Word of Mouth Marketing Advantages & Disadvantages with Example

Word of Mouth Marketing

You would have heard this concept very frequently. Word of mouth is all informal customer to customer interaction that is not controlled by the marketer.

Now the definition of word of mouth is right here. You can see and read the definition of word of mouth and advantages and disadvantages with examples to understand the importance of word of mouth.

Advantages of Word of Mouth Marketing

Word of mouth is generally compared with advertising and other sources of the market are controlled ways of reaching out to customers.

Word of mouth is essentially all informal communication that you get to hear from your friends, from your family members, from other people who don't have necessarily a reason to talk to you about a product in a good way or in a bad way.

Word of mouth is all the product reviews that you see on social media.

It is all the product reviews that you see on e-commerce platforms on amazon.com, on Flipkart, on Paytm, on any of these e-commerce platforms.

You will see that there are product reviews available. Now, most of these product reviews out there, of course, I'm not saying all product reviews, but most of these product reviews are uninfluenced organic inputs given by customers who have either used the product or seen somebody else using the product.

Now it is much more relevant and much more credible than advertising that is out there because when generally a customer sees an advertisement, the customer has a feeling that this advertisement is out there to influence me to go and purchase the product that is being advertised.

A word of mouth, on the other hand, doesn't necessarily have such a motive. Word of mouth is generated by customers who have used a certain product and have found that product to be useful and have told me that this product is extremely great and extremely useful, so I had attached greater credibility to word of mouth.

I attach more importance to word of mouth as compared to the other forms of communication or information available to me.

I generally have a tendency to go to e-commerce platforms and look into word of mouth before making a purchase decision.

So all of this information that is out there in the digital space, specifically information that is known as word of mouth, is extremely critical in how the customer goes about, making the purchase decision.

And this is one essential thing that has changed the way in which consumers make purchase decisions.

Earlier too, there was a lot of word of mouth out there. Customers attached greater importance to word of mouth, but with the emergence of digital technology, word of mouth has now taken center-street.

Example of Word of Mouth Marketing

For example, earlier say 20-30 years ago, if you wanted to buy a car, you would have spoken to a few friends. You would have spoken to one person who's either an expert in automobiles, who works in an automobile company or is a mechanic nearby, to understand which the best car out there is.

You would have heard from these people. All the information that you heard from these people would have come to you immediately, you would have forgotten it in some time. Your family members, your friends, other people would have heard from you. They wouldn't have necessarily got this information directly.

So, the reach of word of mouth was very limited. Word of mouth was very spontaneous. There was no way by which you could remember all of these exact details about the vehicle and talk to somebody else, but with the emergence of the digital space, word of mouth has unlimited reach right now.

You write something on Facebook, probably 3000 of your friends hear about. You tweet about this, a few million people hear about it.

You put it up on amazon.com or Flipkart or any of these e-commerce platforms, every single customer who comes to that platform is now viewing the certain content that you have provided.

So the reach of word of mouth has become exponentially high. Word of mouth is extremely, extremely fast propagating.

You would have seen a lot of viral campaigns recently. You would have seen a lot of campaigns which basically have been started by consumers and which basically are spread like wildfire.

You talk bad about a product. You remember there was a product, a noodle product in India recently, a few years back, which basically pulled off the shelves because of the controversy.

Such negative word of mouth spread much faster. So although word of mouth has always been there, it is with the emergence of the digital space, that word of mouth has now taken center-stage.

Digital Word of Mouth Marketing

Apart from this word of mouth, the entire marketing context has also changed drastically with the emergence of the digital space.

Let’s see how digital space has completely altered and completely changed the way marketing operates.

Say, for example, the reach has exponentially increased with the emergence of the digital marketplace. Earlier you had a limitation with respect to how many customers you could reach. You had a limitation with respect to how many customers could come to your retail store. You had a limitation on how many customers view television or read a magazine or read a newspaper.

Today, you basically have let go of all of these limitations. You can basically reach out to any customer anywhere in the world who has access to the internet and access to a platform or a device that can access the internet. So the reach has become exponentially great.

The second thing is you are today able to reach customers throughout the day, any time of the day. Earlier, customers had to wait for office timings, had to wait for the time that the shop was open and only on these times you were able to get to the customer or the customer was able to reach out to you.

Today you basically have a 24x7 operation. The customer can come to an e-commerce platform at any point of the day, any time of the week and purchase the products that they are looking for. You don't need to necessarily have the kind of people, staffing the e-commerce platform because most of these things are automated today.

Earlier, it was very difficult for us to gather information. If you had to have some information about what customers thought, what customers behave or what things customers were thinking, it was very difficult for you because you always had to have those long surveys that you had to take to the customer and gather a lot of information from the customer as part of your marketing the search activity.

But today all of this has become much easier because everything that the customer does on a digital space is now trackable. You have access to a lot of data. The customer browses from website A to website B you are able to see what the customer has been doing. The customer comes to your e-commerce platform and looks for a certain product. You know that this is the customer who was looking for this particular product. You know that the customer is also going to these other websites.

You know that the customer has a social media account where the customer is connected to 10 other people, a few of whom could be influencers whom you can use to reach out to this customer and motivate this customer to buy.

You also have options wherein new business models have come out. The entire e-commerce industry has come out wherein you are able to sell a lot of products which traditionally you were not able to sell, because a traditional retail space has limited shelf space. You couldn't sell a lot of products there.

Today, with e-commerce, you are able to sell many more products through these channels. So the entire way in which we do marketing, the whole of the creation, communication, delivery and exchange of value has completely transformed with the new technology, and with the emergence of the internet.

Conclusion

Now, that we have understood the definition of word of mouth, advantages, and disadvantages of word of mouth marketing and how word of mouth marketing context has changed drastically with the emergence of the digital space.

Read also the complete marketing concept and step by step guide of marketing on our blog for a complete understanding of digital marketing.

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What Are The Different Factors That Influence The Consumer?

There are different things that essentially are influencing the consumer and basically influencing the decision that the consumer makes. And as marketers, the role that we have to follow is to ensure that all of these different influences are somewhere interpreted and somewhere influenced in such a way that the consumer is now interested in purchasing or procuring our products and services, rather than those of the competition. So, in this article, we are going to understand what are the different factors that influence the consumer?

