Refinance Leads

The Following Blog Post is from Associated Content and brought to you by financial advisors

Though unbeknownst to most, there was a reason behind the madness of the marketing campaign. And the reason was this. While the financial tracker and coordinator cunningly checked monetary transactions and recorded them with not only pen and paper but also with the crafty electronically transmitted communications to keep the business afoot. It is the duty of the Marketing Manager to dive into the dark twisted innards of the world to find those brave souls willing to purchase products from said business. If the wrong people where to be targeted by said business, it could spell disaster for all.

Even though the above paragraph was written with the Financial Advisor in mind, it was not targeted towards her. Most people whom work with numbers are very detail orientated people. They are more commonly known as ‘left-brained'. According to the Funderstanding website, the left side of the human brain defines analytical and objective thinking as well as logical and rationalizations of what is brought before them (OPA). Financial advising is an extremely detail oriented position and requires several skills identified with the left part of the brain.

The starting paragraph was written in a style similar to old radio shows like ‘The Shadow'. These radio serials where for anyone to enjoy but the ones whom enjoyed it the most where the ones who could use intuition and subjective ness, or right brain traits. These are the people who did not need to know every fact of every episode, or who did not need to know every minute detail to know who the villain was, or who the hero is.

Now, by knowing this very small difference between people, it can give you a little better understanding behind the purpose of the Marketing Plan. If, a business just dives blindly into the night they may end up targeting a group of people who do not fit into the mix and thus causing their own business to fail. This is a huge problem for lots of businesses. Many small businesses will fail because they are improperly educated on who their target audience/market it and how to reach them. The Marketing plan will break down the market in to segments and show us exactly who the target market is, and how to reach them. Now, picture if ‘The Shadow' was targeted to the elderly or even retired bankers and accountants. Do you think it would have done as well?

As for breaking every single step down for you to pick at the minute details of the marketing plan, is an impossibility. Simply because the market trends and fads can change on a daily basis, and having something concrete on something so static can not happen. However, I can tell you some of the steps of the marketing plan that may help you understand more so.

There is multiple levels of research that is done, from geo-demographics, to demographics, breaking down how much people spend and how large the family is. It is discovered when people spend the most, and what they spend the most on. From this statistical information, we are able to generate a market segment. This is grouping together similar people by wants and needs. Also by similar reactions to similar market mixes.

As we now have a market segment, we can start surveying these segments to figure out positioning. Positioning is mostly what it sounds like, this is where we find out the position of certain brands and brand loyalty among the mix. This gives us more information to let us know where we stand as a business amongst our competitors from a consumer standpoint. Now we can look at differentiation, which will let us know how different our marketing mix is from the competitors. This allows us to identify what needs to be altered, or changed to make our mix better than the competitors. With a stronger mix, we will have a more finically positive year.

This small segment really focuses on the consumer and what they want and believe. Several larger companies have used this mix very successfully in the past. Amazon, Starbucks and Home Depot to name a couple.

Home Depot, has a strong believe in good customer service. The following is a quote from the Home Depot Website talking about their values, ‘Along with our quality products, service, price and selection, we must go the extra mile to give customers knowledgeable advice about merchandise and to help them use those products to their maximum benefit.' (HD)

Home Depot, gives their consumers ‘extra' information about what they are purchasing that they do not need to give. They are going that extra mile for the consumer to make the consumer feel confident in their purchase and more loyal to Home Depot for the added ‘personal' attention. This is because the marketing mix Home Depot put together for themselves, showed that their target market, is mostly ‘do-it-yourselfers' who enjoy the extra information on tricks and tips with diy projects.

These little ‘personal' touches are all created for the consumer, and the need for these personalization's had been found with the efforts of a marketing manager and their marketing plan.

Sources:

Perreault W.D. Jr., McCarthy E.J. (2006). Essentials of Marketing — A Global-Managerial Approach (10th ed.). San Francisco, CA: McGraw-Hill Irwin

On Purpose Associates. (OPA). Right Brain vs. Left Brain. Retrieved December 01, 2006, from http://www.funderstanding.com/right_left_brain.cfm

Home Depot. (HD). Our Values. Retrieved December 01, 2006, from http://corporate.homedepot.com/wps/portal/!ut/p/.cmd/cs/.ce/7_0_A/.s/7_0_112/_s.7_0_A/7_0_112

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