Interesting Debate Topics

Interesting Debate Topics

• Is animal testing a justified?
• Is the death penalty appropriate?  Or should it be banned?
• Should cell phones be used during class?
• Should laptops be allowed in classrooms?
• Is global warming an issue?
• Is there good reason for the American war on terror?
• Does school detention do any good in high schools?
• What impact does social networking and social networking sites have on society?
• Is euthanasia justified?
• Are video games containing violence appropriate for children?
• Are single sex schools more effective than co-ed schools?
• Is television an effective tool in building the minds of children?
• Should jobs be subcontracted into developing countries?
• Is cloning animals ethical?
• Is the grading system used in high school effective?
• Do celebrities get away with more crime than non-celebrities?
• Is it justified to develop nuclear energy for commercial use?
• Is it effective to censor parts of the media?
• Are humans to blame for certain animal extinctions?
• Are alternative energy sources effective and justified?
• Do school uniforms make school a more effective place to learn?
• Is drug testing athletes justified?
• Is it appropriate for adolescents to be sentenced to life without parole?
• Should high schools provide daycare services for students who have children?

How to Create Effective Marketing Campaigns

by Sam Ashe-Edmunds

Related Articles

• 1Top Ten Promotional Strategies
• 2How to Increase Brand Awareness for a Product
• 3Marketing & Communication Activities
• 4Promotional Campaign vs. Advertising

Marketing includes the upfront research that leads to the development of the communication of a sales message. A marketing campaign starts with learning about your target customer, marketplace and competitors. Using that information, you will choose different types of media and create your advertising and promotions. Start with number crunching, then use that information to create effective communications to boost your sales.

Research

1. Research the marketplace. Determine if there is a need for your product or service, or customers might not want to buy it. Do this by looking for competitors. In addition to finding competitors, examine the differences between their business and yours. Look for a unique aspect about what you sell. For example, there might be many restaurants in your city, but you might be one of only a few that cater to budget-conscious families.

2. Create a demographic profile of your potential customers. List the gender, age, race, location, marital status, parental status and income level of your primary customer and secondary buyers. Conduct customer surveys if you have access to their phone numbers or email addresses. Contact your industry's or profession's trade associations for research they have conducted. Conduct a survey on your website and offer a prize for participation. Limit this to people who have purchased your product online or who use a code on product packaging.

3. Research your competitors to learn their price, selling message and product or service benefits. Compare your business to your competitors.

Product Development

1. Determine if you need to change your product or packaging to better compete in your marketplace. A menswear store might consider adding boys clothing. A hair stylist might benefit from adding facials, manicures and pedicures and becoming a full-service salon.

2. Develop a brand, image or position for your product or service in the marketplace. Your brand might be that you offer low-cost quality or that you provide high-end service. You might offer name brands or focus on servicing what you sell. You can position yourself as the destination of young, hip consumers, or sensible, practical seniors.

3. Price your product to achieve your marketing goals. Once you know what you need to charge to make a profit, determine if you will undercut your competition, sell at a competitive price or price yourself higher. A low price positions you differently than a high price in the eyes of consumers. A low price decreases your profit margin but can help you take market share from higher-priced competitors. A high price might reduce sales but gives you higher margins and might position you as a higher-quality product or service.

Promotion

1. Decide where you will sell your product. Based on your target customer and brand position, your best options might include retail stores, online, in catalogs, through TV offers or with direct mail. Consider your price point and branding when you choose distribution channels. Selling a high-end product at Wal-Mart, for example, sends a mixed message.

2. Develop a public relations campaign to generate free media attention about your product. Send press releases to newspapers, industry trade associations, magazines, websites and radio stations. Write your press releases to focus on the newsworthiness to the public rather than making your communication read like a free ad. If you are a new business, stress that angle in local publications. If you have won awards, play that up. If you are creating jobs in a community, lead with that fact.

3. Create an advertising campaign to send a controlled message to the marketplace. Research different media using each one's media kit. A media kit contains the demographics of the readers, viewers or listeners of a newspaper, magazine, website, TV station or radio station. Using the reader profiles in the media kits, choose media outlets with audience demographics similar to your target customers. In the ads, sell the benefits of your product or service rather than the features. Have a grand opening.

4. Use promotions to generate more brand or product awareness. Create in-store promotions, such as coupons, aisle displays or product sampling. Sponsor events, such as charity balls, auctions or sporting events. Donate products to charities to raffle or auction.

