Chapter 2 Prologue marketing is an indispensable strategic element for enterprises

In general, the main task of marketing is often considered to be the creation, promotion, and delivery of goods and services to customers and businesses.Marketers must be good at stimulating demand for the company's products.However, if this is just a view of the tasks that marketers are engaged in, it is too limiting. The purpose of marketing is to find more customers. Customers are the largest strategic resource of an enterprise, the source of sustainable profits for an enterprise, and the basis for its sustainable development.Therefore, how to meet customer needs, adapt to customer needs, and give customers the right to choose their own products is the key to a company's success and the core of its strategy.

Looking back at the Chinese Internet market in 2008, Cheng Binghao's Kaixin.com is a remarkable classic case.Although many people don't like Kaixin.com's torture-like, MLM-like viral marketing method, it is undeniable that Kaixin.com is indeed very successful when it is evaluated by the benchmark of the Internet.As a professional website development team, Cheng Binghao’s team had a very clear product positioning from the very beginning. The positioning of Kaixin.com is white-collar workers. This broad and broad definition is actually entertainment in nature. As long as users have entertainment needs , you can go to Kaixin.com to get satisfaction from scrambling for parking spaces or stealing vegetables in a new generation.

The promotion mechanism of Kaixin.com is very similar to the promotion practice of "people pull people" in online games."People pulling people" in online games is a very practical and effective means of promotion, with low cost, high input-output ratio, and more importantly, very high user stickiness.When a certain player in a guild independently forms a new guild, they expect to form a team, which is accompanied by a large number of free people to promote.From the perspective of network marketing, once a certain product is launched, it will be sought after by precise users. Afterwards, users or players who have never heard of or played this product before will be pulled over by their friends at least try it once.As many Internet professionals engaged in marketing have said, no matter how precise Kaixin’s positioning is, if it does not cooperate with its full-fledged viral marketing with the nature of pyramid schemes, Kaixin.com will still be a nobody until now.

Existence is not necessarily reasonable, only long-term existence, is in line with the needs.The same is true for running a business. If you don’t pay attention to the strategic position of marketing, it means that you ignore the market demand and actively choose to give up your "basic parents" - customers.Looking at the successful companies in the market, no one dares to underestimate the power of marketing. Marketing is a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they want by creating, offering, and freely exchanging products and value with others.A marketer is someone who seeks out one or more prospective customers in exchange for value.Marketing management is the planning and implementation of marketing concepts, the practice and promotion of goods, services and ideas, in order to implement creative exchange activities with target groups, namely satisfied customers and organizational goals.The essence of marketing management is demand management, whose task is to influence the level, timing and content of demand.

Marketing planning is closely related to corporate strategic planning.Corporate strategy is the overall planning of the company. When formulating corporate strategy, it is necessary to firmly establish the central position of marketing and use the core thinking mode of marketing to think about strategic issues. A strong company should develop excellent technical capabilities in four core business management processes: new product realization process, inventory management process, order-payment process, and customer service process.To effectively manage these core processes requires the creation of a marketing network.In this network, the company works closely with its partners in all production and distribution activities, from suppliers providing raw materials to retail distributors.Companies no longer compete - marketing networks compete.

Core competitiveness is a kind of ability that can provide potential opportunities for enterprises to enter various markets. It is an ability that can make a significant contribution to the identified customer interests with the help of final products and is not easy for competitors to imitate.Should a company focus on its core competencies or its end product?Successful businesses focus on the former rather than the latter.The key to the company's profitability lies in understanding customer needs and satisfying target customer needs with competitive marketing strategies and competitive high-quality products.Be concerned not only with the quality of your product, but also with the quality of your advertising, service, product descriptions, delivery, after-sales support, and other activities.

Galanz was originally engaged in the production of down jackets, and officially entered the microwave oven business in 1993.After that, Galanz, adhering to the spirit of specialization, liquidated or sold many original businesses that had nothing to do with microwave ovens, and devoted itself to the production of microwave ovens.In the microwave oven industry, Galanz's consistent strategy is cost leadership.By continuously raising the entry barriers of the microwave oven industry, in just a few years, it has become a world leader in the field of microwave oven production. However, in 1999, Midea, a brother in the same city who had been in a "dark war" with Galanz in the field of rice cookers and electric fans, began an "open war" in the field of microwave ovens.Relying on its advantages in funds, channels, and research and development in the fields of air conditioners and small household appliances, Midea has made a high-profile intervention in the field of microwave ovens through cooperation with Japan's Toshiba, officially kicking off the prelude to the battle between Midea and Ge giants.Faced with the aggressive trend of Midea, Galanz naturally and as always held up its tried and tested "price chopper", trying to force Midea out of the game through price wars.But the price war has little effect on Midea, and Midea is determined to make a difference in this industry.Relying on its own strength and channel advantages, the market performance is getting better and better.The competition of MeiG is all-round. In addition to the price war, it also includes channels, talents, etc., and is completely caught in a dynamic competition.Since then, the dispute between Galanz and Midea has developed into an all-out and protracted war.

