Marketing and Advertising

Mkhitar Sebastatsi Educomplex
High School
STUDENT: Arevik Arzumanyan, Grade 12
SUPERVISOR: Silva Harutyunyan
REVIEWER: Ani Harutyunyan
Research Work:  Marketing and Advertising

Yerevan 2024

Table of Contents
Introduction: What is Marketing
Chapter One: Types of Marketing
Chapter Two: Advertising: Interesting and Creative Advertisements
Chapter Three: How Marketing Manipulates us
Chapter Four: Interesting Psychological Tricks in Marketing
Chapter Five: «Sell Me This Pen»: How To Answer This Interview Question
Conclusion: We all deal with marketing on a daily basis
Sources

Sources
https://sendpulse.com/ru/support/glossary/marketing
https://www.investopedia.com
https://mailchimp.com/resources/types-of-marketing/
https://www.hubspot.com/inbound-marketing
https://blog.ringostat.com/ru/digital-marketing-chto-eto/
https://mailchimp.com/resources/what-is-cause-marketing/
https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/definition/relationship-marketing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interruption_marketing
https://www.feedough.com/what-is-interruption-marketing/
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/word-of-mouth-marketing.asp
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/account-based-marketing-guide
https://mailchimp.com/marketing-glossary/personalized-marketing/
https://novate.ru/blogs/191014/28183/
https://mediamax.am/am/news/media/32937
https://www.shopify.com/retail/scent-marketing
https://newristics.com/heuristics-biases/left-digit-bias

Introduction: What is marketing
Marketing is the activity or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising. In simple words, this is the ability to sell a product or service with benefits for both the business and the target audience.

Marketing refers to activities a company undertakes to promote the buying or selling of a product or service. Marketing includes advertising, selling, and delivering products to consumers or other businesses.

It is, in short, an action taken to bring attention to a business’ offerings; they can be physical goods for sale or services offered. Common examples of marketing at work include television commercials, billboards on the side of the road, and magazine advertisements.

• Marketing refers to all activities a company does to promote and sell products or services to consumers.
• Marketing makes use of the «marketing mix,» also known as the four Ps—product, price, place, and promotion.
• Marketing used to be centered around traditional marketing techniques including television, radio, mail, and word-of-mouth strategies.
• Though traditional marketing is still prevalent, digital marketing now allows companies to engage in newsletter, social media, affiliate, and content marketing strategies.
• At its core, marketing seeks to take a product or service, identify its ideal customers, and draw the customers’ attention to the product or service available.

Chapter One: Types of marketing
All businesses must find effective ways to differentiate themselves in a highly competitive marketplace. Regardless of whether you engage in online product sales, operate a local establishment, or manage a B2B enterprise, it is crucial to identify suitable marketing strategies that will expand your customer base, increase brand recognition, and ultimately drive sales to enhance revenue.

Marketing plays a pivotal role in educating potential customers about your product or service offerings, guiding them through the customer journey, and facilitating increased sales. Not only does marketing enhance brand awareness, thereby increasing brand visibility, but it also streamlines the sales process for all parties involved.

In order to successfully sell your products and services, it is imperative to incorporate some form of marketing. When executed effectively, marketing not only drives product sales but also reduces other operational costs. Without marketing, numerous businesses would struggle to survive as they would be unable to generate sufficient sales.

There are various marketing approaches that can be employed to promote your business. However, the abundance of marketing strategies and the associated discourse can often be overwhelming, making it challenging to determine the most suitable methods for your specific business. As a business owner or marketer, it is essential to familiarize yourself with the array of marketing strategies available in order to identify those that will best facilitate increased sales.

B2B and B2C marketing
When determining which of the many marketing strategies for small businesses you should choose, you must consider your audience. There are 2 common types of businesses: B2B and B2C. Business-to-business (B2B) marketing requires businesses to market to other businesses, which may involve using a sales team to answer questions and drive purchases. Many B2B companies leverage relationships in their sales process to keep their customers coming back. For example, Mailchimp markets to business owners for the use of our email marketing and automation tools.