7 Steps to Planning a Successful Promotional Campaign

How to Plan and Execute a Promotional Campaign 

Credit: Thomas Barwick/ Stone/ Getty Images

Marketing

A promotional plan is an important marketing tool when it comes to launching a new service or product or expanding your market reach into new verticals or demographics. When planning a promotional campaign, keep in mind that a successful campaign achieves all of the following desired outcomes and goals:

The question is how do you achieve these outcomes with your campaign? The process is easy, but it takes "planning" time. Here are seven steps that will get your campaign off to the right start.

Step 1: Assess Marketing Communication Opportunities

It's important in this first step to examine and understand the needs of your target market. Who is your message going out to? Current users, influencers among individuals, decision-makers, groups, or the general public?

Step 2: What Communication Channels Will You Use?

In the first step of planning, you should have defined the markets, products, and environments. This information will assist you in deciding which communication channels will be most beneficial. Will you use personal communication channels such as face to face meeting, telephone contact, or perhaps a personal sales presentation?

Or will the nonpersonal communication such as newspapers, magazines, or direct mail work better?

Step 3: Determine Your Objectives

Keep in mind that your objectives in a promotional campaign are slightly different from your marketing campaign. Promotional objectives should be stated in terms of long or short-term behaviours by people who have been exposed to your promotional communication.

These objectives must be clearly stated, measurable, and appropriate to the phase of market development.

Step 4: Determine Your Promotion Mix

This is where you will need to allocate resources to sales promotion, advertising, publicity, and, of course, personal selling. Don't skimp on either of these areas. You must create an awareness among your buyers in order for your promotional campaign to succeed. A well-rounded promotion will use all these methods in some capacity.

Step 5: Develop Your Promotional Message

This is the time that you will need to sit down with your team and focus on the content, appeal, structure, format, and source of the message. Keep in mind in promotional campaigns appeal and execution always work together.

Step 6: Develop the Promotion Budget

This is the exciting part. You must now determine the total promotion budget. This involves determining cost breakdowns per territory and promotional mix elements. Take some time to break down allocations and determine the affordability, percent of sales, and competitive parity. By breaking down these costs, you will get a better idea on gauging the success potential of your campaign.

Step 7: Determine Campaign Effectiveness

After marketing communications are assigned, the promotional plan must be formally defined in a written document.

In this document, you should include situation analysis, copy platform, timetables for effective integration of promotional elements with elements in your marketing mix. You will also need to determine how you will measure the effectiveness once it is implemented. How did the actual performance measure up to planned objectives? You'll need to gather this information by asking your target market whether they recognized or recall specific advertising messages, what they remember about the message, how they felt about the message, and if their attitudes toward the company were affected by the message.

look at these two links for further help

https://prezi.com/umcdx3hxwfti/unit-329-brand-development/?webgl=0

https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/best-marketing-campaigns-2016/

Ethics and Legalities in Digital Marketing

Rules of the Game:

I believe that marketing of brand within social media is a positive step for the end users and public. However, we need a lot to do to make the vision perfect. Here are few recommendations to ensure your social media marketing remains ethical.

1. KYA – Know Your Audience:

Before embarking on any social marketing drive, make sure that you:

• Know about your audience, their preferences, interests and choices
• Have a complete demographic and psycho-graphic overview

This will help you refine your target audience and also facilitate in developing anti-spam mechanism. In addition, it will allow you to segment the audience and send over relevant messages that will drive engagement; the ultimate goal.

2. Stay Away from Biases:

Businesses and marketers need to stay away from (negative) political, religious, ethnic, or any cultural bias that could be termed as controversial. A slight mistake can lead to a big PR disaster and loss of your job (as marketer). We have seen that many top social media managers got fired for just one wrong tweet.

3. Never Compromise On Privacy:

Privacy is a very sensitive domain as it is top concern of the internet generation. If you are doing some marketing via social media, make sure you do not violate privacy rules. Some companies extract Facebook and LinkedIn data to build their email campaigns. This is a cutting-edge sword and requires attention to core concerns. Just a promise of not spamming might not be enough, you need to give unsubscribe option with every message you deliver. To read more about ethical email marketing.

4. Be Transparent:

If you are endorsing some product, idea or personality; you need to disclose why you are endorsing it. Mentioning your relationship with that particular product, non-profit entity, brand or political entity in your campaign, handle, or bio is essential.

5. Speak Truth:

If you have some interest or affiliation in something being discussed, you need to politely communicate your affiliation. It does not require that you explain your interests but tell as to why are you supporting a particular thing. Another important element here is to be true to yourself as well as the audience.