It is not difficult to see from the case that building a strong marketing team is very important in maintaining and enhancing core competitiveness.As long as the marketing team does not collapse, the core competitiveness exists, and the enterprise cannot collapse.In the battle between Midea and Galanz, its marketing team plays a decisive role. Core competitiveness is a capability, not a product, let alone an attribute of a product.The core competitiveness of an enterprise is the lifeline of the enterprise and the power source for the operation and development of the enterprise.Core competitiveness is the core part of corporate strategy.However, the building of core competitiveness is not something that can be accomplished overnight.The marketing team determines all factors related to capturing market share, such as the company's sales methods, strategies, and channels.For some well-developed enterprises, with the departure of the soul and backbone of the team, the team collapses, and the core competitiveness will disappear, which directly leads to the demise of the enterprise.This is like sailing on the sea, without a good ship, do you dare to set off?

The delivered value of the customer is the difference between the total value received by the customer and the total cost paid by the customer.The total customer value is the total benefit that customers get from purchasing a specific product or service, which includes four aspects: product value, service value, personnel value and image value.The total customer cost is the estimated cost incurred by the customer when evaluating, obtaining and using the product or service, which includes four aspects: monetary cost, time cost, energy cost and physical cost. Under certain search cost and limited knowledge, flexibility, income and other factors, customers are the pursuers of value maximization.Customers form a value expectation, and act according to it, always buy services or goods from companies or organizations that they think can provide the highest value delivered by customers.

Shenzhen Shirble Department Store Co., Ltd., as an earlier local large-scale comprehensive chain commercial enterprise in Shenzhen, has continued to develop steadily in a short period of 12 years since the establishment of the first department store in 1996.And it has created many business models that the industry is vying to imitate, and at the same time achieved good results.Since its establishment, Shirble Department Store has quickly become a well-known brand enterprise in Shenzhen's retail industry. Shirble first started from the service aspect, deepened the service tenet of "serving the people wholeheartedly" from the perspective of retail business within the company, and implemented it in every detail.They have made to the society "provide the service of buying and installing immediately, and making an appointment to purchase goods from other places". 28 convenience measures promises that other commercial retail companies will follow in the future, such as "all branches implement exchange and refund".Secondly, Shirble Department Store vigorously advocates "knowledge service" among employees, that is, when employees serve customers, they should provide "expert" and "consultant" services with rich professional knowledge.In order to improve the knowledge level and comprehensive quality of employees, realize knowledge services, and avoid phenomena such as not being able to provide services in a timely manner, not being rich in product knowledge, not familiar with the layout of shopping malls and product classifications, and being unable to provide professional advice when needed.On the one hand, the above-mentioned measures have increased the service value of customers, and on the other hand, the thoughtful and considerate service has reduced the time, energy and physical costs of customers for shopping.

