Marketing is not all about selling. The main aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself. Ideally, marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy. All that should be needed then is to accomplish the product or service available.

(b) What is marketed?

v Goods

v Services

v Events

v Experiences

v Persons

v Places

v Properties

v Organizations

v Information

v Ideas

(c) Understanding the consumers

The only value your company will ever create is the value that comes from customers-the ones you have now and the ones you will have in the future. Businesses succeed by getting, keeping, and growing customers. Customers are the only reason you build factories, hire employees, schedule meetings, lay fiber-optic lines, or engage in any business activity. Without customers, you don’t have a business. When Sony designed its Play Station 3 game system, when Apple launched its iPod Nano digital music player, and when Toyota introduced its Prius hybrid automobile, these manufacturers were swamped with orders because they had designed the “right” product, based on doing careful marketing homework.

To choose the marketing trend for a product the consumers must be categorized, like they can be differentiated as per the literacy level or as per urban and rural people, etc. For example: When launching a marketing campaign, if all the advertising is done though a non-visual/non-audio media like the newspaper, the marketer must know whether his target consumer is in a position to read the advertisement i.e. is the target consumer literate.

(d) Trends of Marketing

A trend is a direction or sequence of events that has some momentum and durability. Trends are more predictable and durable. The trends can be classified as per the modern developments and in line with the new emerging and evolving world and corporate sector. The main trends which may be highlighted involve:

I. Macroeconomic trends

1. Public-sector activities will balloon, making productivity gains essential. The unprecedented aging of populations across the developed world will call for new levels of efficiency and creativity from the public sector. Due to the recession people are more faithful towards public sector and want to invest their funds in the same. Even private-sector approaches will likely become pervasive in the provisions of social services just the mobile companies Airtel and Tata Indicom are booming.

2. The consumer landscape will change and expand significantly.Almost a billion current consumers will enter the global market-place in the next decade as economic growth in emerging markets pushes them beyond the threshold level of $5,000 in annual household income-a point when people generally begin to spend on discretionary goods. Shifts within consumer segments in developed economies will also be profound. Example, newly opened Baskin Robbins in Bkn.

II. Social and environmental trends

1. Technological connectivity will transform the plan people live and interact. More transformational than technology itself is the shift in behaviors that enables. Communities and relationships are being formed in new ways. More than two billion people now use cell phones and nine trillion e-mails are sent a year. A billion Google searches occur every day, more than half in languages other than English.

2. The role and behavior of big business will come under increasingly involving scrutiny. The tenets of current global business ideology-for example, shareholder value, free trade, intellectual-property rights, and profit repatriation-are not understood, let alone accepted, in many parts of the world. Business leaders need to argue and display more forcefully the incandescent, social, and economic case for business in society and the massive contributions business makes to social welfare.

3. Demand for natural resources will grow, as will the strain on the environment. Natural resources are being obsolete at unprecedented rates. Oil demand is projected to grow by 50% in the next two decades, and without large new discoveries or radical innovations, supply is unlikely to keep up. Water shortages will be the key constraint to growth in many countries.

III. Business and industry trends

1. Management will go from art to science. Long gone is the day of the “gut instinct” management Style. Today’s business leaders are adopting algorithmic decision-making techniques and using highly sophisticated software to run their organizations. Scientific management is becoming the ante that gives companies the right to play the game.

2. Ubiquitous access to information is changing the economics of knowledge. Open-source approaches to knowledge development are arising as communities, not individuals, become responsible for innovations. Knowledge production itself is growing: worldwide patent applications, for example, rose from 1990 to 2004 at a rate of 20% annually.

(a) Old Trends

After classifying the trends on various bases, we can have a look on the actual trends and tools that are followed by the companies for launching or developing the product.

The old trends which are also in motion today consists of -

v Newspapers

v Magazines

v Trade journals

v Advise Mail

v Audio/Visual

v Radio

v Television and Cinema

v Outdoor hoardings etc.

