Marketing

Suggestions for new DLC projects.
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buells
Level 4 user
Posts: 124
Joined: Sun May 25, 2014 7:38 pm

Marketing

Post by buells »

A few ideas to throw out there:

1. Allow marketing outside of retail stores. Suppose I have a subsidiary that owns all my retail stores and the parent company owns the factories. The sub tends to underinvest in marketing my products because it doesn't receive the full benefit to justify the cost. This problem arises whenever you don't have vertical integration into retail. In-store marketing should be focused on promoting the actual stores. This could be channeled through an expanded system for retail demand bonus / store traffic. Each retail chain in a city could have its own brand rating tied to customer satisfaction, balanced supply and demand, and promotional spending.

2. Marketing campaigns: My new marketing department should be able to launch targeted campaigns with some upfront investment to drive up or repair my brand rating in a given city. These could be ad campaigns, viral marketing, brand ambassadors, etc. The effectiveness could depend on CMO ability (which could be further broken up such that some CMOs excel at certain types of marketing), product quality, suitability for the product (viral marketing might work well with soft drinks but not with chairs). The effectiveness should be limited by the availability of the product in the city (brand rating should not rise as much if no one can buy the product). More targeted marketing strategies such as social media or cable television advertising might work better with more niche products (like golf clubs). Network TV advertising, billboards, etc. may work better for mass appeal products like Cola or Beds. Different strategies might have different cost intensities.

3. Sales / Discounting: Retail stores could adopt a pricing policy that draws in more demand. Basically the options could be every day low prices or periodic promotional pricing. This may get kind of complicated, but it would be that revenue per unit sold would periodically be lower if you adopt the latter strategy. For simplicity, this process could be fully automated. The question of what the benefits and drawbacks of this should be is more complicated and would require some thought.

4. Packaging: A new packaging unit should be created in factories allowing you to get a brand advantage from packaging your products. The packaging should amplify the effects of your branding strategy (good or bad). More customization options can perhaps be added to integrate with the positioning feature described below.

5. Social responsibility: Some dynamics could be created that cause certain decisions to impact your brand rating. Maybe if your factories have low training, periodically environmental incidents could occur. Maybe occasionally workers will complain about poor conditions. These kind of events could hurt your brand rating.

6. Positioning: It may be too hard to have different consumer preferences within one city, but different cities, for example, could respond differently to different positioning. Maybe you position your jeans as comfortable or stylish, for example. Consumers preferring stylish jeans may be less price sensitive and more brand / quality sensitive than their counterparts. This could potentially be the most revolutionary aspect of this with ample opportunities for integration with my other suggestions, but I suspect it is also the hardest to implement. (Could be integrated, say, to allow for socially conscious products such as "Organic" food and "Green" automobiles. Green automobiles may require special technology, etc.)
jared_allister1
Level 3 user
Posts: 79
Joined: Sat Apr 30, 2016 5:19 pm

Re: Marketing

Post by jared_allister1 »

That all sounds awesome!
Depuyi12
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jul 22, 2019 6:32 am

Re: Marketing

Post by Depuyi12 »

I am just so happy to take a look at this post and it has given me very nice ideas for marketing.
lagrelax
Level 3 user
Posts: 50
Joined: Wed Sep 12, 2018 8:58 pm

Re: Marketing

Post by lagrelax »

For your fist point, you can create a warehouse and input a small amount of your goods and stop the purchase, then you can advertising on them. This is the classic 'showroom' strategy.
buells
Level 4 user
Posts: 124
Joined: Sun May 25, 2014 7:38 pm

Re: Marketing

Post by buells »

Lagrelax, that's a good idea. It would still be nice if it could be made easier, especially with COOs/CMOs etc. doing marketing.
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