Question

ABC Zimbabwe Limited is a private company wholly(100%) owned by a Zimbabwean with its headoffice in Harare.The company is into the manufacturing and selling of earth moving equipment to the mines,construction companies and the government in the country and the COMESA region.You have been appointed as the marketing manager for ABC Zimbabwe Limited and your first task is to present a single paper to management identifying and recommending the type of marketing channels the organisation would use,the function of the marketing channels and the criteria you would use to select the channels if any?

Answer 1

ABC Company is in the business of selling earth-moving equipment to large enterprises - typically mining companies, construction companies and the Government of Zimbabwe and neighbouring nations.

This is a typical large B2B business which will require and intensive and integrated marketing and sales approach as opposed to large scale demand generation through product awareness.

Businesses are increasingly being targetted online through a very intensive Lead Generation/Management processes that target key decision makers in enterprises. In this case we should be looking closely at the purchase and procurement departments of major industry verticals we should be targetting - mining and construction. The context of business allows us to document and list all possible potential customers through publicly available companies data and contact them periodically through available channels such as phone, email sms etc.

Digital media will be a key marketing channel for this business as all decision makers could be accessed through professional networks (such as LinkedIn). A propoer Lead Management process will need to be instituted which tracks business right from prospecting to sales closure and post-sales CRM. A strong pre-sales process is an essential part of the overall Lead Management system to ensure that the right knowledge about our products is disseminated. A key milestone wthin this would be a proof of concept - sometimes through a product demo, which should be the objective of the pre sales team.

A critical channel within the digital ecosystem would be Inbound marketing through SEO/SEM - this will effectively target those who are actively searching for information related to the category already. Such customers need to be provided genuine content regarding the product and category so they can make more informed purchase decisions. Our own website, landing pages etc. are good starting points to capture this kind of traffic.

It is also important for us to create the awareness for our brands and products in the appropriate industry fora. We will need to identify and partner with the leading industry bodies in the category - participation in industry events, exhibitions, thought leadership events etc. to ensure that the brand is visible in the right places where members of the target segment congregate.

The focus on these marketing channels would be adequate for bbuilding the business and efforts should be made at a strong execution.