Flanking Marketing

Flanking Marketing

“Pursuit is a second act of the victory, in many cases more important than the first” ---- Carl Von Clausewitz

The term ‘Flanker’ is used in military terms to describe a soldier positioned to protect the flank of troops in the march. In 1940 German stunned France by going around its vaunted Maginot line and attacking the country through Belgium. After six weeks the battle was over. In 1991 US encamped their forces in Kuwait and eastern Saudi Arabia. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf shifted its forces 100 miles west and launched the attack from the south surprising the enemy. After 100 hours Iraqi defense collapsed and US declared the war was over.

In the product lifecycle stage many companies want to expand their product and service offerings to reach a number of customers by adding product attributes and features. The marketers fully dependent on core marketing sector to earn profit. Here comes the Flanking Marketing. Flanking is the most innovative way to fight the competitor’s strategy.

Flank Marketing is the indirect marketing strategy to capture the competitors market segments which are not established by the well served marketing players. Flanking threatens the competitors either to allocate the resources to the segments that are attacked or to step down. Generally, the flank marketing strategy can be seen between large firms which have multiple number of product and services with product and service lines. However, a larger established firm takes less risk by inviting a confrontation in its own core market. The small and medium scale enterprises can take the risk and act quickly and secretly and makes profit. As a strategy flanking operation is a bold move.

Some features of flank marketing are as follows:

v  This marketing strategy doesn’t confront the two teams openly.

v  The surprise part of this marketing strategy the winning player gain access in the market before its competitors realize that.

v  Follow through once the leading position established.

v  This strategy works for differentiated product not for the new product.

There are two possible ways of flank attack:-

Glocal Flank Marketing Strategy: This occurs when a company or a firm attack different areas of accompany locally, regionally and globally where the competitor’s resources are not very strong. Mercedes Benz, Pepsi, Coca-Cola uses this type of marketing strategy to gain access in the market.

Segmented Flanking Strategy: The marketer’s attacks the competitor’s targeted and niches customers and win over their resources.

The concept of flanker brand in late 80s also known as fighter brand is used to offer a new product to the market in order to capture larger portion of the market. The benefits of flanker brand are multiple. A flanker brand allows the brand owner to capitalize on the reputation of its main brand and on all the messages about quality and source which are espoused in the existing brand. This allows for potential capturing of new clients, including those who are unhappy with competitors’ products in the same space, or those who are looking for a more economic choice.

 

Example of Flank Attack:

 The Japanese company Canon uses flank marketing strategy and took over the half of the market share from Xerox in 1978. The Canon Company target the niche segment of smaller size copier market which cannot be affordable to large size copier market of Xerox. This flank strategy showed up the poor defensive strategy by Xerox and better aggressive strategy by Canon as it successfully implement the flank strategy.

The success of flanking strategy depends on marketer’s ability on creation and differentiation. This has to be carefully handles by the marketer or competitor as its competitor takes the defensive strategy and try to blunt the flank attack. To launch a true flank attack the marketer must go segment by segment of the competitor’s product and services offerings and should clear the objectives among its clients and to manage their expectations.  As there is no established or skill players in the market for the product and services flanking skill require good foresight. The traditional marketer may found difficult to launch a new category of products in a new market as their there are many competitors but with the flank strategy launching of the products can be fruitful.

Another example of flank attack is the flank attack used by Mercedes Benz on Cadillac by selling more expensive cars. But Mercedes continues its high end position by selling cheaper version of its luxurious cars like A-Class and C-Class vehicles. The introduction of high-price Seville helped Cadillac recover somewhat.

Great flanking moves are often undermined by the competitors and test marketing researchers which exposes the strategy in front of its competitors. Test marketing is a proposed flanking technique if successfully implemented it alerts the market leader to take necessary steps to ensure failure when the test marketing is expanding its base locally or nationally.

Many companies after achieving the initial target move their resources to other sectors. This is wrong especially in a flanking move. Ancient military maxim: Reinforce success, abandon failure. Success breeds success. It is very important to use the marketing weight to get the new product in a hurry before the marketing leader can cover. The marketing history is filled with flank attack stories which were initially successful but quit due to lack of resources.

