Improving Business to Business Marketing in TCL Business Research Paper

Improving Business to Business Marketing in TCL Business - Research Paper Example