One of the more important elements to building a company is to know which of the 4 types of market structure you're looking to build. Alongside your Industry Analysis, identifying your market structure can help you better understand the basics of your marketing strategy, who your competitors are, and what made them successful in your industry.
Market can be defined as a destination where sellers meet potential buyers, this can be physical or virtual, just like the product offered. However in an economic sense, the product must be of value to the buyer, and that value should be able to be a measured in a monetary value to the consumer. In other words, to be an economic market there should be recurring monetary exchanges involved, something of economic value must be at stake.
Knowing the various types of market is important for a business since it heavily influences the marketing decisions and strategies that go into building different industries. So now we'll dive into the four major market types.
What are the four types of market structure?
Monopoly
The four types of market structure - Monopolistic
Monopoly or Monopolistic is a a type of market structure where there is a single seller who provides goods that have no close substitute. There is no perfect monopoly in America. However, virtual monopolies(1) are quite prevalent. For example, DeBeers Diamond Corporation has a virtual monopoly over diamond distribution since they have control over most of the world’s diamond extraction. Monopoly markets maintain certain characteristics of its own, such as the necessity to charge different prices from different individuals (price differentiation), no selling costs (lack of advertisement expenditure), and artificial or real restriction of entry in the market.
Reasons behind barrier to entry include natural restrictions such as control over resources or artificial restrictions such as patents or government regulations & licensing. While an absolute monopoly does not exist in America, such are widely observed in mixed or socialist economies such as India or China.
Warren Buffet historically invests in monopolistic structures and purchases competitors to create monopolies within his investment portfolio.
Monopolistic Competition
Monopolistic competition one of the four market structures
Monopolistic Competition is a type of market strucutre where different sellers sell closely related but somewhat differentiated goods. In other words, under this market form various sellers sell goods that can be substituted for another, but each good has some differentiation to the others. This is the most popular and healthy form of free market. Examples include toothpaste, shoes, soaps, and other goods and services used daily. Under this market form there is little to no restriction of entry and exit. However, it involves a high selling cost since your competitors are constantly looking to acquire market share from you and vice-versa.
Oligopoly
Oligopoly one of the four market structures
An Oligopoly is another popular type of market structure. This market relies on there being few sellers selling homogeneous or closely related products, such as cement or smartphones, and typically differentiated by brand name. Oligopolies come up against a few barriers to entry, such as requirement of huge capital or geographical access or control over resources.
The main distinction about Oligopolies is group behavior. Group behavior means that the decisions of one oligopoly will directly affect another. For example if one smartphone company produces a new innovation (such as the air pods), another is soon to follow to maintain a competitive parallel.
Due to the competitiveness of group behavior, there is a lack of pricing competition(2), and hence oligopolies also highly depend on selling costs such as advertisement and PR to gain competitive advantages over others.
Perfect Competition
Source: EO
Perfect competition is a theoretical type of market structure, this theoretical market structure is difficult to analyze due to there being no real world examples of such a market. The closest thing to a perfect type of market structure is agricultural products such as wheat or grains.
Under this market structure, the consumers are expected to have perfect knowledge of every product and vendor, since all of them are absolutely the same. There is no brand value, no involvement of selling cost, no innovation or expansion, no super profits, and no form of competition. There are no barriers and hence there is absolute freedom of entry and exit to and from the market.
Footnotes
(1)
A virtual monopoly is a market structure under which technically there is no official barrier to entry, however other factors such as resource control or cartel may lead to this. A famous example of this is Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) which gained a virtual monopoly by various distributers coming together and forming a single exporting alliance. This oligopoly was turned into a monopoly.
(2)
Pricing competition is competition based on price, such that a business may reduce the profit margin for a product or good that can be substituted in a monopolistic competition or oligopoly to gain a temporary advantage over competitors.
We Can Help!
Symphysis specialises in market structure and strategy. Every day we meet clients
from around Greater Seattle for one-on-one training and consultation. Our
marketing services extend to businesses of all sizes, family and enterprise.
For more information, call or text @ +1 (425) 390-4738.
Marketing these days is heavily reliant on social media, networking, and the internet. One of its popular aspects is Search Engine Optimization, which is governed by its own tactics and strategies. One of the most important aspects of SEO is Link Building. For a more details on SEO, visit our Search Engine Optimization article.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
What is Backlinking?
Backlinking and its relevance in 2019.
The Problem with Backlinking Spams (Tiered Backlinking)
Footnotes
What is Search Engine Optimization?
The main objective of any website is to drive traffic toward its content. There are two primary ways to inrease web traffic. The first option is advertisement: paying websites with decent traffic to make your content discoverable to their users. But the obvious flaw with this is the fact that the audience attracted is often temporary, and that new startups and small organizations cannot invest a great deal in such advertisement.
The second and more effective way of generating long-term organic audience for your content is Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Optimization is the process of customizing your website in a manner that when a user does a generic or specific search, your website with relevant content shows up first. Generally, users click on the first website they see therefore increasing the traffic on your website.
What is Backlinking?
Backlinking is the most effective white hat(1) (though it can be of Black Hat(2) nature as well), Off-page(3)Search Engine Optimization technique. It basically works by linking (or referencing) one page on the internet to another. SEO preference is given to pages with greater credibility, and if your site has been featured in other websites of relevant content, SEO bots such as Google Crawler(3)find their way from that website to yours, ranking your website (with more links) above the rest.
For easier explanation think of it as a web. Google crawler crawls all the way from the edges to the center. The more the edges, the stronger its center will be according to Google Crawler, and it will feature the website in the center (that has been linked to on other relevant sites) higher on search results.
Another factor playing a key role in Backlinking is Keyword Optimization. To rank higher, the web page must feature repetitive (but not spammed) usage of relevant keywords that users are using to find information.
