Marketing vocabulary of the day: "marketing-oriented"

If an organisation is described as marketing-oriented, it means that its activities are focused on satisfying customer needs. This contrasts with a sales-oriented organisation, whose primary focus is sales.

Example usage: "We’re a marketing-oriented company. That means that everything we do is geared towards providing a service that satisfies our customers’ needs."

Just how good would the Mad Men be today?

Mad Men, probably my favourite TV show at the moment (except maybe True Blood ...), is back for its fourth series, and the folks over at Hubspot have done an interesting piece on why the Mad Men approach to advertising just wouldn't cut it in 2010. There's a webinar to accompany it, too, but I haven't had the chance to watch it yet in full.

Click.

Marketing vocabulary of the day: 'idea screening'

Idea screening is the process of evaluating product/service ideas for an organisation, based on its resources.

Example usage: "After successful idea screening, we decided to develop the concept of a new range of ethical financial products."

Out of office

I'm away in Barcelona on holiday for the next week or so. More posts to follow soon.

Marketing vocabulary of the day: 'Five Forces analysis'

A Five Forces analysis (commonly known as Porter's Five Forces) is a technique used to analyse the competitive environment of an organisation.

Example usage:

Gavin: I was just wondering if we need to do some more analysis of the competitive environment.

Jessica: Uh-huh.

Gavin: You know, get a better insight into the competition in our industry.

Jessica: OK. What were you thinking specifically?

Gavin: Could you do a Five Forces analysis?

Jessica: Oh, Porter’s Five Forces?

Gavin: Yeah. Have you done one before?

Marketing vocabulary of the day: 'ethical business'

Ethical business is business which is conducted taking into account issues of morality, e.g. marketing to children, labour conditions, etc.

Example sentence: "I want a bank which believes doing ethical business is more

important than making money."

Marketing vocabulary of the day: 'demographic data'

Demographic data is information collected relating to population characteristics such as age, gender, race and income.

Example sentence: "It would be useful to get some demographic data, too – you know, what stage of the family life cycle people are at, that kind of thing."

Marketing vocabulary of the day: 'click-through rate'

The click-through rate is the percentage of people who follow a link from an email or advert out of those who view it.

Example sentence: "The click-through rate from our email campaigns to our website has been falling steadily all year. People are just not responding."