In the previous articles, we had discussed the definition of marketing, the concept of value, segmentation, targeting and positioning and the marketing mix elements. If you have already read that move the next.

At the center of the entire marketing activity that you do is the customer or the consumer and it is important for us to understand how and what are the different elements that make the consumer so unique. So we'll start off from understanding what are the different factors that influence the consumer?

What are the different factors that influence the consumer?

There are 5 factors that essentially are influencing the consumer and basically influencing the decision that the consumer makes.

1. Environmental Factors

The first and most important elements that influence the consumer are environmental conditions. Say, for example, there is a certain political environment in the country, there's a certain technological environment in this society, all of which influence a consumer in certain ways. 

There are different social classes. Say, for example, you have a middle class, an upper class, and a lower class. Each of these customers who identify themselves with one of these social classes will have a certain way of consuming. If you carry a product that is meant for the upper class, it associates yourself with that class of people or with that creed of people or with the people who are generally able to procure and use such products.

2. Societal Factors

The second important factor is the societal factors. In societal factors, one of the most important things to understand is the role of reference groups. 

Now, there are a lot of groups that basically are reference groups, when consumers make purchase decisions. 

Say, for example, many of you are students. You would have a group of friends who influence all the purchase decisions that you make, your mobile phone choices, your social media consumption choices, your t-shirt, and apparel choices, all of which are influenced by a set of friends that you have.

Because now you want to associate yourself as being part of this group, you will consume things that are also consumed by these people. So that is what we generally call as a reference group. And the reference group is very important because the reference group often is the direction in which you consume.

3. Cultural Factors

Culture is one of the major influences on how consumers behave. When I say culture, these are a set of societal norms that are generally acceptable for a vast number of people out there.

Say for example, if you take the Indian culture, there are different food habits, there are different dressing styles, there are different consumption patterns that you see, there are different festivals that you observe and there are different consumption patterns in different festivals.

All of these are influenced by culture, a culture that most of the people in the country share. There are also some subcultures that have a little deviation from the general culture that you see always.

4. Aspirational Groups

There are also aspirational groups. Many times you know that your immediate friend group or your immediate family doesn't necessarily have a certain consumption pattern, but you might find that the Indian cricket team is endorsing a certain product, a product that you want to consume because you aspire in with the kind of people who are consuming these products.

You look into Bollywood actors and actresses and they endorse a certain set of products and because you aspire to be part of that group, you will consume these products. So aspirational groups, as opposed to reference groups, are also important influences in consumer decision making.

There are also people out there who are experts in certain areas. Say for example, in your friend group, there might be a person who has the expertise and who has a greater understanding of digital cameras as compared to all the other friends that you have.

So, this person becomes somebody who we call in marketing literature as an opinion leader. Every time you have a certain doubt, or every time you have a certain requirement of consumption of a certain product category, you will reach out to this person. You'll ask this person as to what are the products out there and what are the parameters based on which you should make your consumption decision.

So, opinion leaders, reference groups, and aspirational groups all of them influence consumer decisions and consumer buying patterns in the market place.

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5. Personal Factors

There are, of course, a lot of other personal factors like the age of the consumer, the income of the consumer, the place that the consumer lives in, the life-cycle stage of the consumer. All of these patterns and all of these features also influence a consumer's decision making in the marketplace.

Conclusion

Now, that we have understood what are the key factors that influence the consumer, which is the societal factors, the cultural factors, your family, your friends, etc. and a lot of personal factors that are essentially influencing the consumer behavior.

Apart from these 5 key factors, there are lots of decision-making processes that consumers generally use to make a purchase decision. These processes are need recognition, search for information, evaluation of alternatives, product purchase and post-purchase behavior. All of these elements will be discussed in the next article. So stay tuned.

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What Is Market Segmentation? Targeting, Positioning & Marketing Mix Explained

Hello everyone, welcome to the next very interesting concept of segmentation, targeting, positioning and marketing mix. Earlier we have discussed the definition of marketing. We also discussed value creation, communication, delivery, exchange, need, want and demand. Read ‘what is marketing’ first if you haven’t read that yet.

Now, once we have understood the market, needs, wants and demands, we need to understand one other thing that is very relevant to how marketing operates and that is you have very limited resources.

Any company, for example, has a limited amount of money to advertise, has limited people in the sales force and has limited partners to reach out to the market. So it becomes very essential for marketers to identify the right set of customers for whom they should create value, communicate value, exchange and deliver value. So to do this, we use the concept of segmentation, targeting and positioning.

What Is Market Segmentation?

You would have heard this term very frequently. What is segmentation? Now if you take, for example, any market out there, the market consists of a large number of people. We generally called markets to be heterogeneous in nature.

When you have a large number of people, say, for example, people who are using mobile phones, there are a large number of people out there. There are consumers who are interested in buying mobile phones, which are cheaper. There are consumers who are interested in buying mobile phones which can be used for playing very sophisticated games, there are consumers who might be interested in having mobile phones that have great cameras, there are other customers who are interested in buying mobile phones that have longer battery life.

So if you take for example, any product or any service or any offer, the consumers or the market, in general, is very large. It is heterogeneous.

To satisfy the needs of all customers out there, it becomes very difficult for organizations. Think about the case of building a mobile phone that is the best for all customers. It might be a very difficult activity. One, you might not be able to achieve excellence in all different things that you do and even if you are able to achieve excellence in all different things, your product might be extremely expensive, because of which the customer cannot buy it. So it becomes extremely important for you to divide this heterogeneous market down into smaller, homogeneous groups for whom you can create products, for whom you can have campaigns that can target them, for whom you can basically reach out to the customer by having a retail channel or having a delivery channel.

So the act of dividing the entire market down into smaller, homogeneous groups is what is essentially called segmentation.

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Geographic Segmentation

Segmentation can be done by different means. One of the most commonly used methods of doing segmentation is at a geographic level.

Geographic segmentation is where you basically break down the market into different regions on a geographical map.

Say for example, if we're talking about India, food habits in the northern part of India and the southern part of India are diverse. People like certain foods in the northern part of India, people like certain other foods in the southern part of India. So you can have different offerings for different parts of the country depending on the kind of food habits that they have. Such kind of segmentation is called geographic segmentation.