Since its establishment, Shirble has always adhered to the customer-centered business philosophy, and has made long-term and unremitting efforts in improving customer transfer value under the guidance of the theory of customer transfer value.A marketing mechanism has been established to improve customer transfer value, which has improved customer satisfaction. After more than ten years of expansion, it has not only formed a group of stable and highly loyal customer groups.It also makes this group continue to expand, and the commercial value of enterprises has also been continuously accumulated and improved accordingly. When customers buy products, they always hope to minimize the relevant costs, including money, time, mental and physical strength, etc., and at the same time hope to obtain more practical benefits from them, so as to satisfy their needs to the maximum extent.Therefore, when customers purchase products, they often conduct comparative analysis from two aspects of value and cost, and choose the product with the highest value and the lowest cost, that is, the product with the largest "customer transfer value" as the preferred object of purchase.In order to defeat competitors in the competition and attract more potential customers, enterprises must provide customers with products that have more "customer transfer value" than competitors, so that their products can be noticed by consumers and then purchased. Products of this enterprise.Suibao's success comes from this way. Humans are rational and self-interested.Two products of the same quality, one has a bad service attitude, and is often out of stock, and even requires customers to pay for postage, and the warranty period is very short; while the other has a friendly service attitude, can guarantee punctual free delivery, and has a shelf life Longer, and the distribution of maintenance outlets is also reasonable.At this time, which would you choose?The answer is obvious, no one wants to spend more time, energy and other costs.Product quality is important, but don't ignore the feelings of non-quality factors on customers.In order to achieve "customer first", we must fully understand and satisfy the transfer value of customers. There are two kinds of marketing, one is downstream marketing, helping the sales department, giving them some brochures, helping them sell the product, but you need another marketing strategy, which is upstream marketing.Upstream marketing helps two or three people. His task is to answer this question: what is the market like, for example, how will the market be formed three years later.We have noticed that if marketers only consider today's situation, they do not consider what more suitable products will be available tomorrow.Regardless of the future, for example, what will happen to the market of our product in three years, this kind of marketing is called upstream marketing at this time. Marketing is more than just merchandising.The existence of sales was much earlier than marketing, and the concept of sales began to emerge probably after human beings had exchanges and transactions.Marketing is a product of modern market development.With the fierce competition of transactions and the complexity of the methods, each enterprise needs to segment the target market and formulate corresponding sales strategies, thus the marketing department, that is, the birth of upstream marketing.By formulating a long-term sales strategy plan and then implementing it by the sales department, the undertaking from upstream marketing to downstream marketing is completed.If you want to be an excellent company, you must have an excellent and well-matched upstream marketing and downstream marketing team. In 1992, my country's economy entered a new period of development. Haier seized the opportunity to merge 18 enterprises including Qingdao Refrigerator General Factory, Qingdao Air Conditioner Factory and Qingdao Hongxing Electric Co., Ltd., and invested in the construction of Haier Park to start a second venture.Now, Haier's products cover refrigerators, freezers, air conditioners, washing machines, color TVs, computers, mobile phones and other fields, forming a brand-name product group with 46 series and more than 8,600 varieties and specifications.Haier has an excellent upstream marketing team and maintains a good sense of the market, which makes Haier's products form an overall advantage. At the same time, each series has different innovation points, and is unique in technology, concept, demand, appearance design, etc. Features to meet the needs of different market segments. In 2007, Haier's overall share in China's home appliance market reached more than 25%, and it still maintains the first share; especially in the field of high-end products, Haier's market share is as high as 30%, among which, Haier is still far ahead in the white goods market.For these "records", Haier's downstream marketing has contributed a lot.A variety of sales models are combined to adapt to different market conditions in various regions.Its main sales model is the typical branch general distribution system, supplemented by direct sales of hypermarkets, direct control of major stores, and looking for agents for other ordinary or third-tier and lower-tier markets.The flexible sales model, coupled with the unique and long-term market strategic vision, has made Haier today's brilliance. Every enterprise hopes to become an evergreen tree in the market, and naturally understands the importance of marketing strategic planning.But many of them fail to pay attention to the communication and cooperation between upstream marketing and downstream marketing like Haier, so naturally it is difficult to achieve comparable achievements.If the strategists cannot listen to the feelings and ideas of those who are in direct contact with the market, most of the plans they make are "on paper"; In addition, planning is not just a budget. Given a bunch of numerical information, you cannot see your strategies and strategies.Without a clear plan, it is mostly because you do not have a good brand positioning.What is a brand?He is not only the name of a product, but your property and assets.For example, Volvo Cars emphasizes safety, and Mercedes-Benz is characterized by the best engineering and manufacturing technology.Once you know where your brand stands, get people to support it and everyone will be proud of it. In the past, most companies paid great attention to downstream