On the other hand, business-to-consumer (B2C) businesses must market to regular consumers. For example, Walmart markets directly to consumers through different forms of marketing and advertising. B2C businesses focus on a more transactional nature and can create marketing campaigns focused more on emotion than logic.

Depending on the nature of your business, you might have B2B and B2C products and solutions, which means 2 different audiences you must target.

Types of marketing
Content marketing
Content marketing is an effective inbound marketing strategy that educates and engages customers by helping them find information about your products, brand, or industry online. Examples of content marketing include:

• Blogs
• Organic social media posts
• E-guides
• Video

Content marketing aims to provide your customers with the information they can use to make a purchasing decision.

Social media marketing
Social media marketing is sometimes considered a small part of content marketing. However, many marketers believe social media is a stand-alone marketing technique worthy of more attention. Social media is a cost-effective marketing tool that can help you increase engagement with your audience, educate consumers, and sell more products.

There are many different ways to market on social media with different platforms to choose from, and some will be more effective for your marketing goals than others. For example, B2B businesses typically get better results on LinkedIn and Facebook than on Instagram and YouTube. Meanwhile, more visual businesses, such as e-commerce businesses, get better results on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. However, you can reach your audience anywhere if you have a good strategy.

Email marketing
Email marketing requires marketers to send emails to customers and prospects to increase sales and help customers through the sales funnel easily. With high conversion rates come high returns.

Email marketing requires you to get people to subscribe to your emails, which may take work if you haven’t already started growing your list. Even so, once you have subscribers, you can send them all sorts of emails and drip campaigns consisting of new product releases, abandoned cart reminders, and even newsletters to help them through the funnel. Before you start building out your emails, learn about the customer journey for email marketing to discover how automation can help you increase sales.

B2B and B2C companies can use email marketing and automation to improve their sales process. While B2C marketing emails will focus more on quick transactions, B2B companies can use automation to supplement the sales process and keep more prospective customers in the pipeline.

Digital (Internet) marketing
Digital marketing is a general term for the marketing of products and services that uses digital channels to attract and retain customers. And any kind — from advertising on online radio to advertising contextual advertising on the Internet.

Digital marketing includes Internet marketing too, but is not limited to the Internet. Internet marketing is SEO website promotion, context, webinars, etc. — all channels that are available to the user only on the Internet. And digital marketing is all of the above plus advertising and promotion on any digital media offline. That is, it implies digital communication that occurs both online and offline.

Inbound marketing
The inbound methodology is the method of growing your organization by building meaningful, lasting relationships with consumers, prospects, and customers. It’s about valuing and empowering these people to reach their goals at any stage in their journey with you.
Why? Because when your customers succeed, you succeed.

The inbound methodology can be applied in three ways:
Attract: drawing in the right people with valuable content and conversations that set you up as a trusted advisor.
Engage: presenting insights and solutions that align with their pain points and goals so they are more likely to buy from you. 
Delight: offering help and support to empower your customers to find success with your product. 

Cause marketing
One solution businesses are pursuing is cause marketing.

Cause marketing involves a collaboration between a for-profit business and a nonprofit organization for a common benefit. Cause marketing can also refer to social or charitable campaigns put on by for-profit brands.

Typically, a brand’s association with a nonprofit will boost their corporate social responsibility. The nonprofit, in exchange for their ethical contributions to the collaboration, creates more awareness for their organization.

As new generations bring in new values, businesses must learn to pivot their strategies in order to keep up. Businesses that care about sustainability and ethics are at the top of consumers’ lists, and cause marketing can help bring a business’s social responsibility to their customers’ attention.

