Kamis, 03 Juli 2014

SOFTSKILL# TULISAN BAHASA INGGRIS

Marketing control is used by small business owners to monitor and evaluate their current marketing strategies to identify needed adjustments and set guidelines for the future to achieve marketing and business goals. Although businesses and marketing firms have designed many marketing control techniques over the years, a handful of techniques stand out from the rest.

Competitor Analysis

A small business owner needs to know how his products, services and marketing strategy compare to local, regional, national and international competitors to retain existing customers and attract new ones. Competitor analysis involves checking out the new products or services offered by your competitors, examining their marketing strategies and determining whether they are succeeding or failing with their businesses. Use this information to adjust your strategies accordingly. For example, you could hire a mystery shopper to shop at your competitor's store to acquire information or visit businesses similar to your own in other regions and speak with their owners to get ideas.

Customer Analysis

Another way to monitor and evaluate your marketing is to perform an existing customer analysis to provide a detailed picture of the types of customers buying your products or services. An analysis involves gathering data about your customers during or after check out and then tabulating this information in a spreadsheet for comparison. For example, you might gather data about your customers such as their geographical location, average age and sex. In addition, you might gather spending habits data such as average purchase amounts, amount and type of foot traffic before and after advertising and coupon or discount usage.

Testing Research

Once you identify a target customer base, you can determine the potential success of a new product or service, the marketing methods needed to promote and sell it and the financial impact of a planned marketing strategy through prerelease group testing. One example of testing research involves communication with a focus group of 10 to 15 people from your target customer base. Ask them to discuss in general the products and services they like and dislike to help you brainstorm ideas for the future, or ask them to try one of your new products or services and provide feedback.

Customer Feedback

Customer feedback is a marketing control technique similar to testing research, but instead of gaining insight into future products and services, you evaluate customers' opinions of existing products or services and the marketing methods you currently use. Customer feedback might involve inviting your customers to complete a survey, offer opinions through a suggestion box or respond to specific questions in-person or over the phone after they've purchased a product or service. Other customer feedback methods include asking your employees for feedback and maintaining a list of the types of products or services customers have inquired about that you don't currently offer.

Cost Analysis

Small-business owners use cost analysis to create an overall picture of the cost of existing marketing strategies to reduce costs, weed out products and marketing strategies that aren't working and create a new budget to use moving forward. To perform a cost analysis, look at the current costs involved with all aspects of your business including inventory, distribution and the current costs of your marketing strategies. After you determine the costs, compare the numbers with your existing budget and the costs of alternative marketing methods.

SOURCE  : http://smallbusiness.chron.com/five-major-marketing-control-techniques-40619.html

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