Marketing, Advertisting & Communication in Iowa

This is a Critical Thinking Exercise for my Marketing Class. I’m having a hard time deciding if it’s good or bad. I would think it would be good because it would be more convenient. But then it asks "What might be some of the drawbacks to this type of selling?"

Answer ASAP I need to finish this tonight.

The federal government isn’t just going to go shopping on the internet. In order to become a vendor of them, you will have to get behind a line of thousands and then send them an RFP. (Request For Proposal)

And whatever your RFP is for is going to have to be so lowly priced because it will be so competitive that your profit margin will be pretty low.

I know advertising is in a subset of marketing; when you are advertising, you are marketing but you can be marketing when you are are not necessarily advertising. Is there any main difference between Advertising and Marketing?

Marketing is a broad term for satisfying consumers wants and needs (with a profit for your company). This involves the 4Ps, or in today’s terms it is 5 Ps - Product, Promotion (Advertising), Place (Distribution), Price, and People(Target Market).

So, essentially, advertising may be seen as part of the promotional aspect of your marketing mix.

I hope this helps.

I was having dilemma which major to choose about two years ago. My father told me without the knowledge of economics you wouldn’t be able to conduct business so I took economics. I don’t know how things are going down in states because I live in Canada but when I checked for admission requirement criteria of many universities, Business was much harder to get in than economics. Why is that?

Business seems to be the most popular major at almost every college. Economics is all about theory and studying the exchange of goods and services. Business is more hands on and creative. I think the reason it’s so popular is because a Business degree can be used in so many fields.

My mom is taking me to shopping to buy my promotion dress today. Since it’s a school night, she’s only letting me go to 2-3 stores. I already know that I want to go to Nordstrom and Forever 21, but what would be a 3rd option?

My daughter got hers at Limited Too. Just keep in mind that you shouldn’t be trying to dress too grown-up or too slutty for a graduation. You want to look classy and smart here.

(We were appalled by the way some of the girls were dressed on graduation night. Ew!)

I’m starting a web design firm and we’re trying to research the market in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I don’t really know where to go to get the statistics and the data about the market here. What resources are available? I am looking for stats like how many start up companies are there per year in the SF bay area? how frequently do businesses redesign their websites? how many web design firms are there in the bay area? that sort of thing….any suggestions?

Dwight DJ has some good points (see up). You can also do some primary data research by conducting your own surveys, questionaires and focus group. Or you can pretend to be a student and visit existing firms and pretend that you are doing a huge huge project that will decide whether you graduate or not and start digging in questions like the data that they use for their market research and who their sources were, and other data that you need.

Or go to the local university or college design/computing/business department and ask whether they know a thing or two.

btw, are you hiring? lol

How is Market Segmentation necessary to run the business in a globally competitive environment? Describe levels of Market Segmentation as well.

Market segmentation is basically identifying how much the market in each country will bear. The American pharmaceutical industry is a great example of this. A drug that sells for $1000 per month in the US can sell for $50 per month in the third world.

Why, you might ask would anyone selling a $1000 item, sell it for $50? Good question! Consider that the drug (after development costs) can be produced for $10 per month. If the product is sold in the third world at $50 then the company is better off by $40, because, at the price the drug is sold in the US, the drug simply would not sell. Better to sell at a $40 profit than to wait for a $990 profit that will never happen!

Very hard to guess what you mean here. "Marketing service" does not seem to apply to what sounds more like you need a job in a medical billing setting.

If you want to market a product which is related to medical billing to doctors, please remember that the doctor himself does not have the time to deal with billing as an issue.

But if you are effectively asking how you get a job in such field, I would go to the school that taught you the medical technology terminology and coding. And if you have not done that yet, you are not ready for a job in medical billing. That’s a very specialized field these days, and takes a few months at least of schooling to learn to do properly. There may even be a government program to pay you to go to such a school. (There was last summer; my guess is with a Democratic congress, they will not dare cut it.) Then a certification program makes a job in the field practically yours for the picking.

If you really were talking about marketing a product, please reword your question and try again.

I’m curious to know what you think is the best way to generate traffic online for any online business. Please share what you are doing TODAY to generate traffic and what you tried in the past that did not work for you. Thank you!

On my end I pretty much stuck with content along with SEO optimization. I just make sure that my content is what the traffic is looking for - up to date, easy to read, something that tells them what to do and what they should expect.

Hand in hand with that I look at keyword(s) that I think attract a lot of attention. I use Google Keyword tool for this. It’s free, and I’ve heard others don’t like it but for me it works well enough.

Link sharing is something I also try to use as much as I can.

I have a student who is serious about getting into advertising - he has a degree but would go back to school to study if need be. What kind of trainings should he look for, or in what area of advertising is it easiest to break into?

If your student wants to break into the creative side of advertising, tell him that he should go to a "portfolio school." He’ll be able to refine his creative skills and leave with a "book" that will be his resume to get a creative job at an advertising agency or at an in-house advertising department.

If he wants to break into account management or media, then I would suggest he start in advertising sales. Tell him to start at a newspaper or radio station, or anywhere selling advertisements. Eventually he is going to make contacts that will get him into an advertising agency if he wants to, or maybe he’d like staying in sales.

Wish him good luck for me!

I am a writer who has filed business write-offs on my personal tax return for 5 years as per the law. I have not made profits in those years. I have been advised by my accountant that tax regulations do not favor my continuing to file business write-off because I have not made a profit so should close out the writing business. How do I go about filing my taxes now? Do I just ignore the past years write offs as thought they were never deductions?

As the other poster mentioned, if you have any income from writing, it will need to be reported, regardless of your write offs. Even if you just report the writing income this year without deducting any related expenses, there’s a fairly good chance that you’re going to be audited for one of the prior years. You’re going to need to prove that you had profit motive for operating this business. Truthfully, I think you’re going to have a really hard time proving that your writing was a real business and not a hobby, but that discussion is best left to you and your accountant.