Relationship marketing
Relationship marketing is a facet of customer relationship management (CRM) that focuses on customer loyalty and long-term customer engagement rather than shorter-term goals like customer acquisition and individual sales. The goal of relationship marketing (or customer relationship marketing) is to create strong, even emotional, customer connections to a brand that can lead to ongoing business, free word-of-mouth promotion and information from customers that can generate leads.

Relationship marketing stands in contrast to the more traditional transactional marketing approach, which focuses on increasing the number of individual sales. In the transactional model, the return on customer acquisition cost may be insufficient. A customer may be convinced to select that brand one time, but without a strong relationship marketing strategy, the customer may not come back to that brand in the future.

While organizations combine elements of both relationship and transactional marketing, customer relationship marketing is starting to play a more important role for many companies.

Interruption (Outbound) Marketing
Interruption marketing or outbound marketing is promoting a product through continued advertising, promotions, public relations and sales. It is considered to be an annoying version of the traditional way of doing marketing whereby companies focus on finding customers through advertising.

Interruption marketing serves the purpose of marketing by disturbing people through an activity. YouTube lends its users an ad before they could watch a video; sometimes even in the mid and after the end of the video.
Interruption of experience by advertisements is just a price the user has to pay for usage.

Word-of-mouth marketing
Word-of-mouth marketing (or WOM marketing) is when a consumer’s interest in a company’s product or service is reflected in their daily dialogues. Essentially, it is free advertising triggered by customer experiences—and usually, something that goes beyond what they expected.

Word-of-mouth marketing can be encouraged through different publicity activities set up by companies or by having opportunities to encourage consumer-to-consumer and consumer-to-marketer communications. Also referred to as «word-of-mouth advertising,» WOM marketing includes buzz, viral, blog, emotional, and social media marketing.

• Word-of-mouth marketing (WOM marketing) happens when consumers talk about a company’s product or service to their friends, family, and to others with whom they have close relationships.
• WOM marketing is one of the most powerful forms of advertising as 88% of consumers trust their friends’ recommendations over traditional media.
• Companies can encourage WOM marketing by exceeding expectations on a product, providing good customer service, and giving exclusive information to consumers.
• The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) cites the best word-of-mouth marketing strategies as being honest, credible, social, repeatable, measurable, and respectful.
• WOM marketing includes various marketing techniques, such as buzz, blogs, and social media marketing.

Account-based marketing
Account based marketing (ABM) is a business marketing strategy that concentrates resources on a set of target accounts within a market. It uses personalized campaigns designed to engage each account, basing the marketing message on the specific attributes and needs of the account.

You start the sales process by selling directly to your best-fit, highest-value accounts.
No wasted time trying to market to unqualified leads who aren’t the right fit for your business. You can move straight into the phases of engaging and delighting your target accounts.
Account-based marketing allows you to weed out less valuable companies early on and makes sure that Marketing and Sales are in complete alignment. 

Personalized marketing
Personalized marketing is when you tailor your marketing based on the data you’ve collected from your contacts. This includes interests, shopping preferences, purchase history, and more.
When you use this data to customize the content your contacts receive via email, ads, and other platforms, you’re using personalized marketing.

The practice of using analytics to make advertising messages and product experiences feel unique to each customer. Personalized marketing is much more than just inserting the customer name into the same marketing email that goes to all of your customers. It’s about reaching the right person with the right message at the right moment with the right suggestions.

Chapter Two: Advertising: Interesting and Creative Advertisements
Advertising is a very important part of marketing and almost everything depends on advertising. With good advertising you can do good marketing. Advertisements promote products, services, or campaigns through written or visual messages. Businesses can pay the owner of a channel or platform that reaches a similar audience to broadcast these messages. The ultimate goal is to inform and persuade customers or potential customers to take action, such as making a purchase.

Here are some creative and interesting advertisements.

1․ Big Pilot’s Watch

Images of the Big Pilot’s Watch are attached to the hanging straps in busses, so anybody who wishes to can easily try on the Big Pilot’s Watch, just on the way to the airplane.