Backlinking and its relevance in 2019.
According to Linkresearchtools.comGoogle confirmed that link-building or backlinking is still its #1 ranking factor along with quality content. However Google has also been valiant in identifying spam building and can penalize websites for cheating the system by banning its ranking forever.
According to moz.com, a study conducted by Perficient Digital which took in consideration over 26,000 queries (an increase by 9,000 queries in comparison to its previous year’s study) showed a strong increase in correlation between link building and SEO ranking. Under the study, a scale of -1 to 1 was chosen. Digits in negative representing an inverse or opposite correlation, 0 representing no correlation at all, and anything above zero showing a positive relationship.
Keeping in mind that Google claims to use over 100 ranking factors, any score above 0.2 should be considered of heavy value. The study showed a high correlation of 0.293. Read the Moz report for more information here.
Source: Moz.com
Conclusively, according to research and Google reports, link building is still one of the most important, if not the most important, factor involved in search ranking. It is one of the best methods to gain credibility about the content and gaining traffic as well. By increasing the number of reference there is a strong chance of gaining visitors from such links.
The Problem with Backlinking Spams
(Tiered Backlinking)
As mentioned above, search engines reserve the right to reduce the ranking, or even completely remove the website listing if they see foulplay. These ranking dynamics are ever evolving and are actively vigilant in finding such spam. One popular variant of this is Tiered Backlinking. Under tiered backlinking a person with multiple websites links them through one another tier wise. For example, suppose you have nine websites (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I) and A is your primary site. In tiered backlinking you would reference website B in D, E and F; and website C in G, H, and I. And then you’d link site A to B and C, which are more credible and relevant to your main site. Google Crawler will eventually find its way from site I to A, assigning it multiple backlinks. And hence greater ranking.
Tiered Backlinking
However this does little in building any organic audience for your website, as there is usually limited traffic on secondary sites in the first place..
We
Can help!
Search Engine Optimization can be a tricky concept to understand and even trickier to tackle. Symphysis maximizes the number of times you appear in organic search queries. Our SEO team begins by reducing loading time, improving image quality, removing leftover template code, implementing analytics, all while improving keyword ranking. For more information, call or text @ +1 (425) 390-4738.
Footnotes
White Hat SEO techniques refers to methods such as better UI (User Interface), Keyword Research and Optimization, Speeding up the load time, and attracting backlinks from reputable websites are the main methods of white-hat SEO.
Black Hat SEO techniques include keyword stuffing (Including repetitive chosen keywords in your content), content scraping (Republishing your RSS links to different sites for backlink generation), comment spams (on different comment-enabled websites with links backing to your own website), cloaking (Showing different content to visitors and search engines), etc. Ranking Bots such as Google Crawler do not appreciate such techniques and can identify and punish sites using them.
Off Page SEO techniques include everything you do online to drive traffic that is not on your website or relating to display of actual content. These include (but are not limited to) Social Media presence, Guestblogging, and Backlinking.
Google Crawler is Google’s inter-site navigation block that navigates through various backlinks on different sites to a particular site.
Competitor Analysis is the process of finding out who your industrial competitors are, evaluating their working and policies, and comparing them with yours so as to gain a strategical advantage. In a world of ever-growing cut-throat competition, analyzing competitors and their strategies is very important to gain a competitive advantage.
What is competitor analysis?
The Importance of Competitor Analysis
How to find out who your competitors are (Industry Analysis)
How to conduct competitor Analysis (The Analysis Process)
Things to keep in mind while analyzing competitors
Footnotes
What is Competitor Analysis?
When you start out in an industry, it is most likely that there already are a bunch of firms dealing in similar products and services. These are your competitors, that is, organizations you are looking to acquire market share(1)from, and organizations that look to acquire your market share.
To be advantageous in this cut-throat competition, you need to strategically evaluate your competitors’ policies and conduct, analyze their marketing and advertising, maintain a proper brand distinction, and offer customers motive to choose your products over your competitors. Competitor Analysis comes after Industry Analysis, which establishes under which industry you will be working, what are its profitability prospects, and how to start out strong in the industry. You can read more about it here.
The Importance of Competitor Analysis
Competition is the whole reason behind rising specifics
of Selling Costs(2), Research
and Development, PR, and other indirect expenses and services. Under theoretical
Monopoly there is no selling cost involved, except maybe the minimum required
for informational promotions.
This suggests that not only the actual sales and profits, but every single aspect of a business is dependent on competition. For example, under a Monopolistic Competition(3) (the most popular form of competition) market like that of toothpaste, inherently the generic product being sold is toothpaste, yet it is extensive promotional methods that cause such a profitability distinction among different brands. Therefore greater level of competition is encouraged.
On the other hand, under Oligopoly(4) markets like cement, telecommunications, or smartphones, competitors often act in harmony because one brand’s decisions greatly affect another’s. For example the shift in taste towards touchscreen smartphones initiated by the release of the first iPhone led to its competitors being forced to shift their focus in manufacturing smartphones. Nokia failed to deliver primarily due to its internal struggle, leading to its infamous downfall.
How to find out who
your competitors are (Industry Analysis)
As mentioned above, Competitor Analysis is a follow-up of Industry Analysis. Followed by it, competitors can be identified as businesses dealing in products and services that can be substituted for those offered by you so that they fulfill a particular demand.
How to conduct Competitor Analysis (The Analysis Process)
To gain a competitive advantage, the first step is to list the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors across various fields of practices such as production, price, distribution, etc.
To follow, determine which competitor uses what
techniques and strategies, rank competitors on the basis of profit reports,
liquidity, solvency, and other survival/growth indicators.
This presents a ranking system showing advantages and
disadvantages of routing through a particular process.