Low Price Flanking: It is the the strategic move to save money by cutting prices. Day Inns beat Holiday Inns by flanking technique to become the most profitable lodging chain in US market.

High Price Flanking: There are many products where high price is beneficial for the marketers. Example:- the price of Barbie doll is the benefit. The opportunity showed up by Barbie in price segment using flanking strategy in the modification stage of product life cycle is excellent.

There are 2 reasons why high price is better than low price. One is the product features and quality with the price. Second is the opportunity by making high profit margins by high price.

Flanking with size: Steve Jobs of Apple have great marketing vision. With small and integrated circuits he introduced miniature products like iPod which at once was taken by the customers. The best example of flanking strategy is Volkswagen’s Beetle with General Motor’s big cars. Volkswagen outplayed General Motors by introducing Beetle by flanking technique.

Distribution Flanking: New distribution channel strategy can be supported by flanking strategy. Watches used to sold in departmental stores until Timex watches came and capture the market using flanking strategy by using the drugstores.

Flanking is very difficult strategy. It is note for research oriented marketers but hard-core market leaders who have the ability of strong marketing vision and foresight. A flanker always get support from industrial leaders who are struggling for success with flanking moves. Creativity is the flanker’s currency of success. Smart flanker can able to steal the competitive share with his or her smart ability. The marketer should always remember the basic principle of flanking: “Rather than competitor head on look for competitor’s weak point.”

Sources:

Marketing Warfare by Al Ries and Jack Trout

marketingschools.org

scribd.com

http://www.yuswohady.com/2013/07/13/smart-flanker/

The power of Flanking by Al Ries

businessdictionary.com

Financial Funding

"Start Up India Plan" by our Prime Minister Narendra Modi was initially taken by the investors and entrepreneurs in an aggressive mode but as the process continues the Follow On Venture Funding seems to slowdown the global economy. Actually the entrepreneurs perceived the perception of panic as the corrections made in the Venture capital policy combined with the valuation by international financial institutions made the situation more worse.

Global financial institutions expects the powerful financial growth in the next coming years surpassing China Na US due to the powerful young demographics in India with the support of internet technology and mobile technology. Many Financial businesses take wants to take this advantage and leverage their technological power in front of their competitors by attracting more entrepreneurs and investors with promising convenience and delivery. 

  

Funding for these financial businesses is very easy. The global financial institutions comes forward with a good amount of capital to grow their businesses. After the initial capital global hedge funds and corporate investment showed up by providing greater sum of capital to fuel excess spending on market shares and customer acquisition with expensive media, excessive hiring and cash back discounts. The perception of getting easy way of capital increases higher valuation ignoring the profits of the company. 

The global financial institution found that these businesses grow at a very slow pace and as a result there is a fear of global slowdown in the economy due to cash backed discount and advertising war. However, the CEOs and upper management authorities of these financial businesses have a marketing foresight by making the financial strategies work for their organization by conserving the capital or how they can spend the equity value for the overall development. The proper financial correction in the policies and proper financial long term course strategy improve their profitability of the company and can be successful in Follow On Funding in this competitive market and help them to grow.

Approaches to Mass Marketing

Understanding Targeting Approaches: Differentiated, Undifferentiated, Niche & Micromarketing 

There are many approaches to segment the market but few firms are there who do not go for segmentation but prefers aggregate marketing. These firms have their unique way to reach their target customers. The few approaches to mass marketing are as follows:

Ø  Spending more in inappropriate place

Companies have seen the mass marketing strategy isn’t working well as used to be while reaching the target customers. These audiences spend less time on different media so marketers find less clutter among this audiences and target this customers by vigorous market research where interruption advertising will be less and effective. Ex: Kellogg’s spent billions on money to position their product and increase their brand presence on the internet----- a fascinating way to sell cereal.

