THIS ISSUE INCLUDES: •  What's New? •  Going, Going … Gone! •  Resource Referral •  Lessons Learned •  Tips & Tricks •  Community Leaders •  Member Spotlight •  Community Stats •  Your Account Summary •  Special Thanks •  Last Laugh

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WHAT'S NEW?

Dear Askers & Answerers,

Hello friends! It's been a few weeks since the last newsletter, solely because we are SO BUSY building new stuff. We have several projects in development - not quite ready for release.

One project close to completion is our new My Account section. If you have updated your MP password lately, you have already seen it. If not, you may want to take a look! You can link to it from the left nav bar on the MP homepage, or the bottom of the site.

You will find a page for managing your MP mail - and another for renewing your membership (if you are a Premium or Premium Plus Member). Other new developments include a toll-free customer service number for our Premium folks, and a new thank-you gift for joining at the Premium level: "Best of MarketingProfs 2004."

You will also see a tab there for editing your KHE profile. That form is not finished yet. When it is, you will be able to upload an image to include on your profile page. I will let you know when this new feature is available ... as well as the other things in the pipeline.

Happy exchanging,

Val Frazee
Moderator, Know-How Exchange
MarketingProfs.com

GOING, GOING, GONE!

Here are KHE's 10 oldest questions. They're likely to close soon. Have an idea to offer? Better do it now!

1. strategy for making consumers print photos at home
2. Sustaining Competitve Advantage - Strategic issues
3. Does product placement have a subliminal effect?
4. How to track the opening with service pack 2 in XP
5. online seminar or webinar?
6. Customer profitability analysis -practisability
7. current profile of UK retail industry
8. looking for internship in industrial design compa
9. how to write a proposal
10. Names for a jewelry business.

RESOURCE REFERRAL: SEO GLOSSARY

SteveB published this week's resource in our Resource Library. I found it just in time. I'm working on a project for our Premium members. The goal is to bring them userfriendly information about search engine optimization. But before I can tackle the job, I need to learn the lingo! So I appreciate this resource. Anyone who is new to SEO will probably feel the same way.

Resource: SEO & Marketing Glossary

Browse 299 other resources recommended by our members in KHE's Resource Library. Or add one of your own!

LESSONS LEARNED: SUPERMARKET STRATEGY

Last week, new member kreozio explained he was having trouble getting mainstream, price-conscious supermarkets to carry his company's high-quality products. Read on to learn what the community advised.

• blanalytics: Supermarkets do care about what drives sales in their category (e.g. category management). If your products or brands do that, and you can prove that, then you have a lot of leverage.
• querciwa: In my opinion you should first position and segment supermarkets for the given food category...for sure some market chains are driven by "lowest price every day" but other are driven by level of service and others by merchandise quality. You should be able to find easily in the specialized press some kind of positioning analysis of supermarket brands for the the given food category you are in the business of. Based on that analysis, you may decide that you don't want to serve each of them but only those whom your food product features (incl. price) fit with.
  
• Peter (henna gaijin): I agree with querciwa. In my area (Silicon Valley of CA), there are a variety of grocery stores aiming at different markets. Safeway and Albertsons are the general ones, Grocery Outlet is a low price, often closeout products. Whole Foods is high price, healthy/organic products. And Lunardis and Draegers are high price, high service stores. You should choose which stores in the areas you want best fit your product strategy, and target them.
• koen.h.pauwels: While targeting the right supermarket (i.e. sharing your focus on high-quality for a price) is important, you will anyway want to put together a very convincing presentation, including: 1) how other distributors have adopted your product with great success; 2) exactly how you generate consumer pull for your product and which funds you are committing to it in the future; and 3) how your brand is going to contribute to the retailer's bottom line, in terms of category margin and store traffic, but also in attracting the right kind of profitable shoppers: people who buy your quality product typically buy other high-margin products while in the store.
• mgoodman: I think you may be surprised to learn that the supermarkets have an enormous amount of power in deciding which products succeed and which don't. If they're telling you your prices are too high, or their margins are too low, they're probably right - even if it seems unfair or unreasonable to you. Without their cooperation and acceptance, your product quality and your brand name are not likely to be worth much at all. You need to have a plan for working with them, not against them. It's frustrating, I know, but it's the way you have to play the game if you want the big volume they represent.

Question: Ways To Protect Our Interests In the Market

Do you have something to add? Feel free, if you like. You could even earn points. This question is still open.

TIPS & TRICKS: EMAIL ADDRESSES

It's against our Community Guidelines to post email addresses or other contact information in response to a forum question. We unceremoniously delete email addresses from forum posts, when we see them, primarily to protect the recipients from spam. (Also to keep the self-promotional dialogue to a minimum.)