To do this you will need to profile your competitors. You will extract their theoretical market value and their products’, real or psychological. And then to gain an advantage you will need to offer superior value to the potential customer.
These days details of most of an organization’s functioning variables are transparently available on the internet. To follow, profile each or leading competitors in your industry based on their functioning variables like:
Organizational history: Of ownership, location, functioning, previous financial reports, previous policies and updated functioning governance.
Employment details: How many people they employ, pay rate, departments, types of people employed (key qualification looked for), management functioning, etc.
Marketing strategies: Advertisement, PR, and sales promotions, and their respectively corresponding goals and objectives.
Distribution: Distribution chains, vendors and methods, geographical coverage, etc.
Financial structure and sources: What are the sources of finance (Share capital/owner capital/ loans and capital borrowings). Along with financial performance like profitability and liquidity ratios, debt payback potential, growth profile, etc.
Products Evaluation: What kinds of products are offered, what are the R&D improvements employed in the product, what is the brand and trademark value, what kind of patents and licenses are registered by various businesses, etc.
Things to keep in mind while analyzing competitors
One of the things to keep in mind while going about competitor analysis is potential competition. This includes potential new competitors/startups or other businesses looking to expand. Calculation of this is primarily done by calculating growth rate of number of businesses in a particular market based on the market’s past.
While evaluation is based mainly on past functioning,
market is a very dynamic environment, therefore another factor be consider is
the ever-changing competitor policies and market preference. To rapidly adapt
and compensate to change is very important when it comes to maintaining a
competitive advantage.
We can help!
Symphysis offers marketing
consulting for businesses of all sizes. With the right analytics and targeting
process we will give you a competitive advantage that attracts your target
audience. For more information call or text @ +1
(425) 390-4738.
Footnotes
Market
Share refers to the number of existing customers in a market. Hence to acquire
market share is to attract existing customers from your competitors to switch
to products and services offered by you.
Selling
Costs mean the costs employed in informing the potential customers about your
product and attracting them to purchase it, such as advertisement expenditure
or sales promotion expenditure.
Monopolistic
Competition is a form of market in which there are there are a lot of sellers selling
similar but somewhat differentiated products, such as toothpaste or pens.
Oligopoly
is a form of competition in which there are a few sellers selling homogenous
products, such as cement or telecommunication. This leads to co-operation
between them called ‘team effect’.
Business Planning is the most important factor to consider for launching a successful startup business. Industry Analysis is that part of business planning which deals in determining which sectors of the market (industries) you will be dealing in. This brief article explains the basics of Industry Planning with a beginner’s in-depth approach.
What is Industry Analysis?
The Importance of Industry Analysis
Most effective industry analysis strategies (SWOT and Porter’s
Five Force Analysis)
Things to keep in mind while choosing your industry
(Industry Analysis)
Footnotes
What is Industry Analysis?
Before starting actual business processes it is important to find out where your business fits into the market, its growth and profit potential, and the state of competitors dealing in similar products and under similar circumstances. In other words, to target new potential customers, industry analysis can be used as a tool to break down important factors influencing your target market.
The Importance of
Industry Analysis
Efficient Industry Analysis shows effective management and acts as a foundation for long-term growth and survival of the business. Industry Analysis defines the potential liquidity, solvency, and profitability for you and your competitors in the industry. It focuses on analyzing market trends and therefore also helps your business prepare for any future shift in economic patterns of the market.
Most effective industry analysis strategies (SWOT vs Porter’s Five Force Analysis)
SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) and Porter’s Five Forces (Competitive Rivalry, Supplier Power, Buyer Power, Threat of New Entry, and Threat of Substitution) are the two most talked about Industry Analysis strategies.
It is evident by their definitions that SWOT analysis focuses more on internal factors while Porter’s Five emphasizes on external forces. SWOT analysis defines the potentials and capabilities of a business, what it can and cannot do and which chain of actions that it undertakes will be most lucrative. Under this an equity analyst is expected to jot down and deal with a business’ internal Strengths and Weakness in direct relationship to its external Opportunities and Threats. Hence it tells an entity about its own competitive advantages and disadvantages. Therefore it focuses on determining profitability, along with focusing and analyzing solvency and survival potential of the organization.
Source: Mindtools.com
Porter’s Five Forces, on the other hand, tells an analyst about competition within their industry, along with an industry's weaknesses and strengths. Professor Michael E. Porter of Harvard Business School coined this strategy as part of his book "Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors."
This strategy can be used for a more comprehensive analysis of the external factors of the industry. Its main objective is determining profitability prospects for an organization.
The five industry analysis forces that make up the industry as identified by Porter are:
Competitive Rivalry
In the center of it all, Competitive Rivalry is the power of established businesses in an industry that your business needs to deal with. Effective and efficient analysis of Competitive Rivalry becomes a major force since such existing businesses already possess a greater fraction of market share and resources in the industry.
Supplier Power
More supplier power is less desirable for your business. If there is greater demand for producer goods(1) in your industry than their availability, the suppliers are in a greater position to bargain for higher prices. Simultaneously acting forces of demand and supply, if negative, which is likely under such a scenario, leads to lower profitability prospect for the business
Buyer Power
Buyer Power, aka demand, consists primarily of demand function:(2) variables such as the demographic distribution, number of customers, taste and preference, price sensitivity (price elasticity), etc.
Threat of New Entry
If you are an established firm, industry analysis is still necessary since modern market is dynamic is nature, thus entering and existing in an industry is a repetitive occurrence. Such businesses look to acquire market share from you by offering greater value in their products or their presentation, by advertising implied superiority.
