Sales & MarketZing !

These days newspapers have become fatter in the weekends ,not by news content ,but the advertising content .Its another fact ,the way the newspaper lands all crisp at the door steps in the morning ,it goes to the raddiwallah mostly in the same  crisp form ! Some newspapers are so cluttered these days that you are left wondering whether its worth the money being spent on it by the consumer ,when its asking you to spend more monies on brands thru all the advertising ! Most of brands who advertise must be clear that this the medium to try still ,as everyother brand in its category ,is in it too,best example is real estate ,each day there are some 20 projects vying for attention everyday ! We ponder to think whether it works ? Maybe it does ,when you connect to the location of the property or price ,or feature ! With so many new mediums like mobile ,social media ,youtube ,online available for marketing ,you are left wondering as to what would be ROI of newspaper advertising

Brands do vie to build the trust platform ,what drives this is important to understand as in a category with threats of me too's and low cost players ,its an impprtant defence to have . here is our take on the trust drivers :: Built by sheer product consistency :: Consumers trust brands which they believe hasnt changed in performance and experience inspite of a long period of time ..examples are godrej ,maggi ,levis ,colgate . Add to this they strive to keep in line with modern times . Built by performance :: the proof of trust obviously gets built ,by performance of the product /service over a period of time ,either by your own experience or by word of mouth ,example a large set of consumers trust Sony TV ,still to deliver best viewing experience . Built by living upto your promise :: If you make a commitment ,strive hard that you deliver it consitently ,consumer trust would not be far then ,for instance a Fed ex would be our prefered choice for delivering

What's on your consumers mind is it on the shelves ? is a good question to always ask both at a marketing front and on the operations front in retail , or any other consumer product business . Brands spend crores in driving awareness and desire , when the consumers come seeking in for the product , its a sheer waste when they dont find what they have come looking for .This is what the blog would term as "mind1 shelf0 "(tm) phenomenon ( where on the mind gets 1 , not on your shelf gets 0 ) So why does this happen always , yes its a historical issue but never is addressed ...here is this blogs take on the why piece i) Too many variants ::most of the problems occur due to the brand's great desire to satisfy everyone , thus the great urge for more skus 'which could take the shape of too many colors ,sizes , contents etc , so more the variants more the chance of "mind 1 shelf 0 " phenomenon ,take a max of two winning variants , with proper de

This diwali was about brick and mortar retailers vs online retailers for the share grab of Indian consumers ,for the first time we guess in full force ,the battle was fought . The flipkart mega sale, pre diwali took the winds of some retailers for sure ,while brick and mortars have put up a brave face and have tried to combat this with their own online sites .The sheer power of advertising spends of online players ,backed with deep discounting ,must have hurt for sure ! Online platform is here to stay ,so how does the traditional player counter this ? i) play along with them in online space ii)negotiate extra from brands ,which are not available online ,say xtra period of gurantee period iii)wait and watch till price normalcy returns . iv) counter online with a campaign on why everything cant b bought without touch and feel . v)improve experience at the stores to nxt levels ,cut down losses by closing loss making stores this is going to be tough act ,thankful

In continuation with our previous post about the AND approach to business of share and profitability . here is our take on this AND principle getting implemented in retail . retail dynamics ,is not about getting walkins alone but in doing walkins AND the more per customer act too! so the game is like in most business is to get more customers and more per customer ! here is the simple equation of retail business growth. sales = cash memo size (cms) (x) number of converted custom (converted customers =bills cut /number of customers ) cms (cash memo size)= sales/number of bills cut sales going up ,is dependent among other things ,on the "upt" factor ,upt is nothing but units per transaction .higher the upt ,normally means higher cash memo size too. This is how businesses can use this dynamics ... so if walkins are falling ,and the cms is growing ,along with upt growing ,with conversions holding then you should be ok . if sales needs to go up

Writing after a long long time – Must say the world has changed, our prediction of ecommerce boom has just taken shape or is just taking shape , its another matter at what cost or profits currently . are operators  buying share from the market ?  As a  marketer , the only thing  that matters most is customers and what they are experiencing  with your product/ service ,and how do we leverage this to get more new consumers  , but most of us  get carried away with the need  off share more than the experience  part , in any product category , share does matter , but how much of this comes in what cost is the issue . Can a brand garner consumers thus share and then change the business model  when it suits them ?  or it depends on the category , for instance in ecommerce it will be difficult to change the model as stickiness to a platform /firm might not exist , plus price warrior competitors would be still around to mop up .You could still do so with a complete change in your business

Come to think most brand marketers work on demand generation and that typically consumes 80 % of their time , this post makes an attempt to rethink this age old principle /ways , in the sense from a pure demand generation play marketers need to work at driving consumption ,which according to this blog is the key for -if no consumption then the demand itself would not there in the first place ! (consumption )^2 , is a term that we are using to denote the process of driving consumption to newer level and how the rules need to change from pure demand generation to consumption drive by marketers ,lets look at some known consumption driving measures induce trial - the small sachets phenomenon which was a shampoo domain,has seen categories like pickles,hair oil , biscuits ,jams , on this bandwagon , the method is self explained change the product - guess you must have heard about toothpaste brands had increased consumption by changing the dia of the orifice ! smart move -- add diet coke or