Perspectives

This entry is a part of  “What is sales? – A blog book“. Read more about it here.

Sales Promotion goes hand-in-hand with advertisement and many manufacturers/dealers operate contest, quiz, etc., offering attractive prizes to winners. In most cases, the contestants are required to enclose the bill, labels, cartoon, etc., along with the entry forms to qualify for entry in the contest. In some cases, gift or discount coupons form part of the advertisement that could be exchanged or redeemed with the dealers/retailers for a discount on purchase of the product. During festive seasons, special discounts are announced and products sold at most competitive prices that help consumers get bargain deals. All these and many other Sales Promotion campaigns result in both the retailers/dealers stocking the items and inhibit the customers to make trial purchases. In other forms of Sales Promotion campaigns, door-to-door selling of new products and offered at prices lesser than the market with or without free offers motivate the customers to try the product and later patronise.

It would not be enough to manufacture products and advertise in order to create customer awareness and enquiries. It is most important to make the product available to the targeted customer at the nearest retail outlet so that the customer could purchase the product. This function is known as MERCHANDISING or DISTRIBUTION. The principal aim of Merchandising is to ensure that company products are made available with as many outlets as possible and also at close proximity to the customers. The retail dealers must be assured of adequate supply of the product range through a channel of distribution like distributors, stockists, wholesalers and/or company depots.

In industries that cater products which require installation, commissioning, servicing and after-sales-support, SERVICING and CUSTOMER SUPPORT become secondary function forming part of the sales contract and considered to be part of Marketing responsibility towards fulfilling customer requirements, specially during the warranty period obligations

Thus, Marketing is an integrated activity comprising of various functional aspects like Planning, Market Research, Sales, Distribution/Merchandising, Advertising, Sales Promotion. Servicing and related activities and is a complex subject by itself. Sales is one of the primary and core function of Marketing and gains importance in so far as identifying customer wants and needs and meeting with the requirements through company’s products and services by virtue of specific and innovative strategies and plans are concerned and is aimed at company’s productivity, profitability and growth.

This entry is a part of  “What is sales? – A blog book“. Read more about it here.

The next functional area of Marketing is to ensure that goods manufactured reach the customers or they are made available to customers at their towns or cities through company’s offices or dealers who stock and sell the products.  This is known as DISTRIBUTION. In cases where goods are sold by the company or its agents directly to the actual user or customer, it is known as DIRECT MARKETING since the company maintains direct contact with its customers for selling and servicing its products.  In other cases of products of mass consumption, it may not be possible for the company to distribute or sell its products directly to the customers and so would choose to make the products available to the customers at their city, town or village through a supply chain of dealers who would stock, distribute or sell the products to the customers.  The chain may consist of wholesale stockists, distributors, redistribution stockists, semi-wholesalers, retailers, etc., who form the organised channel of distribution.

It would not just be sufficient to manufacture goods and make available for the customers to buy.  Customers must be aware of the product, its brand, its attributes, the benefits of the product over competitors, its availability, etc. The medium to create customer awareness is ADVERTISING.  Though goods marketed and sold to the customers through direct marketing can possibly be reached to customers through company’s own team of salesmen or agents, it will be practically impossible to reach all the customers directly to sell the products.  Further, there can be resistance from the customers before they patronise new products.  The awareness created through Advertising will not only generate customer enquiries but also help reduce the resistance level greatly while selling.  Advertising, therefore, induces and motivates a customer to try or purchase a product for the first time and also ensures the customer’s patronage and loyalty to the product for repeat purchase and clientele.

Advertising can be done through several media.  Advertisements made through newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, etc., reach the mass population and are known as Mass Media.  There are other forms of outdoor advertising like hoarding, neon signs, banners, posters, etc.  In the case of consumer products, despite creating the awareness and pushing the customer to the dealer through punchy advertisements and outdoor publicities, a further reminder medium known as Point of Purchase (PoP) is critical.  Posters, pla-cards, hangouts, danglers, banners, etc., exhibited at the counters of the shop induce customer interest & serve as a reminder to purchase the product across the counters and result in a sale.  To further insure a strong patronage, exclusive window displays are organised to attract the attention of the customers at the point of purchase.