Threat of Substitution
Substitution
effect is the tendency of buyers to switch from one product or a similar
product’s brand to another. A substitute product is
one that may offer the same or similar benefits to a buyer as a product from another
manufacturer/industry. An industry with a higher threat of substitution is less
likely to yield higher rates of profitability.
Things to keep in
mind while choosing your industry (Industry Analysis)
Three major variables to keep in mind before initialising
an Industry Analysis are following-
The Stakeholders
Stakeholders(3) are parties that have something on stake with the business. For example, equity investors or the government. Their policies and preferences should be kept in interest while forming a business plan in the industry.
Competitors
Your existing competitors and their policies/ business structures / producing or purchasing patterns greatly affect and define your own business model. For example, for a startup it is best to adhere to existing, fairly profitable practices than going overboard with experimentation. You can read more about startup marketinghere.
Distribution
Supplier power included, this defines the range of distribution, demographically targeted, and therefore the resulting buying patterns. Distribution patterns define the prospects of growth by showing the targeted market, effective distribution systems, and sales prospects.
Another factor under ‘distribution’ is
the distribution of resources. How
limited resources are distributed among your competitors and you, such that
maximum profits could be yielded, is another factor to be kept in mind while
performing Industry Analysis.
We Can Help!
Symphysis specializes in market structure and strategy. Every day we meet clients from around Greater Seattle for one-on-one training and consultation. Our marketing services extend to businesses of all sizes, family and enterprise. For more information, call or text @ +1 (425) 390-4738.
Footnotes
Producer Goods are goods used in the production process (manufacturing) by the producer. These are not meant for end use and are rather a means to an end.
Demand Function is the culmination of various factors affecting demand for a commodity/service, like price, taste, taxation, weather, etc.
Primary stakeholders of a business are owners (shareholders in case of a company), customers, employees, suppliers, and government.
Identifying and carefully implementing your targeted marketing strategy is one of the most important success factors for any business. This article takes a brief look at the concept of Targeted Marketing, describes the targeted marketing process, and provides tips on finding your ideal market.
Contents
What is Targeted Marketing?
The Targeted Marketing Process: STP (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning).
Online Targeted Marketing.
How to find your ideal market (conclusion)
Footnotes
What is Targeted Marketing?
Targeted Marketing refers to aiming marketing efforts at a specific audience by using marketing mix,(1) resources, and budget. It is advertising and promoting your product or service to a particular and predefined set of customers, who are the most likely to purchase the product. In other words, targeted marketing aims at limiting the number of people you advertise your product to so that the promotion reaches the demographic which is most likely to purchase the product with minimalcost.
Targeted Marketing is especially useful for small businesses. Various strategies and variables are involved in targeting, such as age and gender, geographical location, season and weather, consumer’s preferences, etc. Targeting also largely depends on the product itself. For example, a product of women’s winter clothing will be advertised in winter or in the pre-winter season in a place where potential female viewers are likely to see it.
Check out the AMA definition of Targeted Marketing Here.
The Targeted Marketing Process: STP (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning).
Segmentation is the process of dividing the potential market as a whole on identified bases so that the business can select the most profitable segment to advertise to. For example, in our previous example of women’s winter clothing, let’s say we divide the market in two segments on the basis of income. Now, if we are manufacturing expensive clothes, we will be targeting our advertisements to women with greater income levels, and vice-versa.
It is important to identify the ‘basis’ beforehand, which must be something most relevant to the organization’s long-term goals such that profit maximization is possible. For example, for an organization looking to expand its area of operations, it would be beneficial to go for a geographically-based segmentation. That is figuring out where the highest number of potential customers reside and then expanding the business accordingly toward that area.
Targeting
Targeting is the process of actually making the decision as to which identified segments the product should be marketed to. A business must take in consideration various factors like distance, budget,ROI(2), etc. and decide which segment maximizes the profits and other gains, such as goodwill creation at minimal cost.
Positioning
A promotional and advertisement campaign is only successful if it resonates with the audience. Positioning emphasizes exactly on that, involving decisions and steps to follow that describe how the campaign is presented to the target audience. In other words, positioning is the actual placement of the marketing campaign in front of the segmented, targeted audience.
Online Targeted Marketing
Symphysis can manage and optimize all your social media campaigns to achieve the goals of your business.
Online targeted marketing is becoming increasingly popular due to its convenience and larger demographic coverage, which compliments the parallel increase in shipment-based selling like home delivery and online sales.
Online targeted marketing is carried out through various popular websites that present a referral link from where your product can be purchased. It justifies the ‘targeted’ aspect as the advertisement is directed towards the website users who actively show interest either in ways that suggest that they are prone to purchase or are at least interested in such products or services in a general way. For example, a user who visits a page titled ‘Cool Tattoos’ on Facebook may receive an advertisement for a nearby Tattoo place, based on whether they have opted to show location (in which way another segmentation strategy, ‘geographic segmentation’ is availed, and strengthened the possibility of the advertisement showing up). However websites do not publicly reveal their exact targeting algorithms, since that way it would be easily exploitable.
Another type of online targeted marketing is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your own website to generate an organic customer base. By posting relevant content on your website you can improve your search ranking. Which is the position your website’s content is displayed when someone makes a search content relating to content on your website. You can read more about Search Engine Optimization here.
And finally, the most successful and free approach to generating organic customers is social media presence and activity. Operating pages under your brand name and posting relevant and relatable content of value for the potential customer is another way of building goodwill for your firm. Simply generating advertisements isn’t marketing. It consists of various other variables like Product, Price, Place, and Promotion(1). Advertisement is merely one of the marketing strategies under promotion. This is especially important for startups looking to acquire a share in an already competitive market. You can read more about Startup marketing here.
