Marketing Midterm Essay

1. Critique on this comment: “People are spending most of their time online and they are communicating via social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook. As such, there’s no need for companies to advertise in traditional media such as TV, newspaper or radio anymore. ” Social media tools like Twitter and Facebook have taken the world by storm, as is expected of any social networking platform of such colossal magnitude. According to a survey from Constant Contact a company that facilitates social marketing, there has been a rapid increase in social media use to promote businesses.

Nearly three-quarters of all small business owners are now turning to social media as a means of marketing their business. The 2012 Social Media Marketing report indicates that a “significant 83% of marketers said that social media was important to their businesses. ” In spite of significant statistics such as these and the fact that more people are spending their time online, several of these surveys also report that new media has not completely replaced old marketing methods but has instead enhanced them.Small businesses are still relying heavily on email, website, and event marketing as well as advertising to drive their business. With social media efforts growing, there has actually been no real decline in the use of other marketing tools.

The Constant Contact survey found that 91 percent of small businesses use email marketing, 95 percent use website marketing, 77 percent use print advertising, 69 percent use online advertising, and 53 percent use event marketing. These findings indicate that social media marketing is definitely complementary and additive, but not a complete replacement to more traditional marketing methods.Businesses can improve their results with integrating tools such as email marketing with social media marketing to benefit from both worlds. While social media is a more cost effective method of marketing, the return on investment can only be seen in the long term. Social media involves interacting with your target audience and building communities over time. Most companies are cautious about using social media marketing because they’re concerned whether they will be able to reach the correct audience and the time that they need to invest to see their desired results.

Companies also fear that they might lose control of their brand message in this process. However by integrating traditional advertising with the influence and reach of social media, marketers can safely get their message across to their target audience. A certain percentage of the population is not even on social media which is why companies should not completely shut their doors to traditional marketing methods. People are spending more time online and communication through social media but should companies completely scrap traditional marketing tactics and embrace social media?According to an article on Forbes, it is more important to “catalyze marketing messages with major channels of promotion, and only use social media to interlace those messages and help to further communicate them to the consumer”. With the advent of social media and its rapid usage increase, perhaps it may be possible for companies to use social media as their primary means of marketing in the near future but as things stand now traditional marketing methods are still the most obvious choice to make sure your message gets out while social media puts that message in front of a wider audience.

. From time to time, we hear companies such as Coca Cola, IBM, and Apple are being ranked as the most valuable brands. Search the web to find out (i) which organizations are running these brand ranking and (ii) what methodology is used by these organizations to calculate these brand values. For this mid-term paper, you should be able to find at least 2 of these organizations.

One of the world’s largest brand consultancy organizations is Interbrand which was started in 1974. Interbrand has 40 offices around the world and is committed to creating and managing brands as valuable business assets.Interbrand’s methodology takes into consideration “all the many ways in which a brand touches and benefits its organization — from attracting and retaining talent to delivering on customer expectations”.

The final value that is derived is then used to guide brand management so that businesses can make better and informed decisions. There are three key aspects that contribute to this final assessment: “the financial performance of the branded products or services, the role of brand in the purchase decision process, and the strength of the brand”. The financial performance measures the organizations raw financial return to the investors.The role of brand measures the portion of the decision to purchase that is attributable to the brand. For the purpose of the rankings this role is derived from either primary research, review of historical roles of brand or expert panel assessment. Brand strength is measured on a 0 to 100 scale determining the ability of the brand to secure the delivery of expected future earnings. Brand Value Results: This means that our method takes into account all the many ways in which a brand touches and benefits its organization — from attracting and retaining talent to delivering on customer expectations.The final value can then be used to guide brand management, so businesses can make better, more informed decisions.

There are three key aspects that contribute to the assessment: the financial performance of the branded products or services, the role of brand in the purchase decision process, and the strength of the brand. Critique on this comment: “Focus group is useless because you’re only collecting feedback from a small group of people. I do not think any product managers will benefit from such research activity. ” Proper citing and referencing (using APA, Chicago or Harvard Referencing Styles) are required.