Ford Motor Company: Analysis of Marketing Strategies and Theories

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Ford Motor Company's marketing strategies, encompassing an evaluation of effective promotional techniques and the application of various marketing theories. The report delves into Ford's customer-facing touchpoints, external spaces, and digital platforms, examining the effectiveness of methods like billboards, sales promotions, television advertisements, and digital marketing channels. It explores the use of websites, social media, content marketing, and email marketing, along with third-party techniques like analyst reports and news articles. Furthermore, the report evaluates the execution of marketing theories, specifically focusing on the AIDA model (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) and its practical application within Ford's marketing campaigns. The analysis provides insights into how Ford aims to maximize sales, enhance brand awareness, and build customer loyalty through strategic marketing initiatives.

Principles and practices of
marketing

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY ..................................................................................................................................1
Evaluation and understanding of effective promotional techniques...........................................1
Evaluation and execution of marketing theories.........................................................................5
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Marketing refers to collecting all activities undertaken by the company to promote the
selling and buying of products and services. Marketing is also defined as the systematic
procedure and prominent action through which a company can attract potential customers
towards its products and services to support high-quality messages and the utilization of several
tools and methods. To increase awareness about the brand, products, and services, an essential
aspect for the company is to formulate and implement specific strategies and approaches to
effectively reach to it desire goals and objectives. (Alqahtani and Uslay, 2020). The main aim of
marketing is to provide unique value to customers with the prominent help of content to improve
product value for the more extended period and strengthen brand loyalty and higher sales and
profit.
Moreover, this process was completed with the help of market research, evaluation, and proper
understanding of the audience demand and needs. Marketing has been associated with all the
factors of the company, such as product development, distribution methods along with sales and
advertisement. This report is based on Ford Motor, which is an American-based multinational
auto-maker with headquarter in Dearborn, Michigan, US. The company is specialized in selling
automobiles and commercial vehicles under the frond brand, and it sells most luxury cars under
the Lincoln brand. The below report consists of analysis and understanding of effective
marketing solutions with the usage of strategies and tactical plans and evaluation of the
effectiveness of marketing theories.
MAIN BODY
Evaluating and understanding, effective promotional techniques.
To set the brand or company apart from the competitors in a market place, the companies
use various strategies, and in which promotion is one of the significant factors that provides
support to create awareness within the marketplace. Promotion is described as any marketing
communication which the company undertakes to inform the customer about various benefits
and features of products and services (Bird, Westcott, and Thiesen, 2018). The promotion of
brand is crucial for the company as, without this, a company will not get customers. This is
referred to as one of the marketing tools that supports the audience to purchase goods and
services from the company. This is also used to develop an interest in customers' mindset
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through which the Human Resource team can retain for a more extended period as loyal
customers. With the support of promotion, the company can enhance its public image and
reputation, which is necessary for success and longer sustainability in the marketplace with a
substantial competitive advantage. There are several types of promotional techniques, and some
of them are discussed below, which are used by ford in order to create awareness among
customers.
At customer-facing touchpoints:
Customer-facing touchpoint can be defined as the place at which customers directly with
the brand rather than channels that are the planned interactions (Chernev, 2020.). Ford needs to
understand what those touchpoints are and where they take place for this, and without knowing
the company can't improve touchpoints. It has been done to enhance the customer's experience so
that a better understanding can be provided to the customers and also helps the company to retain
them for a more extended period. The company also analyzes and understands the need for the
interaction touchpoints to formulate a lousy manner, which provides positive outcomes.
External spaces:
External space is the medium through which a company makes their customers aware of
products and services. In addition to this, billboards are also utilized for promoting the
company's brand value with the motive of developing and building a better reputation of the
brand in the marketplace. With the support of such strategies, ford will produce superior
outcomes in terms of higher sales, profit, and brand awareness across the larger geographical
area. Several types of external space promotional methods in which are explained below:
Billboards: This is one of the most potent outside advertisement techniques. Companies
posted their advertisement on billboards and situated them high traffic areas such as alongside
busy roads to be noticed by everyone crossing over there. With the help of such methods a
company can enhance sales by attracting potential customers.
Sales promotion: This is the method associated with all types of marketing tools used to
communicate with customers to increase sales (Dahl, 2018). This promotion has been taking
place through email marketing, text messages, promotional letters, etc. in this, Ford is
encouraging personal selling at ford dealership or another venue. Along with this, it concentrates
on word-of-mouth advertisement and referrals. This is one of the powerful sales promotions
tools, as ford also did direct marketing and encouraged others to do upgrades and sell for them.