How to find your ideal market (conclusion)
Targeted Marketing involves a lot of planning and strategizing. It is impossible to launch a successful marketing campaign without necessary, in-depth market research beforehand. Looking at consumer trends and strategies adopted by rival firms, and then forming a segmentation strategy is helpful. After such trend analysis, you should select the segment which is most lucrative and has potential of shifting brands to yours, which offers them some superior, psychological or real value.
We can help!
Symphysis believes in marketing from the ground up. With our team of dedicated experts we can help in locating your ideal market, segmentation, search engine optimization, and create your own successful brand. For more information call or text @+1 (425) 390-4738 for a free initial consultation.
Footnotes
Marketing Mix consists of four major variables: Product, Price, Place, and promotion. Product Mix is decisions regarding your actual products, such as labeling and manufacturing. Price Mix refers to the pricing decisions (cost-benefit analysis). Place Mix includes decisions pertaining to physical production, transportation, and distribution of the product. And Promotion Mix refers to the decisions involving the tactics and strategies to inform the potential customers about your product.
Return on Investment (ROI) is the calculation of expected or actual rate of return (gain) on the amount invested. For example, on an asset worth $500, the return of interest is $75, then your ROI is 15%. 15% is usually considered a healthy annual ROI, though it also depends on other factors such as rate of depreciation.
Contents:
Definition and Importance of Advertisement
The Three Major Advertisement Media
How to Target your Ideal Market.
Conclusion
Footnotes
Definition and Importance of Advertisement
Advertisement is a part of the promotion mix(1), along with variables such as PR or Personal Selling (Door-to-door selling), which aims at informing customers and inducing potential customers to purchase a firm’s products or services. It is impersonal and constitutes an identified sponsor. In other words, it’s a brief presentation of the appealing characteristics of your product or service, to inform general or specific public about the availability of your product.
Advertisement is an essential strategy to follow in today’s extensively competitive markets. The main difference that convinces someone to choose a particular brandover another, especially for startups, is creating a product of superior value(psychological or real) for the customer. Advertisement aims at both of these aspects, by informing the customer about the product’s actual superior value, and attempting to resonate in their minds with a catchy and indulging presentation. You can read more about startup marketing here.
Various
Types/Methods of Advertisement Media
The most common and effective advertisement media are:
Physical Media.
The most popular method of advertisement is Physical media, such as newspapers, pamphlets, and brochure distribution (Print media). As well as billboards, vehicle advertisement/vehicle graphics, and digital billboards (Outdoor advertisement). Physical media is suitable when the area of distribution is limited but the product has rather generic use, so that each person who stumbles across the advertisement is a potential customer. These are widely used by local businesses. However, these are adopted by larger companies to convey such generic products, primarily because it often leaves a long-term effect in the viewer’s mind due to its physical nature.
Different
types of Physical Media are-
Newspaper/ Magazine advertisement (Print media)
Pamphlets and brochures
Billboards and vehicle advertisement (Outdoor advertisement)
Digital media
Digital media has become the most convenient, effective, and profitable method of advertisement in the modern age due to its never-ending growth of customers. There are various methods to do this, such as running ads on social media like Facebook or Twitter, direct emailing (subscription based), posting relevant content on your website (such as blog or vlogs), and attracting SEO(2)based customers, etc. The dynamics of digital media are ever-evolving with altering algorithms and updates. However the major player for a successful advertising campaign to be retained is its relativity to the target audience. The campaign must maintain relevance and evolve alongside its target audience. Marketing itself is all about keeping up with the dynamics. Developing a good social media community is also an effective and necessary digital marketing method to build a strong, organic customer base.
Broadcast Media
Another popular and effective way of advertising is broadcast media. This primarily includesradio and television. Relevance is of the utmost importance in broadcast media. For example, you see toys being advertised on children’s channels mainly and not on news channels. Similarly, sports gear is advertised on sports channels. This presents the concept of Targeted Marketing(3) and its importance in a clearer sense.
How to target your ideal audience (Targeted Marketing)
For a detailed article on Targeted marketing click here
The most common and important question about Advertising following "How to market" is "who to market to." Advertisements on Billboards and Flyers do not have a specific targeted audience, everyone sees those advertisements and hence they are mostly used for everyday products such as grocery or technological products.
However that is not commonly the case with businesses and Startups. The product/service offered may be of any specific usage for specific audience or even a niche product with a small audience. It is preferable to identify the potential customers who are likely to buy the product and advertise primarily to those consumers to increase return on investment. For example, pet supplies to people with pets or toys to children.
This is where targeted marketing comes into play. It is the process of identifying the demographic most likely to purchase your product and advertising primarily to them. For example since kids are most likely to demand for toys, ideally ads for toys are mostly run on kids' TV channels. However nowadays the most effective Targeted marketing tool has become social media like Facebook and Instagram. By choosing to show your ads to people following specific interests, social media sites makes it way more convenient and cheaper to target your potential customer base.
Conclusion
We have mentioned in the previous articles from our "Marketing How To" series that marketing strategies are almost always dynamic, subjective, and need to be targeted. A non-targeted marketing plan, except for generic products, is inevitably destined to fail. To understand advertisement you first need to understand your specific market's needs and wants.
We Can Help!
Symphysis offers marketing consulting for businesses of all sizes. With the right analytics and targeting process, we can help develop a brand persona that attracts your target audience. For more information call or text @ +1 (425) 390-4738
Footnotes
Promotion Mix refers to a number of promotion techniques that a business uses to inform and induce the potential customers to buy its products. These primarily include- PR, Advertisement, and personal selling.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of techniques used to improve your site’s listing in search results. This is accomplished with various methods, including using relevant keywords on your website, generating backlinks, posting quality content, etc ranging between 'black-hat' and 'white-hat' methods.. You can read more about Search Engine Optimization here.