Demographic Segmentation

Another way of which segmentation happens is based on demographics. Demographics can include anything from age, income, gender, lifecycle stage, all of these different things.

Say, for example, if you take offerings out there, for example, mobile phones. There might be mobile phones that are offered to customers who are in a certain age group. For younger people, you will have mobile phones that are more worthy of playing games, which might be more entertaining, which might have greater battery life. For a little older people, you might have phones which are loaded with features that can be used in a professional space.

For people who are elderly, people who have difficulty to see and use a touch-screen, you might have mobile phones with large buttons which can be easily used by these people. So this is a segmentation that has happened based on age.

Similarly, you might have offerings that are for the really wealthy and really rich class of people. You might have other offerings for people in the middle class. There are people who don't earn as much. You will have offerings even for them. So segmentation can even happen with respect to the income group of people.

There are different people who are indifferent lifecycle stages, for example, somebody who has just married versus somebody who is thinking about getting married. There are different types of consumption that these two people might think. For people who have just recently had a child versus people who are still in college, there might be different ways in which these two sets of people are consuming products. So based on age, gender, income, lifecycle stage, and other parameters that you can see on the screen, there might be a demographic segmentation that might happen. So geographic segmentation and demographic segmentation are very obvious, very easy to understand.

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Psychographic Segmentation

The third basis by which segmentation can happen is based on how people think, how people believe that the world should be, how people's attitudes are about different things and different objects. So this is known as psychographic segmentation.

Say, for example, if you are somebody who is an adventure-lover, say for example, if you're somebody who believes in the idea of using green things versus somebody who is only interested in saving a lot of money; these are basic elements of the personality of these people.

So segmentation of the market can also be done based on the ways in which people behave, the ways in which people have the attitude, depending on the different things that they see in the world. 

So this is basically psychographic segmentation, which is the third way in which segmentation can happen.

Behavioral Segmentation

And the last way in with segmentation can happen is based on behaviors that people show in the marketplace.

Say, for example, if you are a frequent flyer, you get greater benefits from the airline because your behavior is in such a way that you consume air tickets and consume air travel much more than other people. So you might get extra miles for your travel. You might get freebies for your travel. You might not have to wait in long queues. You might get privileged checking counters, etc. based on the behavior that you show and depict in the marketplace.

There might be other consumers who might be heavy users, say for example, if you consume the internet as part of your mobile package, and if you are a heavy internet user, the service provider will give you a package that is suited for you because you are a heavy user.

So based on your behavior, based on the kind of consumption that you do, you can be also segregated into different sets of people. So that is the last basis by which segmentation can happen.

So geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral are the four ways in which you can do segmentation.

But by doing segmentation in either each of these ways, you basically are trying to break down a very complex and heterogeneous marketplace into smaller homogenous groups.

And by breaking them down into smaller homogenous groups, you are now able to reach out to one or a few of these groups and make products and services and offerings that will be most appropriate for one or a few of these groups, rather than having a product that doesn't necessarily be good enough for any of these set of people. So that is why we do segmentation.

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What Is Target Marketing?

The next activity that we do is to identify one or a few of these groups, wherein you can go and try to offer your products and try to make revenue from these groups.

Targeting is where you identify which of these segments is going to be the key or the central segment where you're going to offer your products.

So you have to basically look for five different things when you're trying to do targeting. The first of these things is that the segment should be measurable. The second is where it should be substantial. The third is where it should be accessible. The fourth is where it should be differentiable. And the last is where it should be actionable.

Now I'll talk about each of these different things.

The Segments Should Be Measurable

Now think about the case where the entire heterogeneous market was divided into smaller homogeneous groups, which we call segments. The segments should be measurable.

When I say the segment should be measurable, you should be able to measure key factors that are relevant to you in each of these segments.

Say, for example, the number of customers who are there in each of these segments, the total number of competitors that are there in these segments, all of these different elements should be measurable.

The Segment Should Be Substantial

The second element is that the segment should be substantial. When you are thinking about entering a certain segment and trying to offer your products to one certain segment, you should be able to get revenues or get money from that segment, which is going to be enough for sustaining the costs of your business. It should also be able to provide you profits. It should also be able to give you growth potential in the future. So the segment should be substantial in itself.

The Segment Should Be Accessible

The segment should be accessible. The segment should not be something that is very difficult to reach out to. It should not be very difficult for you to get into that segment. You should be able to access the segment and that is where we say that targeting should be done in a way that you are looking into segments that are accessible.

The Segment Should Be Differentiable

The fourth element and the most important of all of these elements according to me is that the segment that you choose should be differentiable. There is going to be a set of competitors that you will have to compete against in the marketplace for the offerings which you are providing to the customer.

Say, for example, if you go back to the example of a mobile phone, there is going to be a set of competitors out there. Now, the segment that you choose should be in such a way that you are able to differentiate your product as opposed to your competitors.

The Segment Should Be Actionable

And the last one is where your segment should be actionable. When I say actionable, there are these elements of a marketing mix that we generally use in order to create a marketing strategy.

You should be able to create a difference from everybody else by using the marketing mix elements that you are employing. So the product, the price, the place, and the promotion should be giving you a different result as compared to another segment.

So that is where we call about the fact that targeting should be in such a way that it is actionable.

Each of these elements together will define the target group that you are going to decide. So we started off with segmentation. We took the whole market, broke it down into different smaller groups. We looked into each of these groups as to what are the key factors that are relevant to us. What kind of potential growth do we have? Do we have enough scope to differentiate ourselves? Do we have an ability to access these segments and are these segments actionable?

All of these elements are looked into, to identify one or a few of these groups that we call as target groups. This is what essentially targeting is. Now, once you have done segmentation, you have gotten down to a set of groups which are most appropriate to you, the next element is called positioning.

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What Is Positioning?

Positioning is where you're trying to create a position for yourself and the position that you create is not in the marketplace but in the customer's mind because it is important for us to understand that a customer is a person who thinks, who understands reality, who has a worldview of how his needs are, his requirements are, what are the different products out there? What are the key attributes of each of these products? How is product A different from product B? How is the mobile phone A different from mobile B? And for the marketer, it is important that we create an image in the customer's mind. That is what we try to do by doing positioning. And to do positioning, we have a set of vehicles that we can use.