(b)New emerging trends

1. Web/Internet

The marketing through internet has increased in the recent times. It is the next big thing for the marketing. All the companies as well as the government, Film stars and politicians have been using this source. I believe that with the increasing expend of internet this will gain popularity and will emerge as an important source of marketing. Social Media is an important component of the internet and it’s growing like crazy. The number of internet users is rising quickly as access costs decline, local-language boom increases, and infrastructure improves.

v Websites and Microsites – Companies are designing web sites to embody or express their purpose, history, products, and vision. Today most of the companies whether on broad scale or small scale, public owned or private ownership, NGO or a social unit have their own website to promote the product, services and ideas. For example, http://jivdaya.net/, http://www.bhookh.com/, http://www.zapak.com/, www.ebay.com, www.freshmicrosites.com, www.amazon.com etc.

v Alliances – When one internet company works with another, they end up advertising each other through alliances and affiliate programs. AOL has created many successful alliances. Amazon has almost one million affiliates that post its banners on their web sites.

v E-mail – E-mail uses only a fraction of the cost of a “d-mail”, or direct mail, campaign. Microsoft spent approximately $70 million a year on paper-driven campaigns. It switched to sending out 20 million pieces of e-mail every month at a famous savings. Consumers are besieged by e-mails though, and many exhaust spam filters.

v Mobile Marketing – India has been relatively late to pick up on the trend of mobile phone marketing. Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo Inc. began posting ads on mobile websites in 2000 and displayed 1.5 billion ads in 2006. Today, mobile phones offer in-built features like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Opera Mini, etc. Internet specific companies tie up with mobile companies to promote their product.

v Social Networking and online communities – External public social networking services, such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Friendster, can be valuable sales, marketing, and support tools. These services comprise extensive networks of users who are self-organized into groups and communities. Users also join groups and communities that are organized around attributes such as products, lifestyles, entertainment, institutions, politics, and geographic locations. When GlaxoSmithKline prepared to launch its first weight-loss drug, Alli, it sponsored a weight-loss community. The firm felt the feedback it gained was more valuable than what it could have received from former focus groups.

With the help of this kind of social networking sites an organization can help in following aspects:

• HR recruiting

• Product marketing

• Services outreach

• Promotional applications

• Market intelligence

• Professional networking

2. Word of Mouth

Social networks, such as MySpace and Facebook, have become an important Force in both business-to-consumer and business-to-business marketing. A key aspect of social networks is word of mouth and the number and nature of conversations and communications between different parties.

Companies are becoming acutely aware of the power of word of mouth. The build up to “Jassi” by Sony was massive. It succeeded only on the initial word of mouth hype. They planted people on Mumbai locals to talk about jassi, where bystanders would inadvertently listen to these “put up” people and Wonder who was jassi, where was jassi. The buzz passed from one group to another during 2 months prior to Jassi actually hitting the small conceal.

In some cases, positive word of mouth happens organically with little advertising, but in many cases, it is managed and facilitated. Here we deem how word of mouth is formed and travels.

v Viral Marketing

The word ‘viral’, dangerously close to ‘virus’ sounds like something you’d rather avoid. Nevertheless, a virus is something that grows exponentially in the right environment and that is the point of ‘viral marketing’. It takes your message and powerfully and quickly spreads it across the Internet, unbiased like the age-old concept of “word-of-mouth“, but in an electronic context.

Products and brands as diverse as Hush Puppies shoes, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and the blockbuster movie Ghajini were built through strong viral marketing, as were companies such as Body Shop, Palm, Red Bull, Starbucks, and Amazon.com.

v Blogs

Blogs, regularly updated online journals or diaries, have become an important outlet for word of mouth. They vary widely, some personal for close friends and families, others designed to approach and influence a vast audience. Blog networks such as Gawker Media offer marketers a portfolio of choices. According to blog search leader Technorati, every day over 175,000 new blogs are created and existing blogs are updated with over 1.6 million posts.

3. E-Business Trends

E-business describes the use of electronic means and platforms to conduct a company’s business.

E-commerce means that the company or residence offers to transact or facilitate the selling of products and services online. E-commerce has given rise in turn to e-purchasing and e-marketing.

E-purchasing means companies decide to purchase goods, services, and information from various online suppliers. Smart e-purchasing has already saved companies millions of dollars.

E-marketing describes company efforts to inform buyers, communicate, promote, and sell its products and services over the internet.

E-Newsletters are not only an excellent way to earn new customers and boost sales, but also to maintain and grow the relationship with your existing customer base. A newsletter, well written, develops a sort of bond with your customers. This primary bond leads to increased sales when they are informed of a product they either missed at your website, or just didn’t have the time to go see — and they recall it.

4. Wrap Advertising

The advertising on the vehicles is called wrap advertising. Wrap advertising is a new view in recent trends of marketing, though wrap advertising is not that current in India but in short time it is going to be approved. Vehicles with large, flat surfaces, such as buses and light-rail carriages, are fairly easy to work with, though smaller cars with curved surfaces can also be wrapped in this manner. For example, the Banglore Rajdhani exclaim is wrapped at some places by Max New York Life Insurance; many trains also carry advertisements like of Kurkure, Airtel, etc.