Targeted marketing, as the name suggests, refers to the marketing methods directed at a particular group of individuals who are most likely to be interested in purchasing your product or service. Read more about Targeted Marketing here
When every market form seems to have taken a cut-throat form of competition, marketing for a startup is more hectic and trickier than ever. This brief article outlines the importance of startup marketing, as well as tips on how to start a successful marketing plan.
The
following queries are tackled in this article.
The importance of Startup marketing.
The essential strategies of Startup marketing.
Conclusion
The importance of Startup marketing.
To establish your brand in a competitive market, brand recognition is an absolute necessity. While the product itself is a huge factor in this, a catchy and relevant brand name is the only way to gain recognition for such a product. This eventually leads to generation of the most important marketing tool for a startup: Word-of-Mouth Marketing. You can read more about branding here.
As a startup, the prospect of earning profits is more important than actually earning profits. Brand is not something you create but something you gain, by product differentiation and offering superior value to the potential customer. From now on, this article will assume the product created is of superior value to the potential customer than those already available.
Now that our valuable product or service has been finalized and ready to be launched, we will take a look at the essential strategies for Startup marketing.
Choosing a specific market for targeted launch of your product is a very effective marketing strategy for a startup. Even if the product is meant for popular and generic usage, targeted launch is still preferred because it generates credible word-of-mouth marketing from those who regularly use the product/service. It is essentially identifying what market and what segment of the market has the most potential for purchasing your product, then advertising to that part of the market specifically.
Absolute, not Comparative Presentation (Building your own Brand)
Engagement,
Not Aggressive Selling
Comparative presentation of yourself is basically calling your brand or your market inferior to another. For example, you (XYZ, an accounting firm) aren’t the Microsoft of accounting. You are XYZ. This painfully pervasive tactic appears amateur and doesn't produce long-term results, especially for startups.
Aggressive Selling (focusing on immediate sales by advertisement rather than building up a customer base) can only work for a short-term firm constituted for a particular project. It is a huge obstacle for a firm looking to acquire market share from an established market.
Customer Engagement, on the other hand, is an essential. As is evident by the ever growing need of a good Customer Support, engagement and reliability on the organization from the customer’s side helps build the brand. Occasionally this works faster than any other marketing method.
Acquiring
Customers and not Building Brand
By offering Quality Products/Services, Customer Engagement, and acquiring brand recognition, a brand builds itself. But not by aggressive brand-forcing, trademarking, advertisement, etc. A lot of failed startups make the mistake of focusing on Brand Establishment and not Brand Recognition. A brand is built once a strong, satisfied customer base has been built.
Word-of Mouth Marketing
An extension to the previous point, word-of-mouth marketing is perhaps the most important marketing strategy for a startup. A satisfied customer has a habit of recommending products and services or running independent forums and discussions about the product/service, etc. The main focus should be for the firm and its product to be of some superior value to the potential customer.
The Importance
of Networking
Establishing a good network among your market and competition is another essential. It is basically a means of recognition in the sellers’ side of the market. This can be accomplished by attending workshops, meetups, and other networking events and joining forums on various websites like Facebook and Reddit.
Funds
Management
Do not waste money on trademarking/advertisement as a startup without proper budgeting. It is very popular among failed startups to spend thousands of dollars on unsuccessful, compulsive, and aggressive marketing. Instead, invest on methods that work best for your market following the very important market research.
The Importance
of Numbers
An extension to point one, having all the relevant, well-researched data expressed in quantitative terms is a requirement for effective startup marketing. This is often overlooked or disorganized, leading to great losses and even complete failures for startups.
Move Fast!
Not all of these marketing tips will work for your startup. The concept of startup marketing is a dynamic, conditional, and subjective one with variables running from 0 to 100 every day based on trends and customer behavior. Therefore, if a particular method does not work for you, pivoting and redirecting efforts is the only option to stay current and moving forward.
Conclusion
At its core, Startup marketing is about customer satisfaction. We have not mentioned the obvious tips like ‘advertise’ since it is the base, hidden variables that run those surface tactics. The most important things are to understand the dynamics of your market identify your target audience. Change is the only thing that is constant, so continue researching your target demographics and pivot when necessary to continue offering valuable products.
Making a startup successful is difficult and time consuming. In fact, most startups never even report profit or success. The path of entrepreneurship is all about facing and beating challenges so do not let the failure stories discourage you. Once you understand what works for your specific market, marketing becomes easier to manage.
We Can Help!
Symphysis specializes in market structure and strategy. Every day we meet clients from around Greater Seattle for one-on-one training and consultation. Our marketing services extend to businesses of all sizes, family and enterprise. For more information, call or text @ +1 (425) 390-4738.
In a society where markets are driven primarily by customer convenience and online discoverability, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important brick in building a successful brand and driving traffic to your website. This brief article from our "Marketing How To" series takes a beginner’s in-depth look at the basics of SEO and tips on how you can you use it most to your own advantage.
The
following queries are tackled in this article.
What SEO is (Meaning and Definition of SEO).
How is SEO an integral marketing strategy?
Black Hat vs White Hat SEO.
On Page vs Off Page SEO.
Back Links and the Credibility Spam
SEOTips for utilizing SEO to your best interest and increase Ranking and Discoverability.
What NOT to do.
Footnotes
What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?
When you post content online, the main objective for the post is to make it discoverable to your target audience. There are two primary ways to do that. The first way is advertisement: paying websites with decent traffic to drive their users to your content. But the obvious flaws with this tactic is the audience attracted is often temporary and new startups and small businesses or organizations cannot invest a great deal in such advertisement.