marketing and created many sales models to save costs and increase sales. However, if there is no long-term sales strategy plan that adapts to market changes, that is, upstream marketing, then the profits that downstream marketing strives for will eventually fail. To the bottleneck limit, to break through this limitation, it is necessary to achieve a perfect "two swords" in upstream and downstream marketing. Businesses must retain much of the technology and capabilities that have allowed them to enjoy success in the past, but they must understand the new economy and develop capabilities if they are to thrive in today's economy .Basically, they have to rethink and revise their corporate strategy, align corporate strategy and marketing strategy, and rethink the role of marketing in corporate strategy. Today's society is in the new economic era. With the influence of high-tech such as network, biotechnology, new materials, advanced communication methods and smart chips, as well as the changes brought about by economic and market globalization, the market demand is also increasing. To complicate matters, customers can easily obtain information comparisons of multiple similar products on the Internet, have more specific needs for products, and put forward some service requirements with more technical content.Therefore, in such an information age, enterprises must adjust their strategies and revise their marketing strategies accordingly. In 1991, Cisco began to cooperate with one-tier partners to expand its sales channels. Over the past few years, one-tier partners have cooperated seamlessly with direct sales channels, and this channel structure has continued to expand.However, with the increasingly fierce competition in the network equipment industry, the pressure from competitors such as 3Com and BayNetworks has prompted Cisco's management to think hard about a good plan to expand the market. At this time, since Cisco products are only sold to the top 1,000 companies, Cisco hopes to expand its customers to the top 4,000 companies.Therefore, in 1996, Cisco's management decided to include two-tiered partners, hoping to use this channel to sell products with lower prices, extend the reach of products to users of small and medium-sized enterprises, and attract more customers to increase market share. For this reason, in early 1997, Cisco launched a new brand——CiscoPro, aimed at customers of small and medium-sized enterprises, and mainly sold through two-tier partner channels. CiscoPro products are priced lower than general Cisco products, and have fewer functions and features than Cisco general products.However, shortly after it was introduced into the market, the management found out from channel reports that customers were not satisfied with the new brand's products. After 12 months of promotion, the revenue of CiscoPro products accounted for only 3% of Cisco's total revenue that year. After experiencing the CiscoPro experience, Cisco decided to close the CiscoPro brand products, and at the same time integrate all units that support Cisco and CiscoPro products. Channels are divided by the size of customers as a partition, and a series of measures are adopted to avoid channel conflicts.Since then, Cisco's sales competitiveness has improved significantly, and the market share of the two-tier partner channel has increased to 80% in 2001, far surpassing its competitors. Through Cisco's case, we can also find that if the company's strategic goals deviate from market demand, it is like a house without a solid foundation, and it will collapse sooner or later; if the marketing strategy does not conform to the company's strategic plan, it is like drugs. It can bring people pleasure temporarily, but in essence it is a kind of destruction.Therefore, when building the big house of "enterprise", how deep your foundation is, can you build your house to the corresponding height. Regarding marketing strategy, the master Kotler defines it as: the broad principles that a business unit intends to use to achieve its various marketing objectives in the target market.And the content of marketing is divided into the following three parts: target market strategy, marketing mix strategy and marketing expense budget.In fact, the marketing strategy is also an overall plan made by the enterprise for its own marketing work according to the marketing environment, dynamic changes, and its own marketing conditions.It can be seen that corporate strategy and marketing strategy must be kept at a unified pace in order to create more value. You may say that I have done everything, reduce the cost, improve the quality, and the design is very good, maybe you guys are not doing well in this area, maybe you want to do a little of these eight aspects, but you don’t have your own strategy.Sometimes you can make product innovations and have better quality. Your quality is not only high, but also gets better every day. Strategy is how you deal with competition and how you meet your customers’ needs and competition method of competition. Marketing seems to have not attracted enough attention from the company's management. In many companies, marketing is ignored. It is on the edge of the company, in the corner, and its budget is generally spent on advertising. , Promotion, but not really elevated to a strategic level.Marketing is not just a function, but should be regarded as the engine of the entire company, which drives the growth of all businesses.Procter & Gamble is such an excellent company that can focus on marketing from a strategic point of view. Successfully launching multiple brands in the same field is a major feature of Procter & Gamble's brand marketing.The characteristics of each product of Procter & Gamble are different, and there are no two identical brands. This is just considering the diversification of the market itself and the fundamental difference of different personalities, preferences, preferences, and needs of consumers. Therefore, Procter & Gamble should not only strive to meet the common needs of global consumers, but also try its best to meet the unique needs of specific markets. After 2000, Procter & Gamble series products began to reduce prices to varying degrees.As a result, it marks the beginning of its strategic center of gravity to sink.Procter & Gamble finally realized the importance of low-end people to the company.Not only that, but Procter & Gamble seems to have gone further, and it has begun to make every