As Seen On TV - Infomercial Products

Infomercials have been around for along time. Have you ever caught yourself glued to the TV watching and listening to information on a new TV product? We have all seen these ads and I am sure most of us have some of these products in our homes. I know I have several. Wow, will that really clean my floors and make them look new again? Use water to steam away all those germs. Only five minutes a day and you will lose weight! How can you not want to try these products? Only $19.99 or 5 easy installments of $29.99.

A number of celebrities endorse these products. One product that has been around for awhile is The Thighmaster endorsed by Suzanne Somers. She also endorses other exercise machines such as torso track, beauty products and even appliances. Suzanne has made a real impression in infomercial world.

Celebrities definitely help these products to sell. These are people we can relate to and if they are endorsing a product and putting their name to the infomercial product it must be worth buying, right?

Some infomercial products have turned the spokesperson like Ron Popeil into a celebrity. Most people know who he is. When I hear his name "Set It and Forget It" comes to mind. Get rid of that fat from your foods and walk away while your food cooks. I have one of his rotisserie and I have to admit I love it! The food comes out real moist and tasty. Ron has come out with a whole line of helpful kitchen products.

George Foreman also got into "Get Rid Of The Fat" products. I also have his George Forman grill which is awesome for making sandwiches, hamburgers, cooking bacon and I find it easy to clean. It seems every year he perfects his product with a new line.

I do like infomercials and get easily drawn in. Sure some are just ridiculous gadgets that we really do not need and just end up in the back of the closet after a few uses. What about the products that you see advertised all the time and have been around for awhile? They must be living up to their ad and do what they say if some many people are still purchasing.

Television is a very powerful way to advertise a product and have it endorse by a celebrity and the product can become an instant hit. The internet has become another tool for advertising these products. The web makes it even easier for us to purchase. If you walked into the tail end of an infomercial you can find out more about it online. Do a search for the product name and you should be able to find it on the web. You can even find sites that have short clips of the product in action. What will be the hot As Seen On TV Product this year????

How to market? (A complete guide for Indians!)

Here we have provided a complete guide on “how to market” for Indians. You may be interested in marketing your business, a particular product or an event that you are about to organize. This guide is for you!

Though this guide, we have talked about all the “basic aspects” of marketing. This guide will give you a general procedure of what is involved in marketing, the complete process and how you have to go about pricing, advertising, packaging, delivering etc. your product or service.

This guide is especially written for Indians. We have tried to provide information about the people that make up our country, how they think, what appeals to them etc. We have especially concentrated on the Indian middle class. This is the largest group of the Indian population. They have been the largest group of consumers for quite some time now. In the future, as the country keeps growing, our Indian middle class is going to be one of the largest markets in the world.

Though this guide we have tried to provide a general understanding of the Indian middle class, what appeals to them, etc.

How to manage your money?

This guide is mainly written for young people. Boys and girls, who just start earning know little about tax, mutual funds, PPF etc. However, it can still be used by people who already know about money management too. It covers all the basics in an easy to understand, simplified way!

If you know someone who has just started earning and will find this information useful, please do recommend it to them.

Introduction

This guide is a little sad! When you get your first salary, the last thing on your mind is “investing” and “tax” and other such issues. You probably want to use your salary to buy yourself something or spend the money on entertainment, watching movies, partying etc. However, this guide is going to tell you that you need to manage your money. You can enjoy yourself, but you also need to save and invest and use your money properly. So I guess the obvious question is...

How to make a “complete” marketing plan or strategy?

Whether you are a small business or a big organization, forming a marketing strategy is essential. It gives you a clear understanding about what you plan to achieve though your marketing plan and how you plan to achieve it.

Without forming a marketing plan you may spend on different methods of marketing but you will not see the proportional returns in the form of sales or whatever it is your marketing plan is supposed to do. Without a marketing plan you are shooting at a target in the dark.

What does a marketing plan or marketing strategy consists of?

Well, a marketing plan is made up of two parts:

• Identifying and choosing a “target market”
• Deciding various aspects of the “marketing mix”

How to identify your target market? & Why?

What is the target market?

As discussed earlier, the country's consumers can be divided into so many different consumer groups. Based on which consumer groups they lie in, the consumers will have different needs. Also they will find different things that appeal to them. So before you launch a marketing campaign, you need to identify which set of people does your business cater to?

What we mean by this is, that you need to know who are your customers? What kind of life do they live? Who influences their buying decision? What kinds of media are they exposed to? How much purchasing power do they have? Etc. etc.

Knowing this information, you can target your marketing campaign to appeal especially to this group of customers you have chosen.

Many a times, you may find that the product or service you are offering is consumed by not only one group of people. You may find that your product has many varied uses and hence has many varied possible consumers. Because of this you may want to choose more than one group of people as your target market. DO NOT DO THIS! I repeat DO NOT DO THIS!

Your marketing strategy will fail if you try to be everything to everybody. When you make a marketing strategy you have to choose only one group of people and design your marketing strategy so that it appeals to the group you have selected.

If you have many groups of people to choose from, choose only the group of people that you can best cater too and will offer you the best opportunities to grow. For example, if you are a small firm that makes women’s perfumes, your target market could be teenage girls, house wifes, rich women who can afford to spend highly on perfumes and other such accessories etc. You could choose any one of these customer groups as your target market. Suppose you choose the rich women group then your marketing plan will be designed to appeal to rich women. The price of your perfume will be high. Your ads will be designed to appeal to rich women etc. These ads cannot simultaneously appeal to younger middle class women also.

If you come up with a marketing strategy to appeal to more than one target group of customers, your strategy will not be effective. Your sales will be eaten away by specialist products or specialist marketing strategies.

Just consider the case of shampoo. If some one is looking for a shampoo to deal with their dandruff problem, they are more likely to buy a shampoo which says "Anti-dandruff shampoo" than a shampoo that says, "Hair shine, Hair strength and Anti-Dandruff" shampoo. This point will be explained later again in more detail.

The thing to understand is that the first step to making a marketing strategy is to select the “target market” for whom the marketing campaign is to be designed.

How to identify who your target market is?

Most of the people who are reading this already have a running business. Now they probably would like to market their business so that they can expand and grow. For you people (who already have a running business), it is very easy to identify who your target market is. What you have to do is run a little research about all your existing customers. If you are a retailing unit, you could find out who are the people who purchase form you.

Once you have a general idea about the people who purchase from you, you need to classify them into different groups. Finally you will have a general idea about the different kinds of customers that buy from you. Finally, you have to choose one of these groups as your target market. You may choose the biggest group or you may choose the group with the greatest buying power etc. and decide on it to be your target group.

Like in the above example, assuming you are a small business who makes shampoos. You may classify your customers as people who buy your shampoo to strengthen their hair and prevent hair from falling or buy your shampoo to reduce their dandruff or people who buy your shampoo because it is made up of natural oils which appeals to them etc.

You should identify how large these different groups are and which group you are comfortable with. Which group of people your shampoo will really be able to satisfy. Once you choose that group you have your target market. Then the next step is to design your marketing mix to appeal to this group of customers. How to do this? We have explained everything on the next few pages.....