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Thursday, November 16, 2017

The Big Picture

            In today’s world, we don’t have to look very hard to see marketing at work. Whether it be on the TV when we wake up in the morning or word of mouth when we get into work or school. In that one little add or that one 200-character tweet that your friend showed you had countless hours of thinking by people just like us. That’s the beauty in Marketing, Marketers try to appeal to us and it works because they are us. They focus on the marketing mix which is the four Ps of marketing; product, promotion, price, place. These are the controllable factors that the Marketers start off with then they branch out to the consumers to analyze their reactions and behaviors and act on them by selling their product a certain way, at a certain price, at a certain location.

Marketers are extraordinary at understanding the consumer behavior which is the actions a person takes in purchasing and using products and services, including the mental and social process that comes before and after these actions. Consumer behavior is like the big umbrella that marketers try to figure out. Then they start to target certain kinds of behavior which in marketing terms is called target marketing. Marketers don’t just wing it and hope that people think like they do but they strategically try to find out what consumers want. A tool such as social media is a huge benefit to marketing because we can post surveys for different existing products or ideas to help build a new product. Social media allows marketers to detect trends and be able to analyze them in order to help them understand what we as consumers are thinking.

 I have learned that marketing research, collecting primary and secondary data is one of the most important things in marketing. Knowing who you are selling to and how they will react to what you are selling is the biggest thing if you are trying to promote a product or service. How much money should Coke use to put in an advertisement during the super bowl? Marketers will try to find out using financial and strategic analysis to determine if it’s really worth it spending the money to put in an add to show the consumers.

Marketers every day are brainstorming every day to try and catch your eye in the newspaper or grab your attention during a commercial. They are trying to persuade you as the consumer to buy into this service or buy this product. The biggest thing that has come up again and again in my research and learning on marketing is that using opinion leaders for promotion is one of the most influential acts in marketing. You get Tom Brady to be the star in your mattress commercial, chances are your sales in New England for mattresses will skyrocket. It isn’t a guarantee by any means but opinion leaders always tend to at least grab the attention of the consumer more than a normal person. Marketers don’t just try to advertise on TV, they also advertise on posters and flyers. At Saint Michaels College one of the most genius ideas the school has had was to put the stall street journal in every stall in every bathroom on campus. This is a great way for people to get their messages out about anything from student activities to donations to a charity.

This semester We were tasked in hosting an event in order to raise money for a nonprofit organization. My group did a spooky 5k to benefit the Red Cross relief fund to help Hurricane victims. It was honestly a lot of fun but it was also a lot of work. From organizing who is tabling at the Café and where are we going to get some donations from was a lot of leg work. One interesting thing I gained form this experience was how powerful the word of mouth is in marketing, especially on a college campus. The flyers were a nice touch and the twitter and Instagram got us a few followers but what really worked for us was telling our friends to spread the word. I told a few kids on my lacrosse team about the event and next day I realize that they are all participating in the run. Word of mouth spreads like wildfire and it was great to see all the people who came out for the run. I couldn’t have done it without the people in my group. We worked really well together because we were able to take different task and work as a team to accomplish them. We were able to get so much stuff donated and all set up because of the effort we put into working as a team and I thought the event went super well.  Our spooky 5 K team worked really well together and we are so proud of our project, we raised over $200 that will go to Red Cross.

The Big picture is very simple, marketing has become such an important piece in society. It’s a way for people to connect with one another. People are able to see what kind of people buy this product and what type of people provide this service. We live in an age where marketing is all around us and I think we should embrace it as the BIG PICTURE.


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