effort to build its own low-price product chain.Procter & Gamble's goal is not just to win the low-end market (cities), it has set its sights on the depth of China's vast rural market. Procter & Gamble's market competition strategy seems simple and understated, but its connotation is quite interesting.The marketing strategy is not simply "heal the head if you have a headache, and treat the foot if you have a pain". Instead, while "focusing on yourself", you can also assess the situation and flexibly "see the style and break the style, and see the tricks and tricks", which fully embodies the The demeanor of a market master. Marketing is not simply selling.In the modern economy and society, marketing is not limited to planning in the market, but also includes strategies to deal with competitors and supporting marketing measures to meet the company's long-term strategic plan.It is from a strategic point of view that the cleaning company has strengthened the effect of marketing to achieve such long-term success. Starting from Kotler's famous 4P theory, we know that the development of traditional marketing revolves around the four elements of marketing: product, place, price, and promotion.Strategic marketing also includes these strategic variables, but goes beyond traditional marketing in some important strategic aspects. Strategic marketing is a new stage in the development of marketing thinking. It recognizes the shortcomings of ignoring competition in the concept of consumer-oriented marketing, and especially emphasizes the balance between consumers and competitors.Therefore, strategic marketing is essentially an all-round marketing plan that raises marketing to a strategic level, and is a marketing requirement that meets the long-term healthy development of the company. Companies that ignore the role of marketing will not go far, and companies that cannot view marketing from a strategic perspective will not be able to grow stronger.Your attitude towards marketing also determines the future of your company. Precision marketing is a major trend in current marketing.For example, direct marketing has high precision requirements, requires the establishment of customer relationships, and can utilize customer databases.The cumbersomeness will also bring benefits, that is, it is convenient to accurately target your own customers, the cost is lower, it can be tested, the advertisement can be measured, and the profit can also be predicted. With the development of the market, the current marketing concept is not limited to the 4P marketing of products, prices, promotions and channels. The customer-centric marketing concept is pushing marketing into the realm of precise marketing. The traditional marketing model is somewhat similar to indiscriminate bombing in war, while precision marketing is like the practice of using advanced positioning systems to effectively strike targets in modern warfare.When products are increasingly homogeneous and price wars make profit margins thinner, companies hold high service cards, cultural cards, and brands in order to show their differences in the competition.Faced with this situation, whoever can grasp the needs of customers, analyze trends, grasp trends, and regard personalized service as an important part of marketing will be able to make marketing work in-depth, detailed, and thorough, and can firmly occupy the market. more market share. Founded in 1993, Shanghai Xiaohua Maternal and Baby Products Co., Ltd. is an enterprise specializing in providing a series of scientific and educational services for mothers and babies and integrating the development, production and sales of mother and baby products.After nearly 10 years of unremitting efforts, it has developed into a diversified company integrating the production of infant souvenirs (fetal brushes, hand and foot prints, etc.), prenatal education, early education, puerperium care, and maternal and infant product research and development, production and sales. Maternal and child health services. According to statistics, China's mother and baby market has a capacity of at least 80 billion yuan.Faced with such a huge market and such attractive profit margins, competitors have entered one after another.The overall maternal and infant market is also showing a trend of subdivision. New purchase and payment methods have emerged, database marketing is constantly improving, and distribution channels are diversifying. The competition in the maternal and infant market has become more intense, and new game rules will be re-formulated. In the face of market changes, Xiaohua Company believes that the extensive marketing methods are no longer suitable for the requirements of the new era. Based on years of practice, they have summed up a set of new marketing methods that they call "precision marketing". The positioning principle of "precise marketing" is "full-process interaction, professional guidance, and multi-source profit", based on information collection and processing, with direct advertising, authoritative recommendations, and free services as the main information carrier to achieve comprehensive and direct communication; establish Professional and convenient maternal and child health consumption platform.Little Ahua pursues accurate communication of market goals, precise grasp of market opportunities, reduces costs and risks through precise marketing, and maximizes profits.Based on the precise marketing strategy, Xiaohua has built a complete business chain of maternal and child services, and successfully maintained and expanded its market share. Precision marketing, in short, is how to increase marketing efficiency.On the one hand, marketing has begun to pay more attention to technology, such as marketing automation. On the other hand, the marketing process not only involves innovation, but also must take financial factors into account to calculate return on investment.Through the example of "Little Ahua", we cannot deny that the advantages of precise marketing meet the needs of the development of modern market economy, and it will definitely become the future marketing development trend. Accuracy also means that higher efficiency will be obtained, that is, more specific things can be done at a lower cost.In the modern market that pursues high efficiency and has many needs, precision marketing will undoubtedly give enterprises a huge advantage.It can be seen that a "targeted" strategy can win the "competition" for you.