This professional campaign titled ‘Hanging straps’ was published on June 01, 2006. It was created for the brand: IWC, by ad agency: Jung von Matt/Alster. This Ambient medium campaign is related to the Electronics, Technology industry and contains 1 media asset. It was submitted over 17 years ago.

2. Kitkat

And only KitKat would manage to turn street bench into chocolate bars…
This professional campaign titled ‘Bench’ was published in United Kingdom in December, 2008. It was created for the brand: Kit Kat, by ad agency: JWT. This Ambient medium campaign is related to the Confectionery, Snacks industry and contains 1 media asset. It was submitted almost 15 years ago.

3. McDonald’s Fries Crosswalk

McDonald’s Malaysia and creative agency, Leo Burnett Malaysia, have brought to life the iconic McDonald’s Fries Crosswalk in the heart of the Golden Triangle in Bukit Bintang. This crosswalk is strategically located as it leads visitors straight into Malaysia’s first McDonald’s restaurant.

4. OREO: Milk’s favourite cookie

Oreo wanted to convey its new slogan “Milk’s favourite cookie” to consumers. So, the ad company which was in charge of Oreo’s request came up with unique and brilliant way, to present the slogan.
Two pieces of paper are simply attached on the outside of the elevator. Upper sticker is Oreo cookie and the bottom one is a cup of milk. When the elevator moves up and down, Oreo cookie is dipped into a cup of milk.

5. Nose plastic surgery (Gevorg Yeghiazaryan)

One of the best Armenian advertisements I’ve ever seen. “The eyes are Mom’s, the nose is  Gevorg Yeghiazaryan’s”. Gevorg Yeghiazaryan is one of the most famous plastic surgeons in Armenia. and this, as you might guess, is an advertisement for plastic surgery…

Chapter Three: How marketing manipulates us

How do marketers manipulate consumers?
It’s a marketer’s job to make us buy a product or a service. And in marketing, like in love and war, all is fair. In order to influence our shopping decisions, marketers have developed some widespread techniques that sometimes involve a little bit of manipulation or subtle subliminal messages that convince you to buy the product (more straightforward people tend to call it “brainwashing”). What are the most common manipulation techniques used in advertising and marketing?

1. Inferiority method
Advertising campaigns can sometimes evoke fear in you, as they bring to light your pains and exert pressure on them. «A bad breath can ruin your first date, excess weight can lead to cardiovascular disease, and baldness makes you very unattractive…». It’s about how the current problem can lead to serious unpleasant consequences, but there is a miraculous remedy. You can purchase the offered products or service and solve this problem once and for all.

2. Social proof method
Approximately 72% of people do not buy or order anything until they read reviews. Video cases, text comments, and other social proofs are used to influence your decision. Good brands always have satisfied customers, but many dishonest brands manipulate ratings for their products and even order good reviews on special websites. It is easy to identify them by their template-like reviews, so it is worth considering if all the reviews are perfect and the average rating is five out of five, despite having a large number of customers.

3. The method of a profitable offer
The most obvious example is McDonald’s. The «Big Tasty» burger costs $3.5, while the «Big Tasty» menu with fries and a drink costs $5. It is definitely more advantageous to choose the menu. This is exactly what marketers rely on. A profitable complex offer is created, while each product alone is significantly more expensive. (Of course, even as a combo, they are sold with a markup that benefits the brand).

4. Storytelling method
Everyone loves stories, remember the commercials where celebrities talk about why they choose this brand? It’s a whole beautiful story where everything used to be not so great, but after buying this product or service, everything stabilized. And it works, people see themselves in these stories, their problems, pains, difficulties, which is why they buy it.