Say, for example, you can use advertising, sales promotion, retail presence, etc. Your product itself can be used for positioning, but the key here is to understand that you are trying to differentiate yourself from the other players in the market. Now, differentiation can be done based on the product that you offer. It can be done based on the image that you offer. It can be done based on the people who work for you. It can be done based on where your product is available. It can also be done with respect to the price that you offer.

Now to do differentiation, you have to identify what are the specific points of differentiation which are going to make your product different from the other products that are out there.

Say for example, if you're a mobile phone company that is pioneering mobile phones, which have an exceptionally great battery life. We live in an age where most mobile phones have a life of say, at max one day or two days. Now, think about yourself as a company that has come out with a mobile phone that has a battery life of a week. This becomes a point of differentiation as compared to other people in the marketplace.

Now, when you position yourself as somebody who's the leader with respect to battery life, you are able to create a different image. Every customer who now thinks about your product knows that you're known for exceptional battery life.

You can think about creating an image for the durability of the product. You can think about creating an image for the service that you're offering. You can think about any of these elements and identify a point of differentiation. Once you have identified a point of differentiation, you have to create the marketing mix elements, which is the product, the price, the place, and the promotion, which coincide with these points of differentiation that you have created.

Now, let me also tell you that we are not always trying to be very different from the competition. There are some elements that also have to be very closely associated with the competition. These are generally known as the points of parity, wherein you're creating a lot of features in your products or offerings which are closely associated with other competitors in that certain category.

We know how a mobile phone looks. If you're going to drastically change the styling of the phone, say, for example, today you have a phone which basically is a flat phone, which has a touch-screen display, which is not very thick, which is basically a rectangle shape. Now think about the case where I'm giving you a phone that is a very bulky cylinder.

Now, the customer doesn't associate it with the regular phones that he sees in the market. So your product has to be different from your competitor to differentiate it, but at the same time, there are a lot of features and a lot of characteristics that customers associate with a certain category of products. So you have to also be close to these category products or these points of parity.

Now, once you have identified which segment we enter into, once you have done your targeting properly, once you have created a position in the customer's mind, then you can actually get to the market with the marketing mix elements, which are the 4 Ps which we'll discuss next.

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What Is Marketing Mix? And The 4Ps of Marketing Mix?

Okay, so the 4Ps of marketing like you would have all heard about or the marketing mix is what we'll discuss next. So these four Ps are essentially what we try to, strategize and what we try to change in the marketplace. These include the product, the price, the place, and the promotion.

What Is The Product?

The product is basically the offering that you give to the customer. It can be something that is pure good. It can be something that is a pure service. It can be something that is a combination of the two.

Say for example, in the case of a mobile phone, the product is the mobile phone. It is also associated with a set of services that go alongside. Say, for example, the after-sales service that you get, the warranty that you get, etc. So that is what the product is all about.

What Is The Price?

Now the product is associated with a certain cost that you have to incur. That is what the price is. A mobile phone can be 20,000 rupees worth. The mobile phone can be worth 50,000 rupees.

These two elements are extremely important because many times the customer starts comparing these two elements. The customer starts comparing the product, the features of the product with the price that the customer has to pay. So the product and the price are very critical in the success of any product.

What Is The Place?

The third of these elements is the place or the third P is what place is. Now, place is where the customer can actually come and purchase the product. Remember, we discussed the electronic store near to your house or the department store where you can buy a mobile phone from? That is essentially what the place is. So which is the place in the market where you can go and buy this product? So that is where we talk about place.

What Is The Promotion?

And the last of P is promotion. Promotion is where you're trying to make sure that the customer is aware of your product, the customer is motivated and the customer has a good reason to come and buy your product. So it could be advertising, it could be a sales promotion, etc.

So, all of these four elements is what we have in our hands to play around with and make sure that we can generate as much revenue from the market as possible.

Now, the reason why we dealt into detail of what marketing is, what value concept is, what segmentation, targeting, positioning is, and what the 4Ps are, is because we want to introduce all of these concepts to be similar to what we see in the digital space. Say, for example, marketing in the digital space and in the traditional space is more or less the same.

Conclusion

In the digital space, segmentation becomes very easy. Say, for example, you would have seen a lot of search engine advertising. You would have seen that every time you go to the search engine and type for some specific set of information, you'll see a lot of product advertisements or a lot of links that are sponsored, that popup.

When you go to social media, when you go to Facebook, you would have seen that a lot of advertisements about products that you are looking for at an e-commerce platform and then purchased, are popped up to you. These are all ways in which the value is communicated to you.

Now the way by which the marketer reaches out to you is based on either your geography, either the demographics that you have; your age, gender, income, etc. or the kinds of browsing behavior that you display.

So even in the digital space, there is a very strong presence of segmentation. There's a very strong presence of targeting that is a very critical method by which the products are positioned in your mind.

Say, for example, you might see certain advertisements where products are displayed in certain fashions. You might see that the product is doing certain social campaigns so that they create an image of being socially aware. All of these elements are done in a way to position the product and create an image of the product in your mind.

You would have also seen that in the digital space you have the 4Ps operationalized very effectively.

The product; it could be a traditional product, it could be a product that is completely digital. It could be a product like a mobile phone, it could be something that is similar to a YouTube channel that gives you a lot of really rich content. So the product holds in the digital space. Price; you have traditional channels where you are paying a certain price, you have subscription-based models or a premium model or other business models that are operational in the digital space.

The place that you get the product from in the traditional space was predominantly retail or direct selling where you went to the store and bought products for you. You went to the hospital to get a service or you went to a bank to get certain financial services or you had direct selling where people came to your house and sold the product to you.

With the emergence of the digital space today, you have a new business model that operates. Say, for example, you have e-commerce sites where you can buy the product. The product comes to your house. It is shipped to your house. You have other services and other offerings that are also delivered to you from the digital space.

You have the last P, which is a promotion, which has significantly changed, which will be a major impact or a major area that we'll discuss.

Say for example, how has promotion changed? Traditional advertising is not as relevant as it was earlier. You have digital and social media that are picking up, so all the different elements of the definition of marketing, the concept of value, segmentation, targeting, positioning, and the marketing mix elements, all of them are still relevant in the digital space.

So a basic understanding of what segmentation is, what targeting is, what positioning is, and what the marketing mix elements are, is what this article is offering to you.