Ø  Undifferentiated marketing

It refers to an approach where marketers produces only one product or product line with a single marketing mix. The idea of this marketing approach is to more exposure of the product or product line to the target customers. Ex: Colgate or pepsodent  where marketers target to a certain group of customers to sell these products in large quantities.

Ø  To make advertising and entertaining more controversial

There are many advertising agencies who make odd and controversial advertising among the mind of the customers that differentiate the advertising from its competitors and people go for that advertising. Many marketers hires different ad agencies to promote their product or services very hard in spite of advertisement clutter. They find it very hard to get a place in the top of the advertisement space. Now if we consider entertainment in advertising the marketers again finds it very difficult to place their product as the gap between two commercials have very less time, customers have a very few seconds to think about the commercial. The marketers have to extensive research on interruption marketing and take it as a challenge from their competitors. They have to spend vigorously on advertising to gain tha attention of te customers, even if they can gain some percentage from it there would be a certain exception.

Ø  Differentiated Marketing

This approach is applicable on wide array of products and product line with multiple marketing and promotional mix. In tis segment the targeted customers are divided into small groups and the products are customized for each group. According to law of division by jack trout in his book “22 Immutable Laws of Marketing” he said the marketers have to differentiate to attain the required benchmark.

Ø  To keep the advertising more interesting and fresh

Marketers or marketing companies create their own brand equity by using unique ways of marketing strategies which worth billions of dollars. Action shoes ran one of the most effective ad on foot safety as their brand image in an interesting and unique way that catches the audience at once.  Dell computers change their ad tagline occasionally to remain attentive in the minds of their customers. Star Buck coffee shop used different marketing strategies with their own unique selling proposition to attract their customers. So the marketer’s task is to always engage their targeted customers by any means and to get their attention towards their product.

Ø  Concentrated Marketing

Also known as focused marketing is a subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing. Each Niche market have its own product features such as product design, price range, production quality and demographics that intend to impact on the niche. Marketers chooses the niche or very small segment which can be profitable for them with lesser resources.

Ø  Marketers abandons advertising and prefers direct mail and promotion

When marketers determine their advertising budget and plan they account for 56 percent of their budget ignoring the advertisement. This percentage was spent specially on discount coupons, in-store promotions and other non-traditional measurement. The marketers enter instant sweeptakes and get the results of increasing trend and marketing efforts. This approach is quite effective than advertisement. This helps the marketers in advertisement clutter and can lead to a dramatic upturn in sales.

Ø  Micromarketing

This approach is the narrowest method of marketing. It is very good for the product or product line who enters into the market, sustain and grow their brand in the market.

Source: Seth Godin, Gk Today

  

Larry Page is Google’s Steve Jobs

You all know the story of Steve Jobs about how he fired from his own company, returned as its savior after years in exile according to the author Nicholas Carlson. He says “Larry Page is the Steve Job’s of Google”.

Carlson draws the parallels. In July 2001, Page fired all the company’s project managers citing non-engineers supervising the engineers was a bad idea. The project managers were stunned. Shortly after this incident Eric Schmidt stepped in as Google’s CEO and Larry Page became the president of the products.

Carlson describes how Page spends his years in ‘wildernesses’ play second fiddle to Schmidt as the company is slowly maturing to its brand identity. He spends all his energy focusing on development of Android OS. Again in 2011, he returned as a CEO.

Now Larry wants to develop software that are able to organize user experience to solve the world’s problems. As a child, Page’s hero was Nikola Tesla and he read his biography number of times. In 2014, Page is living an alternate ending to the Nikola Tesla biography that made him cry when he was only 12 years old.

Reference: Times of India

Speed Up Your Site and Rise

Good evening Guys! Today we will discuss about the process of speeding up of the websites in Google SERP. So let’s start.

As we all know how internet has changed our world and we are more dependent on this digital world. People always try to look for new options when they search something on the search engines. Google take this opportunity to present this information for the people in a more precise and refined way. To prevent the Black hat SEO and link spamming Google went through various algorithm updates which affect the SEO process of many companies.  Think Google SERP as a race track where the website are the cars who are competing in the race and SEO experts are the drivers and Google is the Organizer.  So if you want to race in this track and increase the visibility of your site you have to follow the ethical rules of the game laid down by Google. Therefore some tips should be followed that may help you to win this race:

Ø  The visitors love to visit the trusted site that has fresh content with interesting facts and information because content plays a crucial role by increasing the traffic of your site.