5. Self-programming method
Do you remember Cristiano Ronaldo in the Nike advertisement? People see successful individuals with specific brand products and subconsciously start imagining themselves in their place. At this level, they associate themselves with the successes of the people in the advertisement. This also compels them to buy more…

Chapter Four: Interesting psychological tricks in marketing

Psychology is a very important factor in marketing. And marketers very cleverly use some techniques to influence people subconsciously. And we all fall victim to this, including me, you, all of us. Here are some examples of such tricks that we deal with every day.

1. Many of you have seen that the prices of products in restaurants, shops, cafes are, for example, 5999… I’m sure many people are wondering why this is so. Of course, there is a psychological explanation for all this. The left-digit bias.
Left Digit Bias is a phenomenon where people place more emphasis on the leftmost digit of a product’s price. This means that people may overestimate the difference between $4.00 and $2.99 compared to $4.01 and $3.00 due to the larger contrast between the leftmost digits of the first set of numbers.

2. Did you know that marketers can manipulate you using scents? In fact, smell has a very strong effect, it can subconsciously create pleasant associations. All this in marketing is called «Scent marketing».
Scent marketing is a type of sensory marketing targeting a shopper’s sense of smell. It involves diffusing strategically chosen scents at different locations in your store. The goal is to create a memorable, pleasant shopping experience and increase sales.
Retail spaces have plenty to consider when creating the right atmosphere to suit the products they’re selling. Location, decor, employee uniforms, lighting, art, temperature, music, and, increasingly, smell all combine to create an immersive brand experience.

3. Have you ever seen an ad that says, “This item costs 30,000, but if you buy it before the 25th of the month, you will save 5,000”? Pay attention to this phrase, you will save. Indeed, there are people who are willing to spend 25,000 to save 5,000. But if you don’t buy at all, you can save 25,000)))

4. Another interesting psychological trick that almost always works, FOMO(Fear of missing out).
FOMO marketing uses psychology to tap into consumers’ emotional responses and triggers, making them want to act quickly to avoid missing out on an opportunity. FOMO marketing capitalizes on this powerful emotion, encouraging engagement, conversions, and sales by creating a sense of urgency, scarcity, and exclusivity.
Examples of this in everyday life, when everyone starts watching and talking about some new series, others think that they missed something and also start watching this series…

5. Usually, when a person finds out that many people are using a particular product or service, they also want to buy it.
An experiment was conducted: a sign was installed in one of the parks asking people not to steal stones from the park, because others have already stolen the stones and this has affected the park. After this sign, the number of thefts doubled. And in the second case, people were simply asked not to steal stones from the park, and people listened.
In the first case, people were shown what others had done, and they simply copied others behavior.
This means that if we want people to buy our product or service, we need to show them that others are doing it too.

Chapter Five: «Sell Me This Pen»: How To Answer This Interview Question

When you attend an interview for a sales-related job, it is common for a hiring manager to inquire, «Sell me this pen.» Your reply to this inquiry is crucial as it allows the hiring manager to evaluate your sales abilities and tactics, irrespective of the level of the position you are seeking. Mastering the art of responding to this question can enhance your chances of employment and set you apart from other applicants. This article delves into strategies for effectively answering «Sell me this pen» during a sales interview, along with sample responses for your consideration.

Why interviewers say «sell me this pen»

Interviewers could say something like «sell me this pen» to learn how well you gather, respond to and deliver information about a product. They also assess how well you can conclude your provided pitch with a persuasive statement. A hiring manager can use your response to determine how you may perform in a sales-related position if they were to offer you a position with the hiring organization.

