Writing Business Documents

Hi, our fellow readers…..long time no see….
Today I am going to address the problem that haunted not only an MBA student but also a professional.

Writing A Business Document!!

Do you often think that writing business documents is very agonizing? Is it difficult to tell your point directly without getting lost in a lot of explanations?? No worries lads, today MBA League is giving you the secret to write a clear and straightforward business documents. This is the first lesson, so you have to stay tune for the very next update……now let’s start our journey ……
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The first thing you need to know before writing a business document is what are you trying to say and the audience of the document…..most of us do not think the audience is pretty important, that is where we are wrong…Furthermore, It is pretty easy to know what we are trying to say, heck you are writing it for a reason, but it is difficult to find the essence of the writing itself.

The essence of the writing is the meaning behind those words, is it to inform, to motivate or to persuade…These three are very different in any sense, so you need to take care of your word of choice, tone and formality based on that. Let’s say don’t just give the product detail specification if you want to persuade people to buy it, you do not want to only inform them but to persuade them. For that reason, you need to plan your business documents carefully to prevent sending a wrong message.

There are four basic aspects that you guys need to grasp before writing a business document, the plan, audience, message, and word choice. Let’s talk about the plan first. Plan is not what you want to fulfill because of your responsibility, like assignment or job task, but what you want to accomplish through this document. That is why content is very important. The content is not only what belongs to the document but also what does not belong to it. A lot of MBA students forget the latter and get confused when they are trapped in the middle of the chaos they made themselves.

Basically, knowing what does not belong to the documents will make the paper more straightforward and clear. There will not be ambiguity or double meaning in it. So, knowing the content is the first thing that you need to do before planning to write a business document. The next thing you have to do is trying to meet the audience expectation through this document. If they want a thorough analysis or detailed specification just give it to them. Please remember that the document is not for you, it is for the audience. The document is a bridge for you to accomplish your purpose…

That is our lesson for today…see you tomorrow for the next lesson …the audience ; )      

ClaudyaLita

Catching the Customers Eye

Attracting customers is what we need to do as marketers. However, it is not an easy job. Marketers need to emphasize the uniqueness of the product while convince the customers that the products also have similarities with others. KFC “Jagonya Ayam” or Nike “Just Do It” is amazing slogan that makes the customers instantly think of the products when they heard it. Regardless, sweat and tears are needed to create these two or three words slogan and a tailored marketing support to kick the promotion. So, the question is how to create kickass slogan that will imprint in the customers mind.

Slogan or brand is a product of positioning. As MBA students all of us should be familiar with the term. In short, it is where we want the put the product in the market and customers eyes. Having clear positioning will ease the marketing team effort to build brand awareness, shady one will not go nowhere even with a lot of financial support like old time saying we cannot have it all, so choose one.

Even though positioning is a part of marketing, it has the formula to make it easier for the marketers to create one. The formula is:

To – mention the target customers in the first few words to emphasize the position of the products.

Brand- mentioning the brand so the customer will be familiar with it. For Example: Orang Pintar minum Tolak Angin.

Frame of reference – this is the similarity of this product with competitors or in short it is point of parity.

Unique selling proposition – emphasize of what makes the product different. This is important to hit the target right to the point not walking around the bush.

Comparison – Comparing the product with competitors, not really important if the marketers already created creative unique selling point that hit the bull’s eye.

Reason to believe – Showing why the customer should believe what the product claimed it good to be.

By using this formula, marketers can depict the right words to lead the customer imagination of how the product should be perceived. Now, how about you all use this guidance to create your own unique slogan?

written by Claudya

The Marketing Process

What are the common mistakes of MBA students? It is not a surprise if one of them is thinking that a promotional tool is a marketing process or marketing process stops in creating the promotional tools. That is really wrong because promotional tools are a part of marketing process and the marketing process does not stop there. Many students are too focused on the promotional tools that they become advertisers inevitably not marketers. So, what is marketing process? And what is the difference between marketing process and advertizing? Now, let’s look at marketing process first.

Marketing process has no start and no end as its basic principle. Keep in mind that the end is always evaluation to create more distinctive activities for each process [Exhibit 1]. The purpose of these distinctive tailored activities is to support the company competitive advantage, so it will not be imitated by competitor easily.  That is also why students need to be supported by valid and reliable data when they create marketing process. This data will lead them to a specific answer. “Never assume anything” is the last rule of marketing process, especially in research and strategy process. Gather all the data needed, analyzes them then create something from them is the best way to create marketing process. Sporting the most innovative idea for the promotion will be useless without valid and reliable data. Now, you already understand what marketing process is; it is a cycle that has to be repeated in order to get better and better each time. So, what are the differences between marketing process and promotional tool?