6. Think Before You Tweet:

Internet if flooded with unauthentic information pieces, which has made the marketer’s job more complicated. Therefore, always verify what you share before sending it out for prospects. Any factual error may lead to embarrassment and negative perception of the brand.

7. Imagine the Impact:

If you are sharing some information through your social channel which has been acquired from a third party source, give clear disclaimers to avoid suspicions of conflict of interest. Moreover; be very careful about your tweets and retweets. Public perception matters a lot. For instance, you might retweet something a politician has said in order to spread the news but some may view it as your support for that person. This can be very tricky for your brand.

Conclusion:

Finally, if you do the campaigns with a documented marketing strategy, it can save you from many troubles. Probably the best way to avoid any misconception is to map your content and have a content calendar. Moreover, a strict monitoring mechanism has to be installed to ensure compliance with the code of conduct.

 http://www.business2community.com/social-media/7-fundamental-ethics-social-media-marketing-01571504#adth2mSzRrheHEuT.99

Why does ethics come into it?

This is a grey area but marketers have a responsibility to act ethically.

Of course, there is a difference between illegal activity and unethical activity. Responsible brands are unlikely to be acting illegally as marketers should be familiar with privacy legislation. It is the unethical activities which have the potential to really damage brands.

Marketers know that a brand’s success is built on consumer trust and so delivering on its promise is key. If a brand fails to act ethically, whether this is done accidentally or deliberately, this trust is undermined.

In the past, we have seen brands acting unethically over their claims or trying to be something they are not, harming their brands  For example, the companies that provided the popular game app, Angry Birds, and the ‘Brightest Flashlight Free’ app have been using these apps to track users’ movements 24/7 and passing this information along to other companies. Acting as mini tracking devices, these apps collect information about where people travel throughout the day. As it is unreasonable to expect consumers to know they’re being spied upon, these app companies can be said to be acting unethically, and should their actions become public knowledge, it would undermine brand trust and dramatically reduce downloads.

But who owns the data?

Our every movement in the digital world leaves a trail that can be tracked. Various permission may well be given by consumers when first signing up to websites and apps, but these permissions are often without the consumer’s active knowledge as companies hide what data they are collating and for what purpose. For example, permission for companies to re-use family photos and videos that have been posted onto networks, such as Facebook, may well be buried in the T&C’s.

So all the while people are using a platform, data is being collected by the brand and being used to make a better product. Would consumers consider it morally acceptable if they found their personal details and images elsewhere on the web without having given explicit permission? Again, many consumers would see this as overstepping the ethical line.

The moral dilemma

A moral dilemma reigns. The Internet is meant to be free from control and a force for good where ideas and information can be freely exchanged . But who defines when something is ‘a force for good’ and when it’s okay for information to be ‘freely exchanged’? Large tech companies are dominating Internet activity and whilst generally perceived to be benign, they are increasingly deciding what Internet freedom should look like. Taking a closer look at the following examples shows that their actions are not always ethical.

• Google’s “don’t be evil” motto seems to mean that if Google does it, it’s for the common good. This is despite accusations of monopolistic practices in search and being criticised for spying on consumers to sell advertising. Google appears to want to define what is ‘good’.
• Facebook “helps you connect and share with the people in your life”. Another way of looking at this is that it is a giant marketing platform for collecting data on people’s lives and then selling this to advertisers. 
• Unethical sites have tapped into Facebook to help them disseminate ‘fake news.’ This ‘news’ is so realistic, and targeted at people who have the propensity to believe it, that there are concerns it may have influenced the way people voted in the U.S election. 
• Twitter claims to help you to “get in-the-moment updates on the things that interest you” and yet they aren’t transparent about how users’ data is sold on to advertisers.

If the world’s largest tech companies are not transparent in their marketing activities this highlights the scale of the moral dilemma today’s marketers must navigate.

Navigating the moral tightrope

It’s an exciting time to use digital tools as they are changing fast, but by ignoring the ethical dimension  marketers are in danger of undermining brand trust. On the horizon, we can see  which will measure peoples’ emotional response to ads through facial recognition. To do this, consumers must grant the platform access to their webcams, adding another dimension to the moral maze.

The arrival of big data means that there will be even more data available requiring more powerful tools. So, now’s the time for marketers to obtain clarity around what is and isn’t ethical. There are currently few guidelines around the ‘rights and wrongs’ in the world of digital marketing. Perhaps it’s time for companies to introduce an ethical marketing handbook, making it clear what is and isn’t acceptable in the online world? By considering the brand damage that could be done by acting unethically, this should be incentive enough for marketers to review their own and their companies’ moral compasses!