Please feel free to use the My Profile page to share your personal contact info. (We've put extra protections in place to block email address harvesters on this page). If there's someone you want to refer the Asker to, you can look for Askers' contact info by clicking on their names. If they have chosen to publish their email addresses, you can send referrals to them directly.

The best alternative, however, might be for you to alert the referral to this question. Let them set up their own membership and KHE profile page, and they can respond to the question themselves. That way we all benefit from the knowledge exchange.

Have a question? Ask the experts.

Post a brief synopsis below, and invite other members to offer their feedback.

My Question Title

COMMUNITY LEADERS

As of this week, these are our superstars! The Most Resourceful are those who have contributed the most entries to the Resource Library. The Most Expert are those with the highest number of Expert Points (earned by answering questions).

NOTE: These are our top members as of midday March 23, 2005

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: MEET JSTILES

You may recognize Jim Stiles (jstiles) as the KHEr who posted a recent question about promoting a group of physicians. Since he started last July, he has also posted more than 100 responses. Read on to learn more about this week's featured member.

Where are you based?
Sacramento, CA mostly - I travel frequently.

What do you do in real-life?
I help clients navigate the marketing planning process from research to strategy.

Tell us about your company.
The firm is Thielen Partners (www.thielenonline.com). We are a marketing firm that evolved from a full-service advertising agency. We found that our efforts at creating better, more responsive campaigns started moving us deeper into research and strategy. We realized our strengths and simply embraced them.

How did you find KHE?
During my solo consulting days I had a client who recommended KHE. One visit and I was hooked. often I get some of my best sources of information from clients.

What kinds of KHE questions do you enjoy most?
You can usually find me in the advertsing, research and strategy forums. I try to contribute to the student questions as much as possible also (great feature). I think this forum is not only a great resource for information and idea exchange, but it also helps me clarify my thoughts as I share them. I suppose it's like the military method: "See one, do one, teach one."

Did you study marketing in college? Or on-the-job?
Yes. I think if you rely on only one of these you shortchange yourself.

Do you have a favorite tool that helps you do your job?
My laptop is my lifeline. And my Jornada PDA also plays a key supporting role.

Describe one of your non-marketing hobbies or interests.
I love the outdoors. Surfing, camping, fishing, skiing, snowboarding, waterskiing, cycling, climbing, tennis, soccer - I like to keep moving. My problem is I like so many activities that it is hard to really concentrate on any one.

COMMUNITY STATS

Active Unique Participants (to date): 5,093
Closed Questions (to date): 5,749
Currently Open Questions: 300
Total Responses (to date): 41,980
Subscribers to this newsletter: 15,973

YOUR ACCOUNT SUMMARY

These numbers come directly from YOUR profile. Question Points tells you how many points you have available for asking questions in the forum. Expert Points indicates your standing in the community based on answers you have posted. Visit this FAQ, if you want to know more.

Question Points: %%PointsBalance%%
Expert Points: %%PointsCum%%

Click here to buy more Question Points

SPECIAL THANKS

Thank you, jstiles and SteveB for providing content for this newsletter. And thanks to all the following community members who have emailed or posted suggestions, technical reports or questions in the last week. Your energy drives this community's development. We couldn't do it without you!

jose04, abhi_magre, eddie.sierra, fahmid, seshika, Peter (henna gaijin), gianni_herrer, srdjan.milic, Tudor, bodge84, Sanjeev Kumar Vyas, chell, FireFox 1.0.1, bizscape, tonnie.choueiri, aishsain, eugene, v- man, tahirmalik- 7, JBtron, TamaraG, Bill Moore, applexmkgp, stevea, amar, Worm, Michele, Zeme, Dee, valerianm, barr, gstromberg, Christie, Alleycat, jjninja, Malcolm Mcdonald, gftrcoach, gftrcoach, fahmid, ExecPowerCoach, ctaylor- scott, rob, donna.hamel, colby76, lee, Markitek, Sanjeev Kumar Vyas, sondek, muk684, bennettstenton, cyn_eliana, jmoss, W.M.M.A., shari, and Deremiah, *CPE.

Finally, thanks to my MP colleagues for making my job easy: Aaron, Sharon, Shelley, Megan, Achim, Ann, Roy and Allen.

LAST LAUGH

I like to close with a smile. So this space is dedicated to something amusing I find posted in our forum.

I think it was Shakespeare who said: "Brevity is the soul of wit." And he's always right, isn't he? So this question AND response must be awfully witty!

Discussion: Ipod

Forum Feedback: The Know-How Exchange is still young. So we're constantly refining how things work. We have a gigantic list of action items, and your feedback helps us prioritize it. So please feel free to reply to this email with any suggestions. Thanks, in advance, for your time!

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