The second and more effective way of generating long-term organic audience for your content is Search Engine Optimization (SEO.) Search Engine Optimization is the process of customizing your website to appeal to search engines. This can be accomplished by having relevant keywords to the topic of your site, a layout that Google (or another search engine) thinks is organized, and fast load speed. Google wants to show it's customers the best and fastest results that relate to their search queries. When someone does a generic or specific search on Google relating to the topics on your website, your pages with relevant content show up higher in search results. Generally, people will click on the first result they see, therefore increasing the traffic on your website.
How is SEO
an integral marketing strategy?
In a dynamic online marketing environment, discoverability is one of the most important factors to staying ahead of the competitors. During a time of home delivery and on-call services, customer convenience is very important. Search Engine Optimization targets that precisely, along with building goodwill(1)for your brand, by attracting more and more people to your website. By increasing organic visits to your website, SEO ensures a dynamic buying cycle(2) for the products and services offered.
Black Hat vs White Hat SEO.
Source: MLwebdesigns.com
Black Hat SEO refers to the techniques and hacks for generating short-term audience for your website. These techniques include keyword stuffing (Including repetitive chosen keywords in your content), content scraping (Republishing your RSS links to different sites for backlink generation), comment spams (on different comment-enabled websites with links backing to your own website), cloaking (Showing different content to visitors and search engines), etc. Search engines bots, such as Google Crawler(3) do not appreciate Black Hat SEO methods, and upon identification, websites using them can be penalized or even banned.
White Hat SEO, on the other hand, emphasizes primarily on the content of your website. Methods such as better UI (User Interface), Keyword Research and Optimization, Speeding up the load time, and attracting backlinks from reputable websites are the main methods of white-hat SEO. Contrary to Black Hat SEO, it is a long-term marketing tool which focuses on generating organic audience and building an organization’s goodwill.
On Page vs Off Page SEO.
Source: Blog.alexa.com
On Page SEO is essentially optimization based on what is actually on your webpages. This is altering and modifying the content on your website to increase discoverability. A simple SEO checklist for On Page SEO is:
Creating Quality Content.
The contents of the page should be relevant to the desired search results. Relevant content increases the chances of appearing in organic search results and reduces bounce rate(4).
Keyword Optimization
The content should be inclusive of various relevant keywords (the actual words that users type in search engines) with a recommended ratio of 2-5:100 words. These words/phrases should be mentioned at least a few times in the content. Although it must be made sure that these are not spammed.
Website
coding.
Behind every page there is coding and structure, with important factors such as Title Tags, Heading Tags, and Meta Data. Title Tag is the clickable link that shows up on the ‘Search results’ page of a search engine. Heading Tags are the particular heads of the page (for example ‘Black Hat vs White Hat SEO’, ‘What NOT to do’, etc. headings in this article). Metadata is the part of code that describes other parts of the code.
Off Page SEOis basically your online reputation based on other relevant websites. It is a long-term optimization method. There are no direct alterations to the content of your website involved. Our simple SEO checklist for Off Page SEO is:
Social Interaction and Online Presence.
Social activity is increasingly becoming an
important factor for SEO. Google Crawler checks all relevant sources eventually
backlinking to your main content. And although its exact algorithm is unknown,
various trial-and-error experiments have shown significant direct impact of
social media popularity and search engine ranking.
Backlinking
Acquiring backlinks from reputable and relevant websites for your content is the most important Off-page SEO factor. Links between websites create a web that search engine crawlers can follow to determine the quality and relevance of websites within the web. Bots like Google Crawler recognize both quality and quantity of backlinks.
Guest
Blogging
Guest blogging is an effective way of getting
backlinks from popular websites. As a guest blogger, you submit blogs to other
more popular and relevant websites with backlinks to your own content. Upon
acceptance, such blogs and content creates a decent backlink base for search
bots.
SEOBacklinks and the Credibility Spam
Tiered Back linking. Source: apprize.info
Backlinks are off-site links pointing at your website. They play a significant role in Search Engine Optimization. Due to the popular misuse of such backlinks, search bots have become highly vigilant in identifying spam (such as Tiered Backlinking(5)). That means backlinking from your own secondary WordPress or Wix or any other suspected spam sites does little to harvest organic audience. On the other hand, backlinking from more popular and credible sites helps way more in increasing search ranking.
SEO Tips for Increasing Ranking and Discoverability.
Make sure to post original, valuable, relevant, and quality content.
Make sure that your clickable URLs and Permalinks are sensible and readable.
Link to other websites with relevant content. This builds your own reputation as a trustworthy and relevant site.
Acquire Backlinks from other sites by using methods mentioned above under ‘Off-Page SEO’.
Create a social media presence and accountability for your content.
Research. This is a very important strategy for Search Engine Optimization. Paid tools such as Semrush tell how many backlinks a particular site is using, what keyword ranking they have, and where they acquire their reference from. A free but less accurate way of doing this is by adding the Keywords Everywhere extension tool to your Chrome or Firefox browser. Ahrefs also offers a free backlink checker tool, with paid options to view more data. For a more comprehensive list of research tools, visit our article: Best Paid and Free SEO tools in 2019.
What NOT to
do.
I have mentioned it before and would again, don't get banned trying to gain search priority. Spamming of any kind could easily be detected by search bots and will penalize your whole site. Tiered Backlinking was considered a hack to this, but Google’s algorithm is perpetually changing, and even that is an unsafe bet.
We Can help!
Search Engine Optimization can be a tricky concept to understand and even trickier to tackle. Symphysis maximizes the number of times you appear in organic search queries. Our SEO team begins by reducing loading time, improving image quality, removing leftover template code, implementing analytics, all while improving keyword ranking. For more information, call or text +1 (425) 390-4738.
Footnotes
Goodwill is a long-term intangible asset of an organization. It is basically the organization’s reputation among its customers and the general public. It helps attracts customers and builds their trust in the organization.
