Target Market and Positioning Statement
Discuss about the Marketing Mix Recommendations For [email protected] Book.
A marketing strategy is a plan by a business, which contains the methods and strategies of attracting customers and ensuring high quantities of sales. This plan is usually a long-term venture that covers a specific period. All marketing strategies can be included in one document to form a marketing plan for the business. This plan contains the actual methods of ensuring that the business thrives. It is a guide for the marketing strategy. The marketing plan and recommendation generally describes the market situation in terms of size, growth, and location. It also contains the competitive situation in terms of the number of similar products or services (Bert & Boryana, 2011).
Target Market: |
Geographic: Australians Demographic: 50-year-old male and female readers Psychographics: Ambitious individuals Behavioral: People who love like reading books frequently, those who read books at their leisure moments and those who read a book to gain |
Positioning Statement: |
The [email protected] book title is Illustrative and In-depth |
Fillis (2010) states that marketing plans are essential tools that should be owned by any business aspiring to succeed. Issues of competition, distribution, macro-environmental trends, sales, products in the market and prices can be addressed in a marketing plan. It also outlines the business’ strengths and weaknesses, opportunities, and threats available in the market. A well-laid marketing strategy can make a very big difference especially for a business that was previously making losses. More customers/readers can be attracted, sales volumes can increase and the profit margin can go up too.
There are 7 P’s that describe the marketing mix strategies that can be used by a business in developing a marketing strategy. An extended marketing mix is made up of seven items that are incorporated together to come up with a marketing strategy. The seven items include product, price, promotion, place, physical, people and process. This assessment focuses on the three extended marketing mix elements; people involved in the business, the process of consumer satisfaction and physical evidence that keeps long-term customers.
This element talks about the people employed by the business to be in contact with the customers. This can be through making deliveries, promoting the product one on one and attending to consumers’ complaints. This contact can be physical or through other channels like digital communication.
For a business to thrive through this element of marketing strategy, the people must undergo training in terms of their job descriptions. The business should make decisions based on service and quality, relationship marketing, internal training as well as marketing training. People who get in contact with customers play a very vital role in promoting the name of the business and the product being marketed (Hsu, 2011).
Marketing Strategy Recommendations
Employing efficient and competent people is advantageous to a business. In this regard, the customers’ interests come first as they are given attention. Customer focus is a key item in this element. The feeling of concern from the organization by the consumers gives a competitive advantage to the business. All these goals can be achieved mostly through motivation of employees. This can be done through salary increments, day-offs, insurance, field trips and promotions (Kumar, 2016).
In [email protected], the employees undergo a 30-hour training session on how to prepare different combinations of strategies to gain readers. To better the employees’ capabilities, [email protected] should hold frequent training just to ensure they are still in terms of their work. This should happen monthly, quarterly or twice in a year.
Basing on the target market, the employees should also deliver books to consumers through orders, this can be online or offline through bookshops. For example, some books lovers who read books as they perform other duties may find it difficult to go to [email protected] outlets for books. Such consumers should make an order that can be delivered by the employees to their addresses. This move will increase sale volumes and also ensure customer satisfaction through increasing their concentration and eliminating stress especially after working for long hours.
This marketing strategy should be measured in terms of additional sales volume and customer feedback in terms of satisfaction, attitude and future preferences. Apart from delivering, the employees should also take customer care courses. This will ensure good service by all employees to customers.
The process entails all activities and tasks done in delivering products to consumers. This includes the manufacturing process, packaging process, and distribution process. Processes should consistently be put to check and reviewed for improvements (Laura, Victoria, Melih & Ilan, 2014). This element aims at offering after-sale services, inquiry, the point of purchase and delivery to consumers. At such points, the customers interact directly with the organization and that is where their experience is affected. This can be termed as direct selling as the customers meet face to face with the employees.
To ensure the success of this element of marketing strategy, some changes should be made in the organization. This may include identifying areas where customers are not satisfied and trying to fill the gap. For instance, if the products are not delivered on time to consumers due to the small number of people involves, more staff should be deployed to the delivery section (Magrath & McCormick, 2013).
People Strategy
[email protected] book title serves its customers interest within three minutes of their perusal. Uncertainty is not there, as the author gets straight to the point in relevant chapters. For an inpatient customer who is in a hurry, five minutes is a long time to wait. This can demoralize him/her and that may mark the last visit to [email protected] outlets/bookshops. To avoid such scenarios, the author of [email protected] should employ more staff in outlets to ensure a small ratio of customers to employees in addition to self-publishing of the book. This is a strategy that will ensure fast, accountable and better service. Fast service will also increase the number of customers served per hour from two hundred to a bigger number.
The process strategy for [email protected] can also be implemented by reducing the process costs and maximizing profits. Its customers/readers are increasing day by day due to being a new book, and hence the demand has gone up. Proper distribution, as well as delivery methods, must be put in place to ensure low distribution costs and maximum profits. Currently, the supply is tight and the demand is not met yet. The demand can be met by employing more people to distribute the products and opening more outlets for distribution of the book. The performance of this strategy should be measured by the demand-supply curve between the customers/readers and the publisher as well as the author.
This element provides customers with a tangible or visible reason to come back for service in future. It shows the customers’ satisfaction and experience on the given product or service. Physical evidence can be proven through such services as packaging, evidence of ownership, the design of the product, corporate identity and environment of points of purchase (Mart & Gergely, 2017).
The items covered in the physical evidence element are a confirmation to the customer of consistent service in future. The physical features of the business premises must be welcoming, easier to navigate and fancier than those of the competitors to ensure frequent and consistent customers (Michael et al, 2016).
[email protected] should ensure all its outlets/bookshops, in addition to the title of the book, are attractive and conspicuous to catch the customers’ eyes. Being among the biggest sellers of books and other products, it should strive to ensure that it remains at the top. The competition is stiff and hence more strategies should be put in place to give it a competitive advantage.
People Strategy for [email protected]
Distribution outlets should be opened all over the cities and towns in Australia to solve the demand problem. Apart from that, introducing different designs of book covers can change the customers’ perception of the book, hence giving them the urge to know more. Customers who are fond of perusing books frequently will have a different feeling concerning the new book packaged in a design dissimilar to the ones they are used to. This way, the sale volumes will go higher and the profits will be maximized. This strategy’s performance can be measured in terms of sale volumes of the newly designed book covers and the customers’ reactions towards the new style of packaging.
Conclusion
Precisely, this report assesses the target market for the [email protected] book title in terms of the demand, positioning, and marketing mix strategies. Moreover, the author should target the older generation of Australians, specifically those who are 50 years and above. Following the three extended marketing mix strategies, that is people, process, and physical evidence; it is evident that there will be a positive implication for the company’s performance. The target market is of much importance to [email protected] as it is the consumer/potential readers of the book. The marketing mix strategies discussed above will ensure a satisfied, consistent and reliable market.
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