Ø  Designing a good site map which keeps all the records of your entire articles, blogs and complete site details and if followed will definitely increase the rank of your site.

Ø  Inbound links, domain authority along with the page rank are the important aspect that affects the total indexed pages of a site and increase the speed of indexing.

Ø  Try to add more links from high traffic sites which reduce the index time and instantly shows the result in the SERP.

Ø  Write original articles, blogs especially go for in-depth articles and post them on relevant sites which increase your site’s visibility.

Ø  Focus on knowledge graph on Google which speed the indexing of your site within a few hours.

Ø  You have to create xml and HTML sites and post on Google webmaster consortium and also include them in robot.txt.

Ø Newly launched ‘Fetch’ tool in Google webmaster helps to crawl the site and thus speed up the indexing.

Ø  Social sharing sites helps to gain you the social signals for the site and Google looks for engagement for your site by accessing the traffic visitors which is excellent for speeding up the process of indexing.

Ø  Google focuses on link popularity of your site. If it finds good link popularity for your site automatically your site will be visible and rise in SERP.

Ø  The link structure of your site plays a crucial role in indexing your site on SERP. If have to be extra careful about the non-indexed pages of your site and concentrate on the structures of the link so that it may come to the SERP as soon as possible.

Ø  It is better to add a link directly from your website homepage which helps in faster ranking of your site. [Three Click Rule ---- will be discussed later]

Ø  If you change the crawl rate in Google webmaster tools you can see the fast indexing of your website.

Ø  Online ping sites like Ping-O-Matic or FeedShark are there and you can use these sites to update your blogs and articles for faster indexing.

In the conclusion, I can say if you follow the above rules you can able to achieve your desired result within a few days

Brand Cannibalization

Brand cannibalization is an advanced science in brand marketing warfare. It is the science  of creatingsub-brands within the main brand so that it targets a whole range of consumers in order to reatinand grow its consumer base.For eg. Marriot group runs hotels like Courtyard by Marriot which is a lesser budget concsious hoteltargetted at the business class in the same city where Marriot is also present. Marriot is the parent brandand is a 5 star chain whereas Courtyard by Marriot is a sub brand for business and budget consciouscustomers. Another common example is the brand extensions by GM Motors like GMC, Buick,Pontiac, Saturn, Outlook and Traverse within its 4x4 domain. What it basically does is offer a customermultiple choice within the GM brand, it also allows the dealer the chance to book additional profitmargins by converting a customer who is say wanting to buy an entry level 4x4 into a mid level 4x4.Becasue of the plethora of choices the customer is satisfied at the same outlet and doesnt have to look elsewhere. Hence it is a win-win situation on all sides.To sum up brand cannibalization is the art of brand extensions to benefit the brand owner, seller andthe end user. Brand cannibalization can be resorted to activate an existing parent brand by offferingindividual stronger sub-brands. Like Coke did in india with the launch of Minute Maid, Sprite etc.Brand Cannibalization is not exactly brand extension. However in both cases you are extending the lineof a given brand, in case of brand cannibalization you are actually eating away the market share of yourown existing brand. Brand Cannibalization can be deliberate or oblivious. In case of deliberatecannibalization, company actually try to phase out some old brand or try to grab the additional marketshare of competitors' along with its own. When cannibalization is not a well thought of strategy behindthe brand extension, company tries to eliminate it by repositioning new brand (mostly).

