Personal Selling And Direct Marketing example essay topic

Charlotte Langston Marketing Channels The marketing channel (s) that will be used to distribute that product and the reason why these channels were selected Our marketing channels which will be used to distribute the household cleaning products are direct and indirect to consumers and direct and indirect to businesses. Direct selling is a dynamic, vibrant, rapidly expanding channel of distribution for the marketing of cleaning products. Direct marketing presents the product and service directly to consumers in a face to face manner, generally in their homes or homes of others, at their workplace and other places away from permanent retail location. Direct sales typically occur through explanation or person demonstration by an independent direct salesperson. The direct salesperson demonstrates product to a group of guests, invited by a host in whose home or other location the demonstration takes place. Objectives of each channel selected The objective to direct marketing is to create connections with targeted consumers to obtain an immediate response and build everlasting and cultivate everlasting customer relationships.

This systems helps to separate suspects from prospects, converting one-time buyers to multiple-time buyers, and which are advocates are our multiple-time buyers; creating everlasting relationships that gave us our advocates a prime role in our indirect marketing. Our best customers are advocates. Advocates sell our product by touting about them to their friends, family, neighbors and business colleagues. With direct marketing an easy to use, private and convenient way to shop is made available to the consumers. It allows for an immediate and interactive communication with consumers and sellers. It also provides sellers the ability to target small groups and or individual consumers and tailor offers to meet their needs.

Provide sellers with a low-cost and efficient alternative approach to reaching their consumers. Direct marketing is a low-cost and effective approach of selling and reaching consumers and prospects via telemarketing, direct mail and company Websites; reaching an end result a marketing world that is advantageous to both the seller and the consumer. Selecting channel members: Channel management calls for selecting, managing, and motivating individual channel members and evaluating their performance over time. With our promise of exclusive distribution, we should have no problem selecting our channel members as our desirable products will draw many applicants. Plans for managing and motivating the channel members Managing: Not only must we sell through these intermediaries, but to them and with them as well. These relationships are considered as first-time partners and customers.

Direct marketing will give us the opportunity to introduce our product to potential buyers. By attaining a functional list (from a communication service) of buyers who use similar products, we can initiate a promotion in the form of coupons and discounts. We could use product advertisement, and send free samples and trials to the customers. We could provide a toll free phone number with a live person to assist with questions or problems.

We shall practice a strong partner relationship management (PRM) to forge long-term partnerships with all of our channel members. This will create a marketing system that will meet the needs of us and our partners. Motivating: We must be able to convince our distributors that they can succeed better by working together as part of a "cohesive value delivery system". We will plan merchandising goals and strategies, inventory levels, and advertising and promotion plans jointly to keep all intermediaries up to date on each situation at hand. Nowadays, many companies are installing integrated high tech partner relationship management (PRM) systems to coordinate their channel marketing as a whole. We can now use this software to help recruit, train, organize, manage, motivate, and evaluate relationships will all of our channel partners.

We can use personal selling to gain space in the retail stores. The best way to sell our product is on a one on one with the retailer. Through interaction we could assure the retailer that we are capable of servicing their needs. Personal selling is extremely effective. It is open to greater freedom to satisfy customer informational needs.

Especially when selling our product in a highly competitive environment. In perspective, we have the opportunity to sell our cleaning product to a retailer which sells a host of other products similar to ours. It gives us the opportunity to differentiate our product from our competition. It allows us to interact with potential buyers and we will gain feedback from the retailer.

By personal selling our cleaning product we can convey important information about our product to the retailer and by doing so, build our brand and develop relationships. To promote our cleaning product, we could use displays and counter space to attract the customer. We could offer the customers "buy one and get one free" promotions or coupons to give them more of a product for a lesser cost. We could give the potential buyer / retailer the opportunity to display our cleaning product on a trial basis. We can offer discount incentives to the retailer.

We could base our principal selling technique on the retailers customer needs and desires (depending on the channel). Personal selling will allow us to interact with the retailer to increase their knowledge about our product. Personal selling can help us to determine the strength and the weaknesses our product. And most importantly, we could offer our cleaning product at a competitive price. Our ads, coupons, discount and competitive prices will attract the customer to our cleaning product. Both personal selling and direct marketing has its down side.

Personal selling requires the training of sales representative which can be costly. And in direct marketing forecasting to find the right potential buyer list is costly. However, if we are a corporation our efforts will be effective and lucrative. We might want to try micro marketing to get our brand and cleaning product to the public.

Plans for evaluating channel members We must evaluate each business based on how many years they have been in business, product lines they carry, growth and profit record, cooperativeness, and reputation. If we go through sales agents, we will want to evaluate the number and characteristics of other lines carried and the size and the quality of the sales force. If we choose retail stores, we should evaluate the store's customers, location, and future growth potential. Reference (s): Back to Basics in Direct Marketing by Lee Marc Stein (web), retrieved April 6, 2005 Armstrong, G., & Kotler, P. (2005). Marketing: an introduction. 7th ed.

Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. The Direct Marketing Association (web) retrieved April 6, 2005.