Exploiting the Yellow Pages

Many people think the yellow pages are merely a place to put their phone numbers in large type. Silly thinking! The Yellow Pages are an arena for attracting the business of active prospects. They are a place to confront prospects on a one-to-one basis. You are selling. Others are selling too what you sell. The prospect is in a buying mood. Understand that opportunity, and you’ll be able to  create yellow pages ads that translate into sales.

 

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Price Differentiation

A common response during slow demand is to discount the price of the service. This strategy relies on basic economics of supply and demand. To be effective, however, a price differentiation strategy depends on solid understanding of customer price sensitivity and demand curves.

Heave use of price differentiation to smooth demand can be a risky strategy. Over –reliance on price can result in price wars in any industry where eventually all competitors suffer. Price wars are well known in the airline industry, where total industry profits suffered as a result of airlines simultaneously trying to attract customers through price discounting.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Contamination of Resources

Nations have paid relatively little attention to the contamination and destruction of the world’s natural resources. Entire forests have been destroyed by people wanting to get firewood or to clear land and by contaminated air and water. Pollution control of air and water was considered a luxury that governments, anxious to attract new industry and to keep the industry they had, could ill-afford to impose. Developing countries assert, “They can’t afford pollution control like Japan or the United States—that’s cultural imperialism.” They unfortunately do not realize that the price for such negligence is too high.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Monopoly Regulation

Monopoly is usually considered to lead to economic inefficiency. Excessive monopoly profits are commonly regarded as unfair to consumers. Policies for dealing with monopoly range from laissez faire or toleration at one extreme to “trust-busting” at the other. Another possibility is to put monopolistic enterprises under government ownership, as is commonly done in Europe for railroads and telephone service. Regulation of the monopoly’s price and quantity or quality of service by a government agency is important. In the US regulation is standard practice for privately owned ‘public utilities’ providing goods and services such as electric power, water and gas, telephone, and transportation—usually thought to be natural monopolies.

The standard philosophy of regulation aims at limiting the monopolist to a ‘normal profit.’ Normal profit is supposed to be just adequate to attract needed capital and other resources into the business, but not so high as to represent exploitation of consumers. Normal profit in the accounting sense corresponds to zero economic profit. Zero economic profit characterizes long-run equilibrium in perfect competition. In a sense regulation achieves the result that may occur if competition is possible.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Identifying Target Market

Once the market-product segments (potential customers) have been identified, the firm must plan a strategy to attract them to its product. Three different strategies can be followed: unidentified marketing, differentiated marketing, or concentrated marketing.

In undifferentiated marketing, the firm manufacturers a single product and tries to attract all buyers with one marketing program.

In differentiated marketing, separate products and marketing programs are designed for each market segment. Differentiated marketing is effective, but it is always a more expensive way to go.

A compromise strategy is concentrated marketing. This means that the firm concentrates on one or a few profitable market segments.

Marketing strategy decisions are made by people in marketing research and product management positions.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Promoting Sales

First stage marketing strategies should focus on sales promotions that will attract immediate customers and selling methods that will ensure repeat business. First stage companies can also benefit from sales and promotion activities, but with a focus on short term rather than long term benefits. Ideas include:

1. Invite a local newspaper to write an article on some unique aspect of the company.
2. Invite television reporters to cover a special event sponsored by the company (fund raising drive, a banquet honoring an employee, or the introduction of snappy new product).
3. Start a charity book collection drive at local schools.
4. Sponsor a young people’s athletic team.
5. Sponsor a civic band or float in a local parade.
6. Donate materials, space, or services to community theater groups.
7. Sponsor a paper, glass, aluminum, or plastic recycling drive.
8. Get behind a social cause.
9. Donate used computers, office equipment, etc., to local schools, hospitals, or welfare agencies.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Constructing an Employment Ad

Experienced advertisers use a four-point guide called AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) to construct ads. You must, of course, attract attention to the ad, or readers may just miss or ignore it. Develop interest in the job. You can create interest by the nature of  the job itself. You can also use other aspects of the job, such as location, to create interest, create desire by spotlighting the job’s interest factors with words such as travel or challenge. Keep your target audience in mind.  Make sure the ad prompts action with a statement like “call today,” or “write today for more information.”

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Market Penetration Strategy

A market penetration strategy is the one that dictates that an organization seek to gain greater dominance in a market in which it already has an offering. This strategy involves attempts to increase present buyers’ usage or consumption rates of the offering, attract buyers of competing offerings, or stimulate product trial among potential customers. The mix of marketing activities include lower prices for the offerings, expanded distribution to provide wider coverage of an existing market, and heavier promotional efforts extolling the unique advantages of an organization’s offering over competing offerings.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Pricing

Whether or not it is so recognized, pricing is one of the most crucial decision functions of a marketing manager. Pricing is an art, a game played for high stakes; for marketing strategists, it is the moment of truth. All of marketing comes to focus in the pricing decision. To a large extent, pricing decisions determine the types of customers and competitors an organization will attract. Likewise, a single pricing error can effectively nullify all other marketing-mix activities. Despite its importance, price rarely serves as the focus of marketing strategy, in part because it is the easiest marketing-mix activity for the competition to imitate.

It can be easily demonstrated that price is a direct determinant of profit (or loss). This fact is apparent from the fundamental relationship.

Profit = total revenue – total cost

Revenue is a direct result of unit price times quantity sold, and costs are indirectly influenced by quantity sold, which in turn is partially dependent on unit price. Hence, price simultaneously influences both revenues and costs.

Despite its importance, pricing remains on of the least understood marketing-mix activities.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

The Chief Executive Officer

The chief executive officer (CEO) is the person ultimately responsible for setting organizational strategy and policy. Even though the CEO reports to the chair of the board (who has the most legal authority), in a real sense the CEO is the most powerful person in the corporation because he or she controls the allocation of resources. The board of directors gives the CEO the power to set the organization’s strategy and use its resources to create value. Often the same person is both chief executive officer and chair of the board. A person who occupies both positions wields considerable power and directly links the board to corporate management.

How does a CEO actually affect the way an organization operates? A CEO can influence organizational effectiveness and decision making in five principal ways:

1. The CEO is responsible foe setting the organization’s goals and designing its structure.
2. The CEO selects key executives to occupy the topmost levels of the managerial hierarchy.
3.  The CEO determines top management’s rewards and incentives.
4. The CEO controls the allocation of scarce resources such as money and decision making power among the organization’s functional areas or business divisions.
5. The CEO’s actions and reputation have a major impact on inside and outside stakeholders’ views of the organization and affect the organization’s ability to attract resources from its environment.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.