In today's world “premiumization,” “trading up,” are receiving the same attention as "commoditization"and "trading down".A strategy which might click in one part of the world might have to be executed incomplete opposite way in the other part.Economic downturns are now causing consumers to trade down, and many midtier and premium brandsare losing share to low-priced rivals. Their managers face a classic strategic dilemma: Should they tacklethe threat head-on by reducing prices, knowing that will destroy profits in the short term and brandequity in the long term? Or should they hold the line, hope for better times to return, and in the meantimelose customers who might never come back? Given how unpalatable both those alternatives can be, many companies are now considering a third option: launching a fighter brand. A fighter brand is designed to combat, and ideally eliminate, low-price competitors while protecting anorganization’s premium-price offerings.In its best applications, a fighter brand strategy can have evenmore impressive results.A fighter brand not only eliminates competitors but also opens up a new, lower-end market for the organization to pursue.But launching a fighter brand is like walking on a double edged sword. Great application might leap frog you way beyond competition and have your success stories illustrated in b-school cases however there arealso chances of misfire and lead to significant collateral losses for the companies that initiated them.

 Account For Cannibalization

Most fighter brands are created explicitly to win back customers that have switched to a low-priced rival.Unfortunately, once deployed, many have an annoying tendency to also acquire customers from acompany’s own premium offering, which is called cannibalization.You must ensure that it appeals to theprice-conscious segment you want to attract while guaranteeing that it falls short(in terms of  value/quality) for current consumers of your premium brand. That means you must match your fighter brand’s low price with equally low perceived quality.To prevent cannibalization, a company mustdeliberately lessen the value, appeal, and accessibility of its fighter brand to its premium brand’s targetsegments. It may even need to actively disable existing product features and withhold standard marketingsupport from the fighter brand.Managers need to weigh the effects of cannibalization before rolling out fighter brands. Because these brands are explicitly oriented toward the rivals that have stolen share from a company, the initial break-even calculations used to justify their launch often are oversimplistically derived from an estimate of thelost sales that can be recouped, which not usually the case.An accurate break-even analysis must accountfor cannibalization as well. How can you predict whether excessive cannibalization will occur? Test-marketing is the best way to ensure that a fighter brand can compete with low-price offerings withoutrobbing significant sales from its higher-price, more profitable sister brand.

The Gospel:

To calculate the effect of cannibalization, the Break Even Cannibalization rate for a change in a product is:New Product Unit Contribution / Old Product Unit Contribution.New Product is the planned addition to a product line (or change to a product within a product line), OldProduct is the product that loses sales to the new product (or the product line that loses sales). Thecannibalization rate refers to the percentage of new product that would have gone to the old product, thismust be lower than the break even cannibalization rate in order for the change to be profitable. Whenmaking changes to a specific product, cannibalization of other products may occur. To calculate the effectof cannibalization, the Break Even Cannibalization rate for a change in a product is

Bootstrapping

Bootstrapping

The term “Bootstrapping” given by Efron(1979) hearkens back the idea of someone ‘pulling themselves by their bootstraps’. The term refers back to 19^th century high-top boots that are pulled on by tugging at ankle straps----------generally means doing something without outside help.

Bootstrapping is a buzzword specially used with the concept of Entrepreneurship in its purest form. It is the transformation of human capital into financial capital. The entrepreneurship academic research still not fully recognizes the effect of bootstrapping on entrepreneurial behavior and organizational success through formal research. There are four kinds of Bootstrapping options—

Ø  Bootstrapping Product Development

Ø  Bootstrapping Business Development

Ø  Bootstrapping to minimize the need for (outside) capital financing.

Ø  Bootstrapping to minimize the need for capital.

It is the penultimate stage when other there is no alternatives left.

Bootstrapping allows us to keep control of our equity, while venture capital is designed for investors to gradually take control of more and more of our company’s equity. Bootstrapping is also appropriate for business that doesn’t necessarily have to be going after large market opportunities. For Instance, Frank Levinson, Jerry Rawls Sridhar Vembu (who is taking on Google, Microsoft and Salesforce.com with no venture capital). So, we can say bootstrapped entrepreneurship acts as a true weapon of mass reconstruction. 

