Week 5
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Marketing: Growing the BusinessDistinguishing Yourself From the Competition
Returning to your role as an organizational consultant to RPZ Marketing, your current challenge is to help it figure out how to distinguish itself from its competitors.
CEO Regina believes the best approach is an integrated one—offering clients traditional marketing plus social media marketing.
Ravin James, director of business development, would prefer to focus on the company’s social marketing strengths and pour the bulk of its efforts into becoming a social media innovator.
As you watch this week’s scenario, remember how important critical thinking is to evaluating the situation and coming up with alternatives for Regina and Ravin to consider. How can the company best distinguish itself from its competitors? What do you need to find out and take into consideration before you make your recommendation?While the word marketing has often been used as a synonym for advertising, business professionals typically use this term to describe a much broader group of functions. Marketing encompasses a company’s total effort to distinguish itself from its competitors.
Some of the most significant changes in marketing approaches in the twenty-first century have come about as a direct result of the growth of the Internet. The development and maintenance of corporate Web sites, for example, are almost always viewed as functions directed by marketing. Consumers can still use traditional methods to shop in stores, or they can go online to compare and buy products or services.
This week, we’ll explore the many different ways marketing creates relationships with buyers and helps grow the business.
TO DO LIST
What You Need To Know: Dig into articles explaining the transformation of marketing from a discrete function to an organization strategy, read one author’s predictions about the future of marketing, and watch the RPZ scenario video.
Discussion: Participate in a weekly discussion activity in Yellowdig.
Discussion OverviewIn this week’s discussion, you will choose among three options: respond to the scenario video presented in the What You Need to Know activity, create a plan for how you would market yourself, or share which readings this week are most relevant to you.
What You Need to KnowStrategic Marketing
When marketing became more of an organizational strategy than a discrete function, it also became a competitive advantage. These articles help explain when and how that happened.
Kirova, V. (2017). Exploring the role of strategic marketing department. Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness, 11(2), 27–38.
In this piece, Kirova provides a grounding in the evolution and current state of strategic marketing in various industries.
Quinn, L., Dibb, S., Simkin, L., Canhoto, A., & Analogbei, M. (2016). Troubled waters: The transformation of marketing in a digital world. European Journal of Marketing, 50(12), 2103–2133.
With the growth of the digital age, marketing is being pushed to understand, handle, and make use of the abundant data available. Pay attention to the many examples of how marketing is being transformed by data provided here.
The Future of Marketing
Where is marketing headed? This author claims it’s heading toward creating long-lasting relationships with clients and argues for the need to move away from more traditional marketing methods.
Mohammad, A. G. (2019). Entrepreneurial marketing: The missing link in social enterprise studies. Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research, 9(1), 1–12.
RPZ Scenario
In this week’s scenario, RPZ’s CEO and marketing director attempt to define what distinguishes their company from their competitors. As you watch and listen, remember how important critical thinking is to evaluating any situation. What do you need to find out and consider before you make your recommendation?
Defining Competitive Advantage.
Write Your Discussion Post
Instructions
For this week’s discussion, choose one of the following for your post:
Answer the question from this week’s RPZ scenario video, Defining Competitive Advantage:
What is the best way for RPZ to talk about or market themselves and why?
Create a video or a plan of how you would market yourself (you are the product—you are marketing yourself). There is a lot of competition, so how do you stand out, what do you share, and what tools do you use?
Share which of the readings this week offered information you can immediately use at school, home, or work.
Response Guidelines
As you respond to your classmates, share your ideas, experiences, and anecdotal feedback regarding their posts. How have your personal experiences resonated with their ideas? What can you add to their ideas, building upon the connections you have made to the material so far? Don’t forget you can love or like their posts as well.
Do the following when writing your post:
Do not create your post as a reply to this pinned post. Instead, use Yellowdig’s Create option to create a new post.
Label your post with the hashtag for the week (#Week 5) so that others can sort posts by the week’s topic.
If you wish, include links to credible or scholarly articles, videos, images, or other Web resources. These resources could be used to support your post or provide examples.
You may also choose to create a slideshow or use audio or video as your discussion post.
For help using Yellowdig, please see Using Yellowdig [PDF] and Grading in Yellowdig [PDF]. Or visit Yellowdig Forums, Capella’s Campus support page for Yellowdig, with links for technical support.
