At the beginning of September, I wrote an essay about setting personal goals for this semester. One of these goals was to acquire more knowledge in sales and marketing. I have decided to combine this goal with my interest in reading the material that has been produced by my peers and other Proakatemia students before me. This and my following essay will be a reflection of my findings after reading all of the essays that appeared after using hashtag marketing (and for the second – #sales) and commenting on my personal favourites.

Why marketing is dependent on psychology

Yousif Majeed, a member of Kaaos (from the other second-year international team), in the essay “Why marketing is dependent on psychology”, explores why understanding psychology and human behaviour is a prerequisite before studying marketing, and how to brand your company well. In the first part, the essay highlights the deep connection between marketing and human psychology, and how having knowledge of human behaviours can predict and have an impact of the customers’ choices.

Some examples:

• Low-cost airlines that convince you that you are saving money when all of the benefits have a price tag on them;
• Diet Coca-Cola that tastes slightly bitter to appear more healthy;
• IKEA maze – as the store is designed as (almost literally a maze) that for the journey you have made, you have to buy something (I myself have been influenced).

The second part of this essay urged me to think about what message I want to convey the customers about my upcoming project (and how to brand it well). As it is, in fact, everything that customer sees, hears or experiences is a lasting impression. Suggestion from the essay: Write down three things that define your business! Be consistent with your branding!

Overall, this was a very interesting piece. I liked multiple real-life examples included in this work, as it was a great way to stimulate already-made statements and made me think how fascinating and, at the same time, despicable? marketing and its tactics can be.

Word of mouth marketing 

The second essay was a good follow-up to the previous essay. Word-of-mouth marketing has always existed but now, with the help of the internet, it has even more power than ever. I had never thought about it like this, but now that I reflect, it is true – nowadays, if a customer has a bad experience, it can be shared in reviews, and social platforms, and then, we already expect a public message in the comments from the company as a sign that they are not ignorant of their problems. On the other hand, it is also easier to stay in contact with the public, as usually people use tags to align posts to the profile of the company. It could be an appreciation with an @ on their stories/posts as well as it could be that when there is a negative review, on comments people will tag the company so that they are able to address the issue. For both (positive and negative), communication is essential.

As word-of-mouth marketing has always been there, it is natural that people will talk. It is C2C, or as explained in the essay, B2C2C marketing. My biggest learning (or reminder) from this essay – it is important to make your business worth talking about. That is, to be interesting, and to really stand out from your competitors (this is when marketing comes in again).

Rules to make this happen (quoted from this essay and there, from the book “Word of Mouth Marketing” by A. Sernovitz): 1) be interesting; 2) make it easy; 3) make people happy; 4) earn trust and respect. All of those I believe are crucial, and, from now on, I will take them with me. Yet still, what I think and what I was also happy to find in the conclusion of this essay, the most important thing by the end of the day is to be genuine. That is, show that you care for your customers more than your strategic marketing campaign, because if your reality doesn’t match with how you present yourself in the advertisements, it will have no value. If you provide good service, people will naturally become loyal.

To sum up, I found this essay very well written. It had very great points as well as suggestions, which I consider would be valuable reflections for any kind of business no matter how far it has come and how good its marketing is. Definitely some essay that I would like to come back to, and recommend reading.

Branding and marketing to create a competitive advantage

A good link for the following question, “How to stand out” can be found in J. Lumme’s essay (another second-year international student from Kaaos). This essay includes valuable keywords that can be written down for practice.

Some quotes from this essay that I wrote down:

– “A key component of competitive advantage is brand strategy.”

–  “Branding and marketing are very advantageous for brands to evoke desire, value, and loyalty from customers.” (keywords: desire, value, loyalty)

– “Within the branding mission, vision, brand values, brand voice, brand promise, positioning and messaging for target audiences should be included”.

– “By maximising ambassador marketing as happy customers will sell more than salespeople where they can share the product to friends and family.”

This essay has an informative manner and though sometimes I would get lost, I do believe that it includes very important points. For example, to stand out, first, consider the brand’s competitive advantage, then build a brand (in bold to remind me not to rush in this step), and consider how to align it with your marketing strategy. Another way is to consider how to differentiate in 1) product or service superiority, 2) company size, 3) distribution methods, 4) technological benefits, 5) production efficiency and 6) market responsiveness. Lastly, the word “consistency” came up again, as well as the importance of creating value and linking good experiences with goods or services. Something to consider.

Conclusion

This essay now has reached a conclusion. I chose “my favourites” not because “they were the best” but because they reflected my current state and questions. To understand better, maybe it could be linked with a quote that I recently heard: “People can only meet you as deeply as they’ve met themselves”. Though that is more about self-awareness, I would like to compare it to my knowledge in marketing. I was not a beginner, but I wanted to become one to remind myself what marketing is for me. For me, it is about spotting, noticing something and giving it value. It is about finding the right angle, influence and about making an impact.

Lastly, I did read other essays too, and these essays (below) were also important for my learning journey, so I would like to give them credit too:

Sustainable and Ethical Marketing

Strategic Marketing Planning 1.1

Neuromarketing