As a Internet marketing Medium Bootstrapping plays an important role specially when social media becomes more important. With the continued pressure of a down economy, marketing executives are not only expanding marketing but also to ensure business growth from those budgets. . The marketing channels are usually distinct entities; data related to each channel is also distinct, and often not integrated. While fully integrated marketing channels that track customers across channels from "first touch" to sale may be the Holy Grail of marketing analytics, the reality is that many organizations do not have systems in place that can serve up data this way. Since common customer identifiers are not available across disparate marketing channels, analytics at this level of detail is not realistic.  Spend justification relies on illustrating relationships between marketing spend and revenue. This relationship need not be defined at the customer level, but instead could be defined across some common time interval such as days, weeks, months, quarters or even years.  Naturally, the more granular the time period, business variability related to marketing spends will be better understood. The example below illustrates this relationship for an online retailer that wished to justify increased sales through an expanded marketing program budget.  This retailer used a multi-channel marketing program that includes Facebook, Google Ad Words and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to promote their products.  The chart below shows daily spends on Facebook to ad clicks that lead to website visits.  The strong relationship between these two factors indicates that Facebook spend is leading to website visits (naturally with a pay-per-click campaign). 

There are only two basic methods employed by nascent entrepreneurs:

1) Gaining control of resources

2) Efficiently utilizing resources (e.g., minimizing expenses). Taken together, these two methods form the basis for an overall strategy. A bootstrapping entrepreneur’s very survival may well depend on his or her ability to be highly adaptable and operate on a shoestring budget

A Short-List of Practical Suggestions for Bootstrapping Business Start-Ups

1) Start-up entrepreneurs with little capital should be advised to strongly consider a business model that entails compensation prior to the delivery of a product or service (e.g., consulting, mail order, or niche oriented Internet businesses that do not require a glitzy Web site).

2) An emphasis on pre-launch preparations, perhaps several years in advance may be wise.

3) More education and training are needed for would-be entrepreneurs such that they are more familiar with traditional sources of capital and non-traditional sources. Bootstrapping should be a course unto itself in university level entrepreneurship programs.

4) Stockpile non-perishable business assets over a long period of time. Businesses that have resulted from a hobby often start out with many of the necessary tools, contacts, sources, and skills on the part of the owner to be well equipped from their inception.

5) Conduct enormous amounts of research: library research, bookstore research, Internet research, and especially field research (the non-scholarly translation of field research: network, network, network, with prospective suppliers, customers, advisory board members, and other potential friends of the business).

6) Consider an agency or brokerage-type business: connect a party who needs to sell, with a party who needs to buy.

7) Get quotes. Provide a vendor with a general idea of a needed end result for a manufactured product (or a service) and ask for design specifications, pricing, projected delivery schedules and terms (be sincere as a prospective customer).

8) Negotiate terms carefully. Negotiate terms for purchases from vendors and sales to customers. When possible, arrange the purchase-sales sequence in a way, that customers finance the purchase of inventory through prepayment terms.

9) Choose a location wisely. Consider the “image” needs of the business, but also seek economic development dollars (or stakeholders) and co-location opportunities in neighbors with synergistic potential. Do not choose a location because it is close to home and convenient for the owner. It must be convenient for the customer, for the logistical needs of the business, and in a nurturing environment.

10) Advertise a product that could be produced, if response to the ad justifies its production.

11) Develop business communications and media skills. Be worthy of media attention (i.e., be newsworthy) due to a unique product, company history, team, or even aspiration.

12) Be generous. People are willing to follow a leader who understands their needs, and fulfills those needs.

13) Sell in volume at wholesale, rather than one unit at a time (Mamis, 1992).

Finally we can say that, there’s no course book of bootstrapping techniques, but there to be

The approach has much to teach--and even companies that have progressed beyond their    bootstrap days would do well to relearn some of the proven tactics”

References:

·         The Smart Manager(Mar-Apr—10): Sramana Mitra: Vision 2020

·         Bootstrapping Business start –Ups: A Review Of Current Business Practices

·         How to Bootstrap Marketing By Spence Fry

·         Bootstrapping a Marketing Program with Analytics by Anthony Chamberas

·         http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bootstrapping.asp#ixzz25Zl2isOk