Buying-cycle, which occurs between two purchases, is the process that a customer undergoes before buying or renewing a product.
Google Crawler is Google’s inter-site navigation block that navigates through various backlinks on different sites to a particular site.
Bounce rate is the amount of users who leave the site before making a conversion. It is a crucial SEO factor as search engines do not prioritize websites with a high bounce rate.
Tiered backlinking is a form of spam backlinking where a person with multiple websites links them through one another tier wise. For example, suppose you have nine websites, Sites A-I, and A is your primary site. In tiered backlinking you would link Website B to, D, E and F; and website C to G, H, and I. And then you’d link site A to B and C, which are more credible and relevant. Google Crawler will eventually find its way from site I to A, assigning it multiple backlinks.
The concept of branding is a tricky one and could easily be confused with other aspects of marketing such as Advertisement and Trademarking. This brief article explains the definition of Branding along with its importance, what makes a "good brand," and emphasizes the need of a good branding strategy.
Branding is an important aspect of a marketing strategy.
The following questions are addressed in this article.
What is Branding?
Why is Branding so important?
What makes a good Brand Name?
What makes a good Brand Mark?
Conclusion.
Footnotes
What is Branding?
According to The American Marketing Association, a brand is, "A name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s goods or services as distinct from those of another." Legally registering a symbol or words for use in a company's brand is termed, "trademarking." A brand may represent one item, a family of items, or all items & services of that business. If used for the firm as a whole, the preferred term is trade name.
A brand is essentially synonymous to a firm’s goodwill(1), that is, the reason why a person is compelled to buy from a firm more than once. It is a relatively superior long-term marketing tool, emphasizing on the psychological benefit of a feeling of belonging. In other words, Branding helps the product’s recognition in any competitive market. Brand could be a Brand Name, Brand Mark, or Trademark(2, 2.1).
For example, in a market of over a dozen identical yet differentiated products (Monopolistic Competition(3)) of shoes or fast food, the Nike Swoosh, or McDonald’s signature "M" is effectively used to differentiate their products from others, build goodwill, gain recognition, and increase customer confidence.
Why is Branding so important?
In any form of competitive market, product recognition is one of the most important factors in convincing a potential customer to choose one product over another product of similar value. The potential customer, attracted by the product’s advertisement variables like packaging, labeling, communication, and branding, buys the product. The product being of superior value to them, psychological or real, would lead to the development of the most crucial advertisement method for a new brand: Word of mouth, or referral marketing.
Word-of-mouth marketing is when a customer advertises a product to raise a brand's goodwill, and therefore sales, by recommending it to their peers and associates. It is because of Word-of-Mouth marketing that the biggest brands gain popularity. Consumers prefer purchasing products that have been purchased and tested before. Consumers often look to reviews to save time and money on a product that wasn't worth their time.
In other words, branding helps create superior value to the potential customers in a market segment. It helps them view your product as a superior alternative to other similar or differentiated products serving their needs. Without proper branding, there is no way of recognizing the product and purchasing it from the previous producer. This leads to a fall in overall sales. This is also the case when the Brand name is poor, not memorable, and difficult to recognize.
What makes a good Brand Name?
Coca-Cola is a great example of branding gone right, as one of the most recognized brands in the world.
A good brand name is catchy, relevant, and audibly pleasing. For example, in Coca-Cola, the ‘Cola’ suggests relevance to the product of soft drinks offered and the two C's sound catchy and are audibly pleasing. Similarly, Microsoft’s ‘Micro’ suggests technological relevance. In general, a good brand name should have the following characteristics:
It should be unique and differentiated to existing brand names while being relatable to the audience. It should not be too technical.
It should be suggestive and relevant to the product(s)(4) offered under the brand name.
It should be easy to read and memorable. There have been cases of brands failing simply because their brand-name was too specialized.
It should be capable of legal protection and Trademarking (Some words such as curses or previously trademarked words are incapable of legal protection).
What makes a good Brand Logo?
Best brand logos and what makes a logo good.
Similar to brand name, a brand mark (logo) should be relevant, eye-catching, suggestive, and capable of legal protection. Apart from this, emphasis on research for creation of a brand mark should be given priority since visual appeals have a much greater engagement rate when it comes to startup advertising. However, sometimes irrelevant and experimental brands gain great recognition, such as Wendy's or Apple, whose logo and name do not suggest any relevance but are some of the biggest brands in the world.
Branding is one of the most valuable aspects of Marketing. It is perhaps the only way a firm stands out in a competitive market. It is the pillar of building goodwill, which is crucial for any organization’s long term success,. It is important to deal with the process of branding with vigilance and under experienced guidance to develop a brand with a lasting effect on your consumers.
Symphysis Marketing Solutions offers persona and branding strategies that are ever-changing. We’ll help you build an identity for your business that captures the attention of your target audience. Our branding strategies are integrated across various social media platforms and digital marketing media.
For more information call or text us @ +1 (425) 390-4738
Notes
Goodwill is a long-term intangible asset of an organization. It is basically the organization’s reputation among its customers and the general public. It helps attracts customers and builds their trust in the organization.
A Brand generally has three components, Brand Name, Brand Mark, and Trademark. 2.1. Trademark is the part of Brand which has legal protection.
Monopolistic Competition is a form of general market where similar types of products are sold with little differentiation among them. For example, various brands of toothpaste are similar but brand recognition drives much of a consumer's decision to buy one over the other.
A single brand name can be used to sell different products, which may or may not be the same as its parent firm. This is the difference between a firm’s name and one of its registered trademarks. Note that while the firm’s name could be used as its brand name, the opposite can only be the case when both are same.
A business development firm focused on growth strategies, branding strategies, and data-driven marketing for enterprise businesses, start-ups, and small businesses.
