What is Tween Marketing?

Tween Marketing usually referes to the promotion of products and services to young people between the ages of six and twelve. This multi-billion dollar industry deals with views and attitudes that are constantly changing. These tweens that use to be happy playing with toys now turn their attention to music, fashion, and their individuality.

Why is this tweenie market so attractive to marketers, well besides the multi-billion dollar price tag? Tweens are young and uninformed about the world of advertising. Tweens are aware of shopping, however, they lack the skills to make informed buying decicions. "Childhood" once was thought of as the post toddler stage to adolescence, now there is a new stage created mostly by the consumer age. Tweenies are easy to target with children oriented advertising strategies. Tweenies have a massive buying power. They have the power to dictate household spending on items such as clothing, activities, foods, drinks, and groceries. Children have a positve response to triggers in advertsing. They are brand savy and make choices based on image, appearance of items and brand names. They believe in upgrading and replacing items in line with trends, and they move rapidly from one purchasing desire to another. Holiday's such as Christmas and Easter are excellent Tween marketing opportunites. During these times Tweens can be persuaded into holding a desire for the latest toy, game, clothing, music, or piece of technology. Highly visual, colorful, musical messages are excellent for Tween marketing and advertising campaigns. From a disposable income perspective, tweens represent the largest audience,segment or group. The tweenies mareket has become hot property in the advertising world. These 6 to 12 year olds are the next generation of consumers.

What is Interactive Marketing

The latest craze in today's marketing feeding frenzy is interactive marketing. This new tool that has been added to the marketers' tool belt is yet another term that gets thrown around with little or no discussion of what it actually is or how it works. Wilkipedia defines interactive marketing as the evolving trend in marketing whereby marketing has moved from a transaction-based effort to a conversation. The definition of interactive marketing comes from John Deighton at Harvard, who says interactive marketing is the ability to address the customer, remember what the customer says and address the customer again in a way that illustrates that we remember what the customer has told us (Deighton 1996).

Interactive marketing takes marketing to a new level. We as marketers are scientist that constantly test human behavior. We want to know how people respond to certain colors, certain ad copy, banners, pop up ads, and any thing else that may get us a sell. Unfortunately, all of this testing tends to become expensive. Sometimes we have to run advertising campaigns blind and then see how the public responds. Yes, we can employ focus groups to test our theories, however, taking a small sample can be mis-leading. For example, lets say that you live near the beach and you decide to go to the ocean. One day while at the ocean you wonder if there are any fish in the ocean so you take a bucket and dip it into the ocean. When you pull your bucket out of the water you find that there are no fish in it, therefore you reason there are no fish in the ocean. We both know that this is a very WRONG conclusion. This is very similar to test groups when dealing with marketing. Sometimes we are just looking in the wrong place. Interactive marketing helps us to deal with this problem. Interactive

marketing allows us to have a dialogue with our customers. It's like mailing a letter to the fish and asking them where they live. We can even take it further and ask what they like and why they like it. Interactive marketing is a chance for marketers to get it right. We can use it to deliver more value to customers by identifying products and services that customers need and want, then deliver those products and services to them. Interactive marketing empowers the buyer. It allows the buyer to have a say in the purchases they make. No more provide it and they will buy it, rather, provide what they want and they will buy it. Well hopefully they will!!!!

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social marketing has become an important part of many a marketer's tool kit. Its metamorphosis into the choice buzzword for today's marketing specialist as they find that social bookmarking and social media websites are valuable sources for their needs. Wilkipedia defines social marketing as the systematic application of marketing along with other concepts and techniques to achieve specific behavioral goals. Social marketing actually began as a way of promoting social good, for example, trying to promote exercise for a growing population of obese citizens. However, its commercial use roots began around the 1970's and has matured into an integrated customer relationship management platform. Social marketing's vast expansion may be contributed to factors such as technological advances, growing market competition, and its relative low cost. The market place has met the demand for our world's increasing need for social outlets with a hybrid of technology/social platforms such as facebook, flicker, twitter, and several others.

These websites have reunited friends, family members, and classmates. I once heard that a dead beat dad was tracked down by his kids on myspace.com. Social media advertising has become a trusted way of learning about a product or service before you actually purchase it. If everybody raves about the product then you tend to think it may be something you want or a

atleast want to know more about. This creates the buzz and buzz is a key concept to social marketing. The bigger the buzz the bigger the views and that means the more impressions for advertisers. Social media marketing gives marketers a chance to interact with their customers/potential customers. This helps to add to the whole experience for the customer, consequently adding value. Social media marketing seems to be the new way of marketing. It should not be feared or underestimated. We should embrace it. It is an extraordinary and relatively low priced multi-channel marketing tool that will continue to flourish as technology advances and people continue to want to be a part of communities and groups.

Guerrilla Marketing Tactics

With increasing advertising cost and greater competition to sell products and services to consumers we, as marketeers, must form new strategies in order to keep our organizations competitive.  In a constantly changing environment we must stay lean and flexible in order to adapt and overcome.  One helpful tool on our tool bet would be the use of Guerrilla Marketing Tactics.  The real magic of guerrilla marketing is taking a calculated marketing pitch and making it seem that it's a spontaneous unique interaction of information.  This new marketing technique has become  popular due to its reliance on energy, creativity, and imagination rather than large marketing budgets.  Guerrilla marketing usually consists of  street stunts, product giveaways, and any other public display that a creative marketeer can think of.  Basically you are trying to get the maximum exposure with the least amount of resources.  There really are no rules to guerrilla marketing that's where we get the name from.  Jay Conread Levinson, author of the book "Guerrilla Marketing:  Secrets for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business" has been credited with the creation of the phrase.  Using guerrilla marketing tactics have allowed small businesses to compete with large corporations.  It is the ultimate in viral marketing sparking interest that gets passed on from person to person until an entire marketing target segment is infected with product buzz and just hopefully they decide to buy the product.  With the constant improvement in technology and the explosion of the Internet superhighway, guerrilla marketing is now being initiated in chat rooms and social blogs.  Extremely determined marketeers, such as myself, have even used text messaging, which is highly effective for parties and events, to spread the word.  Guerrilla marketing may be a new and crude form of marketing, however, it is a deadly weapon in the multi-channel marketing professionals arsenal.