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  Considering trends in gift giving It’s important to consider rituals within a family structure. Consider, for example, gift giving. Gift giving occurs through family traditions, rituals, and celebrations. When you’re familiar with the gift-giving seasons, you can gear up and market your products heavily during that time to increase sales. Take, for example, Christmas. Many people purchase gifts around this time. If your product isn’t out there or you aren’t mar- keting during that time, you could lose out on a great deal of market share. Gift giving and the celebration of holidays within families are increasing in importance. You can tell this by the number of holiday employees that stores hire to accommodate consumers as well as the increased rate of travel during the holidays. In fact, traditional holiday spending and promotions have shifted to other holidays throughout the year, and more retailers are marketing on other holidays throughout the year rather tha...
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 Choosing the Best Media Outlets for You In today’s world of marketing, you have many media outlets to choose from. I always suggest choosing two forms of marketing: one traditional method and one interactive (or online) method. (You can read all about the many methods in the earlier section “Perusing Your Options for Marketing Message Placement.”) Mix it up and find what works for you in reaching your target market. If you drafted your message and know where to find your target market, you’ll see success. Benefit from trial and error, and then stick with what works for you. Before you try an outlet, you need to determine which of your options meet your objectives. To know which outlets meet your objectives, you obviously have to know what your objectives are. For example, do you want to create awareness, gain new customers, or promote an event? You first need to determine your objective and then make a decision as to whether the market- ing option you’re considering can...
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  Reviews by a third party Reviews can be very useful in proving your claims, because third parties are the ones evaluating and reviewing your product or service. If your product or service stands up to the review process with raving results, you can show consumers that you have an outside party recommending it. A positive prod- uct review can increase sales and build consumer trust. Reviews are often published on the Internet or TV or in newspapers or magazines.  Here’s the downside of reviews: If the product doesn’t stand up to your claims, you’ll have to activate immediate damage control in order to minimize negative publicity. Negative product reviews can diminish sales and create mistrust. Reviews work well for products or services that provide immediate results that are visible to the consumer eye, because that’s what reviewers are look- ing for.
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 Getting Consumers’ Attention with Compelling Stimuli Consumers can be motivated by marketing stimuli, such as product, price, place, or promotion. However, sometimes your stimuli may need to go a little deeper to gain a response, such as psychological, personal, social, or cultural stimuli.  Just because a consumer is exposed to any old stimulus doesn’t guarantee that she’ll pay attention — after all, a consumer can’t pay attention to all the stimuli she’s exposed to! For this reason, positioning (see Chapter 16) is key when it comes to consumer perception. You have to use the stimuli that con- sumers in your target market will notice and respond to. The stimuli that will work depend on what your consumers need and what they want. (Chapter 5 talks all about perception and stimuli you can use.) To determine which stimuli to use and how to get your desired response, you really have to dig into the makeup of your targeted consumer and her indi- vidual behavior. The cons...
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  Addressing the need your product fulfills After you’ve differentiated yourself, you must use the information you gained in the differentiation process to address the concerns and needs of the con- sumer. Determine what problems your product or service addresses: Are you saving consumers money, time, or energy, for example? They don’t care if you have the best packaging or if they can find you in every discount store. They want to know what you can do for them personally.  This step is truly all about the consumer. It’s about first positioning your prod- uct by addressing a problem and then being the solution to that problem. You can focus on one of the following factors as a positioning strategy in this step:  ✓ Product attributes: Attributes often include price, quality, features, style, and design of your product. The attributes are specific to consumers and are often the basis for making a purchase decision. Many times a product can be positioned in terms of ...
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  The factors you can differentiate with Differentiate yourself by identifying what your product does that others can’t or don’t. You’re looking for the most persuasive, meaningful, and unique dif- ference that your competitors can’t claim. You can differentiate yourself by using these four factors:  ✓ Price: You want to evaluate what your price is compared to your com- petitors. Is it higher or lower? One risk you take when differentiating due to price is that price isn’t difficult to change. Plus, while some con- sumers will purchase based on price, most spend more time evaluating other differentiating factors such as benefits or service.  ✓ Focus: You can differentiate yourself by using your focus. For example, are you specialized in a particular area? Are you viewed as one of the experts in an industry? Consumers often purchase from companies that they feel are experts or specialized in an industry rather than companies that are more generalized.  ✓ Produ...
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  The process You need to do the following in order to make the development of your differ- entiating strategy go smoothly:  ✓ Define the criteria your consumers use to evaluate products that they buy. This will help you in knowing what criteria are important to your consumers and how you can use those criteria to differentiate your product or service.  ✓ Identify your product’s key benefits in customer terms. Consumers make purchases based on benefits, so it’s important that they can iden- tify what your benefits are and that they have the information necessary to differentiate you from your competitors. Do you offer a better price, better customer service, or a better product? If so, you want to be clear about that with your consumers.  ✓ Identify your competitor’s position. You can’t differentiate from your competitors if you don’t have a clear understanding of their position in the marketplace. Evaluate where they stand on quality of product, price, and...
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