The quarter has started! This is the blog for my personal journal in Strategic Marketing C570 at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. The purpose of this blog is to reflect on the content I am learning in this course.
To begin, week 1 is the introduction to marketing. Here are my deliverables for this week:
To begin, week 1 is the introduction to marketing. Here are my deliverables for this week:
- Read Ch 1 in "The Marketing Plan Handbook" (done)
- Read "Marketing Myopia" by Levitt
- Set up personal journal/blog (done)
- Watch Jeff Bezos video (done)
- Watch John's prezi (done)
- Contribute to wiki (done)
- Add a marketing podcasts for my stitcher favorites (Marketing over coffee and Bean)
- Touch base with team (done)
- Check out software that came with the book
Marketing is a topic that has interested me for a while. While at college, I took a marketing class for my business minor and really enjoyed learning about the marketing that is going around me all the time. I thrive on understanding how the world works around me and utilizing that information.
Bezos Video
This week while watching the Bezos video, I took the following notes:
- Bugs/mistakes during the early days. Programed a bell to ring for each sale.
- Started off all orders were from family members until the first stranger ordered.
- Everything I know:
- Obsess over customers
- Customers 1st
- Pay attention to competitors, but most of energy goes to customers
- Invent
- Do not accept either/or thinking when a problem presents itself
- Do not accept either/or thinking when a problem presents itself
- Invent on behalf of customers
- Customers wont/can't tell you everything
- Think long term
- Projects could take a long time to pan out for shareholders (5-7 years)
- It's always day 1
- Always new things to do
It was very interesting to get this kind of advice directly from someone like Jeff Bezos. As an avid user of Amazon.com, I can see these principles directly in action. Looking at the Kindle and the Kindle fire I see Amazon putting all 4 of these items in practice. I'm sure it was not an easy thing to do to make compete against their book sales with a digital reader. They probably were looking long term and predicted the future of reading and media consumption when they decided to canabalize their book sales with an e-reader.
This is exactly what the Marketing Myopia article is about. Bezos looked at Amazon and asked "what business are we really in?". I can bet you that he didn't say "selling printed books". Amazon is in content distribution business. One aspect is delivering media (ie books) to consumers in an effective way. They furthered this with the Kindle.
Application of Marketing Principles
There are a couple reasons I am excited about the study of marketing right now. The first is because my current role is within innovation and product development where I am involved with the marketing and communications department when we launch new products. The topics covered in this course will have direct application to the new product development projects that I am managing.
The second reason is because my wife has a business selling decorative pillowcases, tshirts and other items on etsy. The last month has really taken off for her store and I'd like to work with her to ride the wave by improving the store's marketing and drive more traffic and sales to her business using the tools and concepts in this class.
