What Makes Personal Marketing Work?
Personal marketing is a marketing technique in which sales personnel visit customers and market the products directly. Personal selling provides a personal appeal, allowing customers to ask questions and receive immediate feedback. The move to use personal selling in the market ensures that customers are knowledgeable about the products they intend to purchase.
Dove and Axe successfully built their brand equity because they are the only representatives of Unilever Company in the personal care division. The company relies on the two to expand its market and reap more revenue because of increased sales. Dove has been able to establish a unique brand that has attracted clients for over a decade. The marketing campaign initiated by Dove has generated profits for Unilever. On the other hand, Axe has received numerous awards because of its unique and effective marketing strategies. Axe understands how the company values personal marketing. Axe has been able to exploit this channel to reach out to more clients (Armstrong et al., 2015).
Effectiveness of Marketing Campaigns
Marketing campaigns are initiated to achieve specific goals and targets. A marketing campaign is said to be effective if it can realize organizational goals. Marketing campaigns such as personal selling and public relations should be able to generate new sales and increase overall revenues. The campaign should also create customer loyalty and improve the company’s brand. The campaigns should be able to correct the dented image of the company. These marketing campaigns should be able to provide feedback to the organization, which can be used to improve products. An effective marketing campaign should be able to widen the market served by the company and generate a competitive advantage for the company. At the end of marketing, the company’s position in the market should improve, and its response to customer issues should be swift (Boone & Kurtz, 2013).
Conflict of Interest
Unilever Company has shown a conflict of interest in the manner in which it is marketing to young men and women. One of the marketing campaigns conducted by the company used Axe products that targeted men. The campaign uses posters of men who use Axe products to attract women who are perceived as beautiful. In this campaign, men are depicted as being attracted to slim, tall, and beautiful women. The other campaign is designed to reach women with the message of real beauty. The intended message of the second promotional campaign is the opposite of the first campaign. In this case, the company uses Axe products to create a conflict of interest, urging men to date tall and beautiful women while convincing women to embrace inner beauty. Therefore, The marketing campaigns portray the company as interested in two market segments by developing different campaign messages for its customer base (Keller & Kotler, 2016).
Recommendations
Unilever needs to understand the importance of developing quality marketing ads that communicate the right message. The marketing campaign has created controversy, which could lead to product boycotts by its customers. As such, the company should consider redoing the entire marketing campaign to ensure that the right message is communicated and real beauty is depicted in a manner that does not create controversy. The company should additionally analyze future marketing campaigns to ensure that it does not generate a conflict of interest between its customers and the public (Kotabe & Helsen, 2014).
References
Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M., & Brennan, R. (2015). Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education.
Boone, L. E., & Kurtz, D. L. (2013). Contemporary marketing. Cengage learning.
Keller, K. L., & Kotler, P. (2016). Marketing management. Pearson.
Kotabe, M., & Helsen, K. (2014). Global marketing management.
