartly, you do not mean that all ideas are duplicated. It is as if someone wrongly states that Edison and others invented everything, while numerous new inventions have been patented in recent years. Our mind must constantly work to find creative ways to meet needs. Interact with customers in any possible way. Make connections and maintain these connections over time. Are not Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola popular enough? Why are they advertising so much? Wherever you go, Coca-Cola follows you. When you enter a supermarket to buy something else, the Coca-Cola logo asks you not to forget it either. Thus Coca-Cola is making an effort to engage the customers with redoubled advertising. This is not just an advertisement; it is a kind of engaging the customer too. Particularly with the emergence of social networks, presently, they attempt to attract customers' engagement. They ask customers to be in touch with them, they constantly hold contests and attempt to get customers engaged. In some businesses, customers are inevitable to engage, such as Microsoft; you have to update your Windows whether you like it or not.

3. Organizing a Marketing Team The marketing team members must be proportionate to the business type. The main feature of these individuals must be flexibility and they should be capable of adapting themselves to the plan. Some people enjoy attractive characters, but their personality is appropriate for a particular job and cannot do any work. Determination of the executive responsibilities in the marketing plan should be scheduled and the responsibilities must be assigned according to competencies. Attempt to get to know characters and use them in the appropriate situations. It is wrong to oblige a person who is not capable of doing a task, to work, unless that person can adapt to new circumstances. Divide tasks among company employees and assign responsibilities based on two indices of knowledge and proficiency. My emphasis on this issue is that sometimes companies hire a group and entrust that group to prepare the marketing plan. The group designs a plan and submits it to the marketing department to implement it. This is wrong. Suppose these responsibilities are not assigned according to the capabilities of the staff in the marketing department. In that case, the desired results will not be achieved in due time.

4. The Test Plan When you design a plan or even small parts of it, test it in a small market to see if it works. Of course, the test result in a small market does not exactly match the results in a large market, but the feedback you get can prevent overt mistakes. This can help you analyze the next steps. It is essential that you do a trial testing before committing a considerable amount of money into a marketing plan. Most businesses do not take the test plan seriously and believe it is an extra charge. But the cost of the test market is part of the marketing cost and it should be considered in the budget. The test market aims to analyze the result and you should use it in a plan that is flexible and enjoys flexible goals. Testing the market prevents waste of capital. It also prevents you from wasting your time and presents you with options that could work and those that might not work for your business. Someone in Canada paid several thousand of dollars to a company to investigate whether he could launch the egg laying business in Ontario or not. The research team concluded that egg laying in Ontario was 1% higher than demand. Before investing millions of dollars, with just twenty to thirty thousand dollars, they realized that the plan should not be launched. Be flexible as much as possible to prevent potential financial crises. Deal quickly with the occurrences and solve the problem. You need a backup plan for possible changes. Take customer feedback and reviews seriously and make the necessary changes in the plan based on them. Investigate what customers may think about you in any way possible. Finding out their opinions will be quite useful for you.

5. Program Evaluation and Control The marketing plan should be analyzed on the daily, weekly, and monthly bases. The results need to be reported to let you compare the program's expectations with the results achieved in practice. Recall the example mentioned about the Casco store. They compared expectations with what happened. This can help you modify the methods applied. A flexible marketing plan enjoys the capability to be modified throughout the course. Accept your mistakes if you make any and attempt to compensate them quickly. Sometimes a careful review of errors can improve the program. You may be wondering if in the marketing process you should periodically go back and examine problems. The answer is that you always need to have a report of your status in the direction of marketing plan explaining what the goal was and whether it was achieved or not. How many sub goals and daily, weekly, and monthly goals were achieved? The example of Casco precisely showed that sub-goals can quickly be analyzed and the primary program can be changed accordingly. Therefore, it is necessary to divide your primary and final goals chronologically into smaller and more specific goals to achieve smaller results in a shorter time and gain the final goal based on them. Smart people do not want to go back, but analyze themselves over time, and with smaller goals and flexibility they can predict the way forward, determine targets again, and step forward