What Is Marketing? Definition & Example

Introduction to marketing

Hello everyone, Welcome to the topic of marketing on 7techniques.com. Now and in the future, we'll be discussing different techniques, elements, some amount of theory in some examples from the real world about marketing especially digital marketing.

What is marketing? After reading this whole article you will be able to understand the concept of marketing, value creation, communication, delivery, exchange, need, want and demand.

But before I start off with this whole topic, I would like to start off with a small definition of what marketing is, because it is important for us to understand what marketing is before we delve into details of how it is done in the digital space.

So I like to start off my article with this one central question. What is marketing? And it's very interesting. I get a large number of different answers to this one question. Most people think marketing is about advertising.

Like most of you, you would feel that it is about creating a lot of attentive, a lot of interesting advertisements so that you can entice customers to see and be interested in your products. Some other people feel that advertising is all about having a really motivated sales force. It is about making sure that there are people who are going to now sell your product and try to convince other customers to buy your product.

There are other people who feel that advertising and sales are of course there, but marketing is more importantly about understanding the needs of customers and then providing solutions to these needs, which can satisfy these customers.

Now marketing is all of these, but marketing is a little bit beyond what all of these things are. So marketing has a formal definition like any other discipline.

Definition of marketing

Marketing is the activities, set of institutions and processes that are involved in the creation, communication, delivery and exchange of offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and the society at large.

Let’s try to break this definition down

Now, I understand that it might be a little confusing definition at first. I'll try to break this definition down. Central to this entire definition of what marketing is is the concept of value. Now, this again is a question that is a follow-through to the question which I started off with, as to what marketing is?

Value, what do you understand value is? Value is central to all marketing decisions and all marketplace decisions.

Now, the definition of, or the conceptual understanding of what value is. Value is basically the net sum of all benefits and costs that a customer has to incur in order to have that offering.

Now, what do I mean by benefits and costs? There are different benefits that the customer gets by the consumption of a product.

Say, for example, you might be having a mobile phone with you right now. The mobile phone gives you a set of benefits. The first and most important benefit that you get from a mobile phone is the fact that you can communicate with your friends, your family members, and other people in your workspace and your colleges, and in other places that you go to. So communication is one benefit that you get.

Mobile phones today have other benefits as well. Say, for example, you have benefits such as watching, being able to watch a movie when you're sitting on the train, being able to play a game when you are not finding sleep, being able to find any sorts of entertainment at any point of time. This is again a benefit that the product gives you.

There are other services that come alongside a mobile phone. Say, for example, if your mobile phone fails to work one day, you have a service station where you can go to and give the mobile phone. It can be repaired very easily. So there are services that are provided to you as benefits and on top of all of that, there is a certain image that you get as somebody who's able to access and use a certain mobile phone.

Say, for example, if you are one of those people who are carrying a new generation, extremely flashy, extremely costly and premium mobile phone, your friends will look up to you and say that you are somebody who can afford such a phone. So it gives you a certain esteem benefit.

So there are different benefits that you can avail from the consumption of a product. There are of course product benefits, there are service benefits, and there are image benefits. So if you add up all of these benefits, you get the net sum of all the benefits that you get from the product.

Now in order to have all of these benefits, you also need to incur certain costs. What are the costs that you have to incur?

Of course, the first and most obvious cost that you have to incur is the cost that you have to pay in order to buy that device or the mobile phone as the example we were talking about. So this is basically the monetary cost that is involved.

Now apart from the monetary costs, there are other costs that you need to incur as well.

Say, for example, you don't have a shop or a place nearby your house where you get the mobile phone, so you have to travel, say a hundred kilometers to get access to such a device. Then there is travel cost that is involved. You don't know which mobile phone is the most appropriate for you. You might have to search for all the mobile phones that are out there. You might have to find out the different features and the different specifications of each of these devices before you go about and buy this phone. So there is a cost that you have to incur with respect to the time that you spend searching for information on that phone.

There are also other costs that are involved. Say, for example, you are letting go of certain other benefits that you could have had by spending money on this phone. So all of these costs can also be added up like we added up all the benefits and if you take the difference between all the benefits that you get and all the costs you had to incur in order to get these benefits, you get what is essentially called as value.

So benefits minus cost is what value is, and value is very central to all consumption decisions that we make and that is necessarily why we have this very famous quote, a very famous term that we use “value for money”. This is where we think about what is the offering, what is the product out there in the market that gives us the maximum value for the amount of money that we're giving. So value, like I defined to you, is central to what marketing is.

Now we take this value and we do four things with this value. The first of these things is the creation of this value. Now you would have understood by definition that to create value you basically have to define the benefits that the customer gets. And you also have to define the costs that the customer has to incur.

What is Value Creation?

So in order to create value, you have to create a product. Say, for example, we are talking still about the example of the mobile phone. You might have to create a mobile phone that customers can buy.

Now, creation of this mobile phone will incur all kinds of technology that goes into the mobile phone, the camera that goes into the mobile phone, the battery specifications that go into the mobile phone, the Android versus IOS versus other operating systems that are going to be used by the phone, the kind of services, the kind of warranty, all of these elements that are part of the offering that you're making.

You have to create all of these things. You will also have to put a price tag to this mobile phone or you will have to put a price tag to the offering that you're giving to the market. Thereby you are creating this value.

Many companies use internal resources to create this value. There might be research and development teams. There might be engineers who work in mobile phone companies who are creating value for customers. There might be expertise that is outsourced at times. So in many ways, marketers are involved in creating this value.

Now, when you're creating value, one important aspect that you have to always remember is that this value should be important for customers, who you are expecting to buy this product, and if this value has to be worthy enough for customers to buy it, then you basically have to ensure that the value that you create is in line with what the customers expect. 

So that is where marketers are involved in understanding what are the needs and demands of customers. So that is about the creation of value.

What is communication?

Now, once you have created value, it is not just important for you to have created value and then just keep this value within the organization. You have to take this value out there to the customer and communicate this value to the customer.

There are different vehicles that we use to communicate all of this value to customers. One important element that we use and something that you all would be very familiar with is advertising. There are a lot of advertisements out there.

Same example, mobile phones, you might have seen that there are a lot of advertisements about mobile phones, some mobile phones advertise the fact that they have a great practical life. Some other mobile phones advertise the fact that they have extremely great camera quality. Some other mobile phones talk about the fact that they are durable and sturdy.