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This strategy has turned ford's customer into marketers due to the great experience and products
which the company provides to its customers
Television advertisement: It is defined as the paid advertisement in which a company
pays to produce an advertisement to make promotions and inform the public. It conveys
messages for promoting and market the products and services, which cover more extensive
access to customers (Visconti, Peñaloza and Toulouse 2020). This is an effective way to reach a
larger number of people in which most people have access to the broadcast channel. This will
help ford to target potentials customers and creates higher brand awareness.
Digital platforms:
A digital platform is one of the marketing components undertaken with the internet's fair
usage and other online-based digital technologies such as mobile phone, desktop computers, and
other digital platforms and media (De Mooij, 2019). With the help of this, the company may get
higher reach to its customers, which is cost-effective and measurable. There are several types of
digital platforms for marketing which is decried below in context to ford:
Website: It is a collection of pages consisting of related content determined as with a
common domain name. It is also necessary to be published this at at-lease on a web server (Fine
and Rush, 2018). The company uses this to promote its goods, services, and brand. This consists
of information about brands, products, and services to be aware and get engaged with
organisation. The website of the company has contained company information, when it had
started to till now, what they have achieved, their objectives, mission and vision, and the
offerings and quality standard. This help in to develop trust and maintain a good relationship
with customers.
Social media platform: This is one of the prominent method of marketing through the
use of social media platform for promoting goods and services of company. Social media help
connect the company with the audience to build brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic.
This method has been associated with publishing content related to the offerings, listening to
followers, and engaging them with company profile. This help in to better understand the trends
and preference that the consumers have followed in relation to ford. With adequate use of this, it
will develop relationship with consumers and make them engages through which overall
efficiency of marketing campaign.
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Content marketing: This is method to strategic marketing strategy that has been
concerned with creating and distribution of valuable, relevant and consistent for attracting and
retain customers along with this, it is also for driving profitable action of customers. This
company has been attracting customers by providing them valuable and knowledgeable free
content that contains various information about the company (Gossen, Ziesemer and Schrader,
2019). This provides support in developing sustainable brand loyalty by offering information to
customers to become familiar to brand and creates willingness within customers so that they can
buy product from company. This procedure starts from analysing customer needs and
requirements. Based on that, the company presents information in various forms such as video,
white paper, e-books, email new letter, etc. This is the main method through which ford will
meet desire goals and objectives.
Email marketing: This is the companies use a highly effective digital marketing strategy
associated with sending emails to customers and prospects email marketing strategy for the three
primary objectives: to build loyalty, trust, and brand awareness among customers contentiously
purchase goods from company. It is concerned with sending email messages with the motive of
increasing a merchant's relationship with the existing and potential customers and
encouragement in customer' loyalty for particular brand along with this, it is also used for
acquiring new customers and convince existing customers in order to draw immediate results.
With the use of this strategy ford company can reach and connect with target audience in a
personalized way and with this it will increase it sales in affordable cost. In addition to this, it
makes easy for company to measure marketing campaign effectiveness with its outcomes.
Through third party:
The third party techniques are referred to the marketing approach which is used by
company with help of public relation entities. In this public relation firm has taken the support of
media in order to spread positive messages about company. Some of the forms of this is
explained below in context to ford:
Analyst report: This is define as the research report consisting of the market data and
information related to the trends, consumer's behavior, and competitive analysis. It has been to
determine the opportunity prevailing in the marketplace to achieve incremental sales and revenue
(Hbous, El Masry and Shamma, 2020). This is a writing and analysis conducted every day as it is
crucial for the business's day-to-day operations. With such a report, ford's company will gain
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information about market trends, customers preference, and information about competitors,
which is vital for developing a competitive advantage.
News articles: This is one component of content marketing associated with writing and
distributing short articles about brand and its offering and quality standard to bank articles,
forums, and newsletter publishers to reach and obtain a large customer base. The main reason for
this type of marketing is developing backlinks and acquiring new visitors and customers so that
sales on the website get increased. Ford is a famous company due to which their news can cover
in articles and forums because this customer seeks to know about the company more. It is a least-
cost marketing strategy that will save costs and improve the overall efficiency of ford's
marketing campaign.