Tips for answering “Sell me this pen”

Here are a few helpful tips to create a thoughtful response to this interview question:

• Be positive. When you’re answering this interview question, show the interviewer that you can manage open-ended interview questions. Maintain an enthusiastic attitude and accept an interviewer’s follow-up questions and banter to show you can remain calm in different scenarios.
• Ask direct questions. Asking the interviewer questions about their experience with pens or how they use them in their daily lives can help you gain ideas on how to proceed with the sales pitch.
• Relate the pen to a larger concept or idea. By relating the pen and its importance to a larger concept or life event, you can expand upon its obvious benefits as a writing tool and highlight increased value to your audience.
• Relate the pen to the interviewer’s specific needs. Once you’ve had the opportunity to ask the interviewer about their experience using pens, you can start directing the pitch toward their specific needs. Consider their job responsibilities or personal lives when creating your response.
• Close by asking them to purchase the pen. An important part of a sales pitch can be trying to close the pitch with a new customer. Try to incorporate it into the end of your pitch naturally with a positive statement that makes them want to close the purchase.

3 example answers to «Sell me this pen»

Review three example answers to the interview prompt «Sell me this pen»:

Example 1

Here’s an example answer from a candidate who poses a problem that relates to presentation delivery:«From my conversation with the other hiring manager during my previous interview stage, you’re a sales manager who conducts a lot of meetings with their employees. The other hiring manager tells me that you’re an animated, energetic individual who uses a lot of gestures and points to the slides on the presentation when you’re delivering information. When you’re delivering these presentations, you may want to have a reliable pointer. Using a wooden pencil or a cheap-looking pen could work, but you might not be able to convey your points as creatively.Instead, you may want this pen I’m selling here. It has a sleek, stylish body and a laser on the end of it that you can use to direct your audience to the points you want to emphasize. This pen can help you be more memorable to your employees, and you can plan on always having a reliable writing utensil.»

Example 2

Here’s an example answer from a candidate who presents a situation that relates to a personal benefit of owning a pen:«At first glance, this pen is simply a writing utensil. After further consideration, it’s also a tool that we can use to leave impactful messages for the people closest to us in our lives. Tell me, when was the last time you used a pen in your personal life? To sign a holiday card, you say? That’s a very kind gesture. With our modern technologies, handwritten sentiments are becoming less popular. If you don’t mind me asking, for whom did you sign the holiday card? For your daughter and your grandchildren, you say?Think about what it would mean to send them a typed holiday card. Using a computer program would remove the sentiment. Handwriting is something unique to each individual, and by taking the time to write your holiday wishes, you’re giving your family a gift they can cherish forever. I still have a birthday card that my grandmother gave me when I was 10. She’s since passed, but I feel a connection to her whenever I see her handwritten message. You never want to be without a device to convey these emotional messages, so let’s make this sale happen.

Example 3

Consider this example answer from a candidate who introduces a problem that relates to productivity:«Before I became a salesperson, I was a college student who took notes during all the lectures I attended. During the first couple of weeks of classes, I took all my notes on my tablet. After some reflection, I discovered that I was spending way too much time typing everything the professor had to say while trying to make the notes look presentable on my notes application. I didn’t retain much of what my professors were saying, which resulted in poor grades on my first couple of university exams.I switched to taking notes with paper and pen, and I noticed drastic improvements in my productivity, retention and focus. From our conversation early, I know that you host several meetings throughout the work week. I want you to be able to provide your employees with pens so they can take effective notes while maintaining their focus on what you have to say. I don’t want you to have to deal with a bunch of employees who reflect the behavior that I had in my early college days, so let’s discuss making a bulk sale.»

Conclusion: We all deal with marketing on a daily basis

Marketing and advertising occupy a large part of our daily lives. And with this research work, I tried my best to write about everything that we all deal with in our daily life. We all come across ads everywhere and in everything, and it’s no secret that advertising is a huge part of marketing. Many people very often fall victim to deceptive advertisements, or come across a good advertisement and acquire a good product or service, and it is important to know the nuances that marketers use to create advertisements. It is interesting to know how advertisements manipulate us, whether consciously or unconsciously. In this research work, I tried to write about everything that will be understandable and interesting to everyone. Since this topic is directly related to my future profession, this research work turned out to be very useful for me, and I hope I managed to present my chosen topic in an interesting and accessible way, not only for me, but for others also. Thank you for reading.