As most MBA students know, every company needs to create profit. It is the requirement of survival. For that reason, we can conclude that marketing process and promotional tools have similar purpose which is to generate company profit. However, they have different job in the company. Molding customer perception is what marketers do while changing customer perception is what advertisers do. For example, Apple marketers not only have to convince potential customers to believe that Apple products are innovative and reliable with technical specification that suitable with target market, but also unique [think different as slogan].On the other hand, advertisers have to push the potential customers to buy the products by putting advertisements in the most strategic places and using the most influential icon that is appropriate with the target market.    

Now you already understand what is marketing process and, the differences between marketing process and promotional tools. You might be wondering what you need to do to create a good marketing plan to start a good marketing process [realistically speaking marketing process only applied for companies, we as a student should be satisfied with marketing plan]. It might be a surprise but valid and reliable data is the most important thing in creating marketing plan. Having these data shape the purpose of the marketing plan itself. It shows the customer segmentation in a cluster so it is pretty easy to choose the segment that the students want to pursue. Moreover, it will give a big picture of what is the real product that the target market is looking for. Students must think of what the target market want to get. Creating the product that meets customers need and adding more value in it are a success guarantee for a marketing plan.

By: Claudya Lita Grace

Intriguing Marketing Cases or Are They ????

Dealing with marketing cases intrigues MBA students in regular basis. Having too many information to compartmentalize while demanding the right creative solution from the students speak the nature of marketing cases. Creative students find it hard to keep on track with the information overload and analytical students have difficulties in creating the on point approaches to the problem. So, what is the solution of this problem? Looking at the students’ behavior when facing marketing cases, it can be seen that most students are trapped in the problem analysis at the end of the cases. If you are one of them then now is the time to change. Problems at the end of the cases are not what you should pay attention to. It is helpful in some way but not the main purpose of the cases. Detecting the real purposes of the cases will lead the students to the right solution on track. Now the question is how to detect the main purpose with this many information. The answer of this question lays in how the students read the cases.

Many MBA students read marketing cases like reading novels, straight from the first page until the end or read the problem then find the answers like doing exams. However, it is not the right approach for marketing cases. The cases are not mathematical problems when the answers are clear and not also IELTS or TOEFL reading passages that have the answers written accordingly. In marketing cases, students should be able to find hidden meaning behind lines. For example, expanding decision might relate to change in customer preference or failed innovation because of the middle man (you will be surprise to know the power of plumbers in real estate market).  For that reason, MBA students should treat marketing cases differently from their reading tendency. The first step to do that is by acting as the person in charge in the cases not as a student.

Acting as the person in charge lead students to think and act realistically. In addition, knowing the roles and position of the lead actor will help students to eliminate unimportant information. The next thing MBA students should do is skimming the cases. It might be a surprise because skimming is not even a decent reading activity. However, skimming is one of the best techniques to deal with marketing cases. Skimming by reading the first and the last page of the cases will help students in understanding the case as a whole and finding the right information. The first page mostly explains the nature of the cases. It briefly explains the company, the industry and the market. Subsequently, the last page is a pointer to find out what kind of information the students should have.  After reading these two pages, students should gather all the information needed based on the pointers in the last page, read all the pages meticulously to find the right information. To sum up, skimming to gather the right information and understand the nature of the case is very important to keep students on track. Now, we are moving to the third step, finding the right problem.

It is stated earlier that the questions in the last page are not the real problems. The real problems hide inside the cases. Hindering students to find the real problems is what the writer supposed to do. So, how to detect the real problem? The problem will be transparent if students recognize the real vision of the company. No, it is not the written vision but it is the company long-term objective. To put it simple, it is what the company wants to accomplish in the future, what they want to gain or what kind of attention they want to pursue. Consequently, the problems are issues that thwart the company to achieve its goal. This step is relatively easy if the students already think like leading role in the cases, and understand the nature of the company and industry. By doing that, they will be able to portray the real vision of the company based on their role and find the problem based on their understanding of the industry. This third step help student to create the creative but straightforward solution for the cases.

In a whole, doing these three steps, acting as the leading role, skimming to gather the right information and understand the nature of the company, and finding the right problems, are what MBA students need to do to conquer the marketing cases.

Written by ClaudyaLita an SBM-ITB MBA student