This is a long pending post.

Search? Making money out of Search? yeah ok. We have a 200 billion dollar company doing that right. Social networking? Facebook is trying out a few things and they are likely to crack it sooner than anybody else.

Now making money out of Maps? Now that is a complicated problem. In my opinion, nobody has quite solved this. Yahoo and Mapquest stick to what are best at. Banner advertising. But with the advent of Mashable maps (Ajaxified maps), you just have one page to do all you want. Real estate is prime and crunching a banner ad there ends up being ugly. I have always disliked the ad at the bottom left corner of Yahoo Maps.

Now, Google has tried a few things too. They have tried to sneak in their adwords in. But then again, 75% of the page is maps and there is only so much you can do with the right pane which is already so full of local results and driving directions instruction set and what not. Plus, it hardly and rarely makes use of the biggest context available. “Geography”. In other words, “location”.

Yahoo then tried the branding with the “See these business locations on the map” bottom bar. Now it is quite static with no intelligence. And like I argued earlier, and only slightly makes use of the fact there is a location context. Plus, It suits only those business that have a wide (nation wide) presence. In other words, businesses that are chains. It simply refuses to cater to the needs of the long tail.

Also, Maps is a very unique service. Most online services and properties tries to keep the person online. It works by the charm of referrals. But maps works the other way around. The user actually wants to get offline. He wants to get off the internet and get going somewhere. Most Ad models and networks are not best suited for this. They all work in a “Click here to go to the site” way when I want to get off my chair.

A real long time ago ( a year or two ago) Google was trying to sneak in a few sponsored listings as markers on the map. In a given map view, you will find (different looking) markers strewn all over the place. Once clicked, it will tell you about a restaurant or a book store with the phone number etc. Somehow, that has disappeared. Mostly because they didnt find enough interest in the advertising community.

Most recently, I came across Lat49 which is trying to do the same thing. They have tied up with a bunch of map services and hacks (on top of Gmaps and Yahoo maps etc). As an advertiser, you gotta go and buy rights for an area (location context) and place your ad. Everytime anyone see that particular area on any of those Mapping partners, your ad will be displayed.

I think this is the way it needs to proceed. Because fundamentally, the context is location. Not keywords, not your IP, Not the referral page. It is like you are driving to that coffee shop you love the most, but the book store exists on the way. Whether you like it or not. From such a perspective, these ads stop looking like ads anymore. Right?

Now the real challenge is to generate interest in those physical businesses. They need to educated that it is possible to promote their physical store just as well and easy as their online store. It is even possible to advertise on the internet even if you are not online. And that Advertising on Maps is the way to go about it.

What do you think?

Google Local India Sticker
Originally uploaded by shivku.

I was at a watch repair shop at BDA, Complex in Bangalore and I was surprised to see a Google marker stuck on one of the side walls of the small shop. On Closer analysis, It revealed itself as a “Google India Local Maps” sticker that Google possibly has shipped it over to these guys.

So, did the shop owner marked himself on the map (Using My maps) and got the sticker shipped? Very unlikely. I dont think he has used email, let alone maps online. I also tried searching for “Clock repair” and could not find anything useful. Infact, I could not find “BDA complex” in Koramangala, Let alone the “clock work shop” inside it.

So, that just means someone came over and distributed these stickers? That is cheap.

Having said that, the idea rocks. First, They have gone really local. This is as random a shop as it can get. Not the kinds you will find even on yellow pages. Second, this is free physical contextual advertising. Not many people are online in India yet, and not many non-internet ( Newspapers or TV) ads are contextual. Now, things in the physical world that you can relate to on the internet which is (also) contextual, well..that is a killer combo. Precisely what made me come back home and search for “clock works” near my house in Google maps.