So, any of these value concepts or any of these elements of value that you have defined, you can take to the customer and communicate to the customer. So creation is the first element of what you do with this value. Communication is the next one.

What is delivery?

The third element is the delivery. Once you have created value in the format of a product or a service or an offering, you have to then communicate all of this value so that customers are aware of it. Once the customer becomes aware of the value that you're offering, the customer might be interested to come and acquire all of this value from you. The customer might be expecting to buy this mobile phone from certain places.

You have to ensure that there is a certain mechanism in place that will enable the customer to buy it from you. So you might have seen there are phones which are available on the online space. There are other phones which are available in electronic stores, near your house. There are also a lot of big department stores which carry mobile devices. So the marketer has to ensure that the delivery of all of this value is also planned properly. The place where the customer can come and buy this value from you is also to be defined properly. So that is where delivery of value happens.

What is the exchange?

And the last element is the exchange of value. There are a lot of things that you give to the customer. We defined the creation of value, communication of value and delivery of value, but there are a lot of valuable things that the customer has for you as well.

One of the most important things that you derive from the customer is money. As an exchange for the products and services that you offer to the customer, you have to get back money that is worthwhile for the benefits that you provide. So there is an exchange, involved there.

There are a lot of informational resources that the customer has. For example, do customers really like your product? Do customers actually feel that your mobile phone is worthy enough to suggest everything that it claims to have is really met? So you need to have a lot of feedback generated from customers.

You need to understand how the customer feels about your product as compared to a competitor’s product. So a lot of market research is also involved where you get back a lot of value from customers.

So creation, communication, delivery and exchange of value is what we are going to define first and this essentially is what marketing is all about.

So when we talk about advertising, it comes into a communication of value. When we talk about sales, it comes into the delivery of value. When we talk about understanding the needs of the customers and fulfilling them, it comes into the creation of value.

So every different aspect that you see is somewhere or the other related to this definition of what marketing is and then we not really do this for customers like you and me. There is marketing that happens in organizations that are involved in a business to business domain.

So that is where we call about marketing for clients. There are a lot of places where you have partners who are involved in business activities.

So that is where marketing gets involved in helping or providing value for partners. There are also a lot of organizations that do a lot of societal activities, a lot of NGOs out there, a lot of companies that are really involved in making the world a better place, who also use a lot of marketing techniques.

Okay, so now that we have understood the definition of marketing, we also have understood the concept of value, we will move further with other concepts that are relevant. The first and most important of these things is to understand how you're going to operationalize your marketing strategy for customers, and the most important thing here is to understand what the customer is looking for.

So next, we defined three broad things in order to explain what customers look for. The first of these elements is the concept of need. Then we'll discuss what wants are and thirdly, we'll discuss what is the demand, because all of these three terms are very closely linked with one another, but they have different meanings when it comes to the understanding and operationalization of what marketing is.

What is the need?

So, a need is what the customer has as a basic requirement. Say, for example, the customer can have both physiological and psychological needs. Hunger, for example, is a very basic need. Without food, you cannot survive, so when you feel hungry, we call that to be a very basic need, thirst or any other needs that are basically required for your survival are what we understand as needs.

What is the want?

Now, many times the customer knows that need can be fulfilled by different things. Say, for example, you can fulfill the need for hunger by eating Dosa, by eating a hamburger, by eating pizza, or by eating something even more expensive.

Now, each of these things that the customer knows can satisfy that basic need of hunger is what a want is.

So, when the customer can identify an offering that can satisfy basic needs, it becomes a want. Not all wants can be satisfied or fulfilled by customers. There might be customers who want a burger but can only afford a Dosa.

What is demand?

There might be customers who want to eat at a five-star restaurant but can only eat at a normal roadside vendor. So when the want is also accompanied by an ability to pay for that offering, we call it to be a demand.

So, needs are your basic necessities. Wants are the offerings that are available which you can direct or you can understand as being able to fulfill these needs, and demands are when these wants are also accompanied by an ability that the customer has, to pay for them.

Conclusion

So that is why the definition of marketing essentially talks about the set of activities, institutions, and processes that are involved in the creation, communication, delivery and exchange of offerings which have value for customers, clients, partners, and the society at large. So this essentially is what marketing is.

This article offered you a basic understanding of what marketing is, what value is, communication of value, delivery of value, exchange of value as well as an understanding of need, want and demand.

We will delve into details of each of these concepts and also delve into details of segmentation, targeting, positioning, marketing mix and we'll see how each of these concepts is relevant in the digital space in the next articles to come. So stay tuned.

Tamilyogi – Tamil Movies Download New

Nowadays, people are doing a lot of searching for Tamilyogi on the internet. People want to download HD movie Tamil and other new released movies on their Smartphone and PC. In the topic “Tamilyogi – Tamil Movies Download New” is fully covered by downloading techniques of new Tamil movies, Bollywood movies, Hollywood movies, popular web series and TV serials in HD and also covered the pros and cons of movie downloading websites.

If you want to know how to download new and HD Tamil movies from Tamilyogi then this article is for you. You will find the best way to download HD movie Tamil 100% free here.

What is Tamilyogi?

Tamilyogi is piracy website which is involving in leaking newly released movies like Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, English, etc. This website is operated against DOT compliances and provides the services of new Tamil movies for free download. This website piracy any newly released movie and uploads it on its site, which users can download. And you know that Piracy is an illegal activity so the Indian Government has banned the website. Because of it, when you open a website like this, on your screen the message shows- "YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO ACCESS THIS WEB PAGE AS PER THE DOT COMPLIANCE".

The URL of such illegal website is blocked through ISP (Internet Service Provider) as per the government order. But if a URL of Tamilyogi website is blocked, then its webmaster redirects all its contents to a new URL. That is why Tamil movies download new is a difficult task.

Why Tamilyogi?

Recently Tamilyogi website became very popular among the movie lovers. The biggest reason for Tamilyogi being popular is that you can find new Tamil movies for free download along with Bollywood, Hollywood, Tollywood, Hindi dubbed movies, TV serials and Web Series 100% free and in high quality.

All the movies that are uploaded here are all high-quality movies. Here you will find movies in very good sound and picture in BluRay, HDRip, DVDrip, HD Videos, etc. and in 360p, 480p, 720p, and 1080p resolutions.

