"Guerrilla Marketing"

Guerrilla marketing is advertising with a twist.  No matter what the product or service, marketing and advertising is a necessity for brands around the world.  Successful guerrilla marketing campaigns usually corral attention of thousands, possibly millions through hidden strategy, before revealing their true purpose and the best campaigns render no negative sentiment.  In a world where brands have a cut throat battle with advertising clutter, it is essential that marketing efforts are creative, pioneering, and sometimes shocking to potential consumers to differentiate themselves from the masses of products and buisnesses in the marketplace.  Guerrilla marketing can use a combination of marketing mediums including public relations, advertising, design and marketing into an offensive creation and sometimes shocking promotion strategy to reach the end consumers.  Attention getting street graphics, strange occurrences, memorable events, buzz, and product placement great mediums for this type of marketing.

In 2005, Burger King implemented a guerrilla marketing campaign in Asia.  In a attempt to increase their beef sales and lure customers from McDonald's, their #1 competitors.  They placed BK t-shirts on Ronald McDonald statues, put large footprints from McDonald's to BK, and placing "Gone to BK - Ronald" signs on empty benches.  Risky, but their campaign was extremely successful.

Source: creativeguerrillamarketing.com

                                                                         "Public Relations"

Public Relations, as stated in our text , there is an old saying in the entrepreneurship field, "While you have to pay for advertising, you can pray for PR!  Brands and public relations firms may be diverting more of their budgets to content marketing these days, but there's still plenty of clout in PR's bread and butter, earned media.  When it comes to PR resources online, it seems that you could pretty much choose form millions of PR blogs offering tips, tricks, and advice on how to do public relations effectively.  With so many out there, it can be difficult to separate the quantity and form the quality.  Some companies actually plan and execute well controlled PR programs that are part of their integrated promotional plans.  PR is designed to create and display a positive image of a company, its products/services, and people.  Publicity is one of the most used PR tools.  Publicity is the practice of creating and disseminating information about a company, its products/services, people, or company activities to secure favorable news coverage in the media reaching identified target audiences.  Publicity is not the only form of public relation.  There are many others, such as sponsorship and collateral materials like annual reports, brochures, newsletters, corporate Web sites, or videos.  Through sponsorship you can reach your target audience and build goodwill toward your company and its products/services.  PR can make or break your venture, helping you build your brand and bring promise to your venture. 

                                                         Marketing Plan vs Business Plan
                                                                       "Marketing Plan"
The Marketing Plan as stated in our text book, is the road map to a successful business venture.  The anatomy of the marketing plan is the essential output of the venture planning process.  The purpose is to produce a concrete plan of action that will achieve the ventures' objectives.  Putting your ideas on paper and having a vision for your venture is key to being to being successful.  Also, knowing the difference between the Ventures' Business Plan and the Marketing Plan.  The marketing plan has several sections and analysis points.  The Competition Analysis section, is the most intriguing, fun, and challenging.  This analysis involves research of your competitors, understanding their strengths, weaknesses, and strategies.  Also outlining the competitive advantages of each competitor, the customers they target, the market share they hold, and their financial power.  Understanding the key competitive plays of your competitor and how your strategy will be different from the competition and how you will beat the competition.  Which in turn will help you to reach your desired target market.  Understanding what makes your customers happy and why they would buy from you or demand your services.

Market Penetration

                                              "Marketing Penetration and Competitive Advantage"

                                                              "Marketing Penetration"

Marketing penetration is a business growth strategy, in which a company executes initiatives to expand the customer base for its products and services within a certain market.  Market penetration can be both a measurement and a projection of how successful newcomer businesses have been, or will be against the established competition.  Usually performed by start ups and early businesses, market penetration requires careful assessment.  A solid market penetration plan begins with identifying the products or services that the research will focus on.  Market penetration is supposed to be a low risk business growth strategy typically centered around increasing the number of business locations in the interest of capturing greater shares of an existing customer base.  Done well, market penetration yields valuable gains in market share.  It is known that any low risk endeavor, marketing penetration has limits.

Source: smartling.com/market-penetration

Direct Channel

                                 "Entrepreneurial Channel Development and Supply Chain Managment"

                                                                     "Direct Channel"

Direct channeling of distribution is described as a situation in which the producer sells a product directly to a consumer without the help of intermediaries.  Basically, "cutting out the middle man", known as retailers.  A direct channel of distribution is the shortest and simplest form of distribution channel.  This has become very popular since the advent of the world wide web.  Using a Web based channel can have several advantages and benefits.  Web based selling has low overhead and gives your product and or service a potentially global reach.  Because no intermediaries share the profits, most direct distribution channels tend to have higher rates of profit than indirect channels. Having Web based selling, allows your business to be open 24/7 for your customers to shop.  Direct channeling also has its disadvantages is that a direct distribution channel cannot  compete with the geographical reach and business volume of a distribution channel that includes major wholesale and retailers.  Another downside to direct distribution of tangible products by phone, mail, or Internet is that customers are often asked to shoulder the burden of the shipping cost.

Source:  smallbusiness,chron.com

                                                 "Pricing in an Entrepreneurial Venture"

Understanding the value of your product(s) and or service(s) will certainly help you set your price line for your venture.  There are a number of the of things to be considered.  One of the best ways is to put yourself into the shoes of your ideal customers.  Determine, what the market will bear, usually this is done by looking at your competitors pricing.  Yes, you want to be aware of your competitor's prices, but do not let that consume you nor the sole determination for your venture price setting.  As our text book stats, lower prices may give consumers a impression that your product(s) and or service(s) are of poor quality.  You can start to scale and to be able to reach more people, your prices can go down to reflect this reality.  This might seem kind of clique, but actually makes total sense when you think about it from a business perspective instead of "this is what we're supposed to do".  It is possible to choose a price that feels good and that fits the market.

Another option, is to offer your product(s) and or service(s) at a lower price point and receive enough positive feedback that you can then raise your prices over time.  This is a great way to go no matter what business you are in. This way you build confidence and prove to yourself and your future customers that you have what it take to provide a quality product or service. Pricing is something you grow into.  You can not start out charging a price you do not feel comfortable charging.  Also, you do not what to low grade yourself.

                                                                             "Branding"

                                                                         "Branding Equity"

Branding Equity has many definitions, the most simple one is that brand equity is the value added by the brand to the product.  As stated in our text.  Prophet.com says that brand equity has four dimensions - brand loyalty, brand awareness, brand associations, and perceived quality, each providing value to a firm in numerous ways.  Once a brand identifies the value of brand equity, they can follow the brand equity road map to manage that potential value.

The introduction of brand loyalty to the model was and still is controversial as other conceptualizations position brand loyalty as a result of brand equity, which consist of awareness and associations.  To buy a brand or place a value on it, the loyalty of the customer base is often the asset most prized, so it makes sense to include it.  Brand equity also provides value to customers.  It enhances the customer's ability to interpret and process information, improves confidence in the purchase decision.  This model provides one perspective of brand equity as one of the major components of modern marketing alongside the marketing concept, segmentation, and several others.  

Source: prophet.com