Evaluation and execution of marketing theories
The primary purpose of marketing theory is to maximize the sales of the specified
company. An organization must organize their products and services in the marketplace properly
so that customers get influenced by their products and services and that selected products and
services will be the first choice of the customers (Lunde, 2018). The theory also works on social
marketing discipline to optimize the voluntary changes by generating the new ideas or changing
lifestyles to benefit their potential customers. In the main marketing terms, to promote their
marketing in four stages that is, product, price, place, and promotion, now in the context of ford
company, here are some of the marketing strategy that will discuss further below-
AIDA STRATEGY ON FORD- The AIDA models generally stand for attention, interest, desire,
and action. This usually an effective model of advertising strategy that any specific person can
go through these stages of buying any products or services. This strategy helps the seller sell
their products using any of these stages to influence the customers. So, the company also uses
these strategies to influence the customers by showing these four things to them.
Attention: Thus, for getting the attention of the customers' ford is using the premium
pricing strategies for their luxury line of products to set the higher prices, and apart from this
pricing strategy of the ford is also set by analysis of different segments like demographic and
geographic features and also according to their competitors in the market place (Micheaux, and
Bosio, 2019). Also, giving discounts and special prices for some potential customers also grabs
consumers' attention who think that the features are feasible for them.
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Interest: It promotes its products and services through various advertising features like
television, print media magazines, newspapers, and social media channels. And this also markets
their products into multiple events and malls. Thus, ford is interested in attracting customers and
revolving in front of their eyes because some customers have to give their first preference to
ford.
Desire: Ford has their manufacturing plants at many locations worldwide, which helps in
the alignment of their distribution channels. That is why the company's success in distributing
their products and delivering the desired effects in any location to the customers. Through
offering special discounts on the premium products, this technique also helps the customer
purchase their selected products when they need those products.
Action: The company has a good move to promote its sales strategies by doing some
corporate social responsibilities program to create a positive image. The company is concerned
about the community and environment, which also positively impacts their action.
Push and pull strategies: Push marketing is the strategy that focuses on pushing the
products to their specified customers. The target of this strategy is what the company is an offer
to the customer in the marketing. In this strategy, social media marketing plays an essential role
in' 'push'' their products because they are great at launching new products. Pull marketing
strategy is the opposite of push strategies (Park, 2020). A pull marketing strategy is one of the
best strategies for increasing the demand for individual products. For example, ford is the
company, and their attractive features attract customers by which their sales get increased. In this
strategy, the company does not go through the customers. The customers come to purchase their
products.
Push strategy of ford: For applying the push strategy, ford is a company that promotes
their goods and services by making various strategies like advertising, sponsorship, sales
promotion, public relations; they are also doing their promotional strategy in malls and events.
This is why customers attract the products to the company because they directly impact the
promotional system (Percy, 2018). Also, ford has the worth of their word-of-mouth referrals
when they say they make sure to their customers to fulfill their demand. The company ford was
also doing CSR activities to attract the people and do lots of social and environmental work and
protect their environment by giving attention to the environment.
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Pull strategy of ford: Pull process refers to ford as customers are actively seeking the
ford cars because of their enhancing features, because they are providing their customer a good
brand, a comfortable vehicle with various new features, and also giving discounts and reasonable
offers to their some of the potential customers (Tollin and Christensen 2019). They provide
adequate training to their customer support staff for treating their customers in a good way. The
team also has excellent influencing power, so the customer is attracted to the ford service and
purchases their products quickly and happily. The pull marketing strategy helps to show how
unique the product is in the eyes of the customers. This strategy also ensures potential long-term
growth of customers, so they focus on the customer's demand and then accordingly innovate the
products' features (Sellitto, and Luchese, 2018). The company tries to work on the different
segments so that customers can choose their products according to their desire and affordability,
make available of the products according to the customer's demand, and be proven the attracting
features and promotes the pull strategy. Because if the product is available according to customer
availability, they try to purchase the products without applying any push strategy they are
already attracted by their product availability.
CONCLUSION
As per the above evaluation, it has been concluded that marketing is defined as the sum
collection of all activities that the company uses to promote buying and selling of goods and
services. Moreover, promotion is a communication technique and one component of marketing
through which the company informs their target customers about the features and benefits of
their products and services. For this, various methods help in creating brand awareness and
increase. Furthermore, marketing theories direct marketers to position their products at a
marketplace that attracts customers and converts their interest and desire into purchase action.
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