You can download the movies as per your needs but if your internet speed is marvelous which is definitely not impossible in the era of JIO, then you can directly stream your movies online.

 

Not only this, its website design is very user-friendly. It is available for free HD Movies to Download in various categories on the Tamilyogi website like - New Released Tamil HD Movies, Tamil Movies Dubbed in Hindi, Bollywood Movies, Hollywood Movies, Hollywood Movies Dubbed in Hindi, etc.

Why Should Not Use Tamilyogi?

The first and main reason is that the Department of Tele-communication, Gov. of India has declared that piracy is an illegal offense. Such a person or website which is involved in circulating copyrighted materials and piracy movies, CDs, software, Games, etc. online or offline is liable for fine and imprisonment by the law.

So, we recommend do not use Tamilyogi and other pirated movie downloading websites. This complete article is for educational purpose only and 7techniques don’t intend to promote piracy in any way. Our aim is to make all our readers aware in this regard. 7techniques.com strongly condemns every kind of piracy.

And, the second reason for not recommending Tamilyogi by us is insecurity. Since Google's advertisements do not run on these websites, in order to make money, these websites put many kinds of unsafe advertisements on their website which disturbs you a lot. Therefore we also urge you not to open such websites. It can also be harmful to your Smartphone and Computer.

Read Also - Swayam Prabha: 32 DTH Channels and App Review

How to Download Tamil Movies from Tamilyogi?

To download the Tamil movie, a few steps are given below which you can follow to download new and HD Tamil movies absolutely free. But it will work, we do not guarantee it.

• Step 1. First of all, you open Tamilyogi.pro, the official website of Tamilyogi. If this website is not available, then it will divert you to a new website. On that new website, you will get the same content that is found on Tamilyogi.pro.
• Step 2. After opening the website, select movies from the category of your choice or search by entering the name of the movie directly in the search box.
• Step 3. By clicking on the Movie Download Link, you will also have the option to choose quality. You can choose any format from 360p, 480p, 720p and 1080p. The higher the pixel you choose, the higher the quality of the movies.
• Step 4. Many pop-up ads will open as soon as you click on the download button. Such ads will keep you distracted. But in the end, with your knowledge and patience, you will find the right download link and will be able to download the movies you want.

Tamilyogi New Link 2019

If a URL of Tamilyogi website is blocked, then its webmaster redirects all its contents to a new URL. After blocking one URL by ISP, Tamilyogi had released several new URL for its visitors. Some popular URLs are Tamilyogi.com, Tamilyogi.in, Tamilyogi.pro, Tamilyogi.ccv, Tamilyogi.fm, Tamilyogi.vip, Tamilyogi.cc, Tamilyogi.us, Tamilyogi.me, Tamilyogi.nu, and Tamilyogi.eu.

The hide and seek game between the Tamilyogi Team and ISP continues.

Tamilyogi VS Tamilrockers

Even before Tamilyogi, many popular Tamil Movie Download websites have been run, which have been making Pirated Movies available on the net for free download. "Tamilrockers" name comes in such a popular website on which the government took strict action and its operators had to be jailed also.

Both Tamilyogi and Tamilrockers are Piracy Websites. Both websites upload the Pirated version of movies on their website as soon as the movies are released. In this case, Tamilrockers is far ahead of Tamilyogi.

Many news articles of leaking newly released movie by Tamilrockers reported by the Indianexpress news website. Many newly released full movies were leaked by Tamilrockers like Section 375, Pailwaan full, Chhichhore, Sivappu Manjal Pachai, Magamuni, Saaho, Nerkonda Paarvai, Batla House, Ranarangam, Comali, etc.

 

This news proves that despite tough government actions, websites like Tamilyogi and Tamilrockers are active on the Internet for Free Tamil Movies Download from a proxy server.

Conclusion

We all need entertainment and cinema to fulfill this need very well. The craze to see a film in theaters earlier was not a craze among people today. The reason is that today due to cheap smartphone and free data, everyone is watching the film on their mobile. There is no audience in the cinema hall.

 

In this whole scenario, the business of Pirated Movie Downloading Websites spread very fast which leaked on its website as soon as the new movie is released. Tamilyogi, Tamilrockers, TamilGun are named prominently in similar websites.

 

Tamilyogi is such a movie downloading website being run illegally, which has been banned by the Indian government. And you also know that Piracy is an illegal activity. It is a crime to use the Piracy Website in the Guidelines of DOT i.e. Department of Tele-communication.

Our aim is to make all of you aware in this regard. 7techniques.com strongly condemns every kind of piracy. This article is only for education and we do not promote piracy in any way. We want you to choose the legal way to download someone's original content.

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SWAYAM: FULL FORM, WHAT IS SWAYAM? AND HOW TO LOG IN? [FULL GUIDE]

Do you know the full form of SWAYAM? Here is the full guide of SWAYAM. Find out what is SWAYAM? and how to register and log in on SWAYAM for massive open online courses.

SWAYAM FULL FORM

The full form of SWAYAM is “Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds” as it is spelled out by the Human Resources Development Minister Mr. Prakash Javadekar on the launching event.

WHAT IS SWAYAM?

SWAYAM is a MOOC program started by the Government of India and intended to accomplish the three cardinal standards of Education Policy viz., access, value, and quality. The target of this exertion is to take the best showing learning assets to all, including the most burdened.

SWAYAM looks to connect the computerized gap for understudies who have up to this point stayed immaculate by the advanced upheaval and have not had the capacity to join the standard of the learning economy.

This is done through an indigenous created IT stage that encourages facilitating of the considerable number of courses, educated in study halls from ninth class till post-graduation to be gotten to by anybody, anyplace whenever.

Every one of the courses is intelligent, arranged by the best instructors in the nation and are accessible, free of expense to the inhabitants in India. In excess of 1,000 extraordinarily picked workforce and educators from the nation over have partaken in setting up these courses.

The courses facilitated on SWAYAM are in 4 quadrants – (1) video address, (2) exceptionally arranged perusing material that can be downloaded/printed (3) self-evaluation tests through online tests and (4) an online talk gathering for clearing the questions. Steps have been taken to advance the learning background by utilizing sound video and multi-media and cutting edge teaching method/innovation.