5. Online Reputation Management (ORM)

ORM is the process of measuring, monitoring and responding to mentions made by individuals about brand, on the Internet. In simple terms, it involves a three step process:

• Listening to the online conversation around your brand.

• Understanding what is being said about it and why they are saying it.

• Interacting with your consumers to mitigate any harm to your impress.

There is a website named www.quirk.biz which offers this kind of service.

6. Authenticity

This trend focuses on “authenticity” and letting the real people behind your company be visible and show through — no more hiding behind a faceless website filled with the word “We.” Instead, it’s “I.” Consumers and B2B buyers expect to know who they are dealing with before hiring your company.

In the event of a plight with your products, consumers want a real person to reach out to. Business people are connecting one-to-one through social media sites and this activity will continue.

7. Wisdom of Crowds

Customers want more to say in how you improve your product or service. Internet tools like User Voice, Get Satisfaction and Idea Scale are gaining more popularity and soon will be common platforms for gathering customer feedback and ideas on product improvements. Using these feedback tools companies will be able to build customer community and loyalty.

8. Personal Branding

Personal Branding is becoming more important than a killer resume or bio. Your personal brand is your public identity. Its what you are known for within and outside your network. It has never been more important to differentiate yourself and focus on what sets you apart from the crowd.

Good personal brands give people an immediate sense of shiny you and the experience your business offers. What do these names conjure up for you? Osama Bin Laden, Swami Ram Dev, Mahatma Ghandhi? Each of these individuals have focused on a defining idea or element of who they are that is immediately recognizable. For example “Win the world by killing people” would not be Swami Ram Dev and “Glean the world by peace” would not be Osama Bin Laden.

(E) Emerging market for companies: Rural market

The rural markets are estimated to be growing vastly compared to the urban markets. The potentiality of rural markets is said to be like a ‘woken up sleeping giant’.

v Online Rural Market (Internet)

Rural people can use the two-way communication through internet. Agricultural information can accumulate through the Internet if each village has small information office.

v Cost Assist Analysis

Cost benefit can be achieved through development of information technology at the doorsteps of villagers; most of the rural farmers need price information of agri-produce and inputs. If the information is available farmers can take quick decision where to sell their produce and at what prices.

v Developmental Marketing

Developmental marketing refer to taking up marketing programs keeping the development objective in mind and using various managerial and other inputs of marketing to achieve these objectives.

v E-Media

It isplaying a necessary role in communication in the new times. With the increase in the viewer ship and reach of the channels to the villages with the help of DTH, the budget of the companies for the media have increased. Now we can see a product been advertised in a show, the channels are giving Special shows to promote the products, also the recall value is more.

(F) New age marketing

Recent developments are constantly being made in the field of marketing. Now-a-days, because of marketing that is present everywhere, people have become immune to marketing. They are not motivated by advertisements any more. Therefore companies are adopting various trends and tools for making their products popular. They are using public to promote and advertise their product. Internet marketing is now overtaking radio marketing in terms of market share.

Marketing is the area that is used by every sector like financial services, retail, politicians, celebrities, information technology, human resource, charity organizations and the list go on. Online banking and online auctions are booming.

Internet marketing has had a growing impact even on the electoral process. President Barack Obama raised over US$1 million in a single day during his extensive democratic candidacy campaign, largely due to online donors. Internet was also used by democratic party of India and Google made a blog giving all details of the election campaigning and related election issues. The path of this blog is www.google.co.in/intl/en/landing/loksabha2009/.

Many companies in line with profit objective are adopting societal marketing. They are taking steps to promote the rural areas. Like Hindustan Unilever is serving remote villages, by using auto rickshaws, bullock-carts and even boats in the backwaters of Kerala. HDFC tied up with non-governmental organizations and offered reasonably-priced policies in the nature of group insurance Covers.

Sometimes companies adopt fake trends and go for awful advertising. The false trends like Interstitials, use of fake blogs and the problems with online privacy is growing. Steps should be taken by companies to overcome these kind of trends. Companies should be intelligent and clever while choosing the advertising or promoting trend for the product. Competition is vast and anything can happen or discovered at any moment, so the marketers need to be shining, innovative and creative and should know the need of the hour.

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