So as to guarantee the best quality substance are created and conveyed, nine National Coordinators have been designated: They are AICTE for self-guided and worldwide courses, NPTEL for technical, UGC for non-specialized post-graduation instruction, CEC for undergraduate instruction, NCERT and NIOS for school instruction, IGNOU for out of the school understudies, IIMB for the business studies and NITTTR for Teacher Training program.

Courses conveyed through SWAYAM are accessible free of expense to the students, anyway understudies needing accreditations will be enrolled, will be offered a declaration on effective fruition of the course, with a little charge. Toward the finish of each course, there will be an evaluation of the understudy through delegated examination and the imprints/grades verified in this test could be exchanged to the scholastic record of the understudies.

UGC has as of currently issued the UGC (Credit Framework for web-based learning courses through SWAYAM) Regulation 2016 encouraging the schools to acknowledge courses wherever credits may be changed on to the scholastic record of the understudies for courses done on SWAYAM.

SWAYAM stage is indigenously created by Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) with the help of Microsoft and would be finally fit for facilitating 2000 courses and 80000 hours of picking up: covering school, undergraduate, post-graduate, designing, law and other expert courses.

Special highlights of SWAYAM

Here is all that you have to think about the activity:

• SWAYAM Mahaonline utilizes indigenously created IT stage, encouraging facilitating, all things considered, instructed in study halls from Class 9 till post-graduation to be gotten to by anybody, anyplace whenever. 

• SWAYAM expects to give intelligent courses, arranged by best instructors in the nation and are accessible free of expense to the occupants in India. More than 1,000 extraordinarily picked instructors from the nation over have taken an interest in getting ready SWAYAM courses. 

• Course position: SWAYAM courses are accessible on SWAYAM.gov.in site in four quadrants: video address, uniquely arranged perusing material that can be downloaded/printed, self-evaluation tests through tests and tests and an online dialog gathering for clearing the questions. 

• National facilitators: To guarantee the best quality substance, seven national organizers have been selected. They are NPTEL for technical, UGC for post-graduation training, CEC for undergraduate instruction, NCERT, and NIOS for school instruction, IGNOU for out of the school understudies and IIMB for the executives consider.

Confirmation in Elementary Education (D.El.Ed) program by NIOS is gone for empowering the objective gathering - untrained educators named before August 10, 2017 - to create them in aptitudes, abilities, mentalities, and comprehension to make instructing and adapting progressively compelling.

How To Access SWAYAM Study Material for NIOS D.EL.ED. Trainees

Stage 1: Click to open the Sign-in Page: https://swayam.gov.in/User/Registration 

Stage 2: Enter the Registration subtleties

Stage 3: Verify email address and complete enlistment process

Selecting for Course on SWAYAM 

Stage 1: Click on the Hyperlink to explore the course subtleties page for a course name like "ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN INDIA: A SOCIO-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE" 

Stage 2: Click on "select at this point"

Stage 3: Click on the login

Stage 4: Use the Userid/Password made in the before ventures to log in.

Stage 5: Click on "enlist now"

The enrolled hopefuls would need to enlist for different courses following the means given above.

A portable application has additionally been created to enable educators to look for any illuminations and arrangements.

FROM THE MOUTH OF EDUCATION MINISTER

In an offer to advance moderate instruction, Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar today said the administration plans to offer around 2,000 online courses inside one year through 'SWAYAM' - a straightforwardly created stage.

"Right now, courses are offered through this stage and this will be upgraded to 2,000 courses in a single year," he said after the initiation of seven days in length Teachers Workshop at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) here.

Around 60,000 understudies have effectively finished their courses through this reasonable stage propelled a year ago.

It makes information accessible whenever anyplace like ATM offers money, the minister stated, including that it tends to be named 'ATL - Anytime Learning'.

India's training area will see expanded utilization of new innovations, for example, distributed computing to computer-generated reality, as the administration hopes to actualize huge scale changes, for example, Revitalizing Infrastructure and Systems in Education (RISE) conspire.

Association Government has reserved Rs 1 lakh crore as consumption for the rising plot.

While innovation empowered activities or stages in accordance with huge open online courses (MOOC, for example, SWAYAM (for instructors' preparation) have seen utilization of advancements, the legislature should hope to venture up the utilization of apparatuses, for example, virtual lab, augmented reality (VR)- empowered study halls or curated online substance for the two understudies and educators, experts broadly said.

SWAYAM, an online deep-rooted preparing stage created with the assistance of Microsoft, or Diksha, a stage that guides instructors with advanced and tech-based showing arrangements are "unmistakable endeavors" in patching up the training framework.

"Digitizing instruction has been a basic remembering the reasonableness, availability, comprehensiveness of the substantial trainable youth populace. Innovation might be utilized to achieve the different populace at the remotest corners. MOOC stages, NPTEL (National Program on Technology Enhanced Learning) are now being used for the advancement of higher specialized instruction. They might be utilized for contacting younger students also," said Sriman Kumar Bhattacharyya, representative chief, IIIT, Kharagpur.

He included that IITs crosswise over areas are chipping away at "advanced intermingling" and "improvement of the imaginative foundation for training" which could result in expanded utilization of new-age advances.

Upcoming SWAYAM Online courses

Stock Investing can be Pretty easy in India

Introduction to Airplane performance:

This course is intended to give a coordinated early on the treatment of plane execution with the kind of airship structure and flight testing.

Project Planning and Control:

This course will cover the essential ideas in Project Planning and Control with an emphasis on development ventures. The course is significant to Civil Engineering senior dimension undergrad just as post-graduate understudies in the territory of development the executives. Rehearsing engineers who are a piece of the arranging group on development ventures will likewise profit by the ideas shrouded in the course.

Robotics:

The course will begin with a concise prologue to robots and mechanical autonomy. The inspiration driving keeping robots in present-day businesses will be talked about. In the wake of giving a short history of mechanical autonomy, diverse segments of an automated framework will be recognized. The technique for deciding degrees of the opportunity of an automated framework will be talked about with certain models. Subsequent to characterizing the robots dependent on specific criteria, workspace investigation of controllers will be done. Uses of robots in various territories like in assembling units, restorative science, space, and others, will be examined. Different techniques for robot instructing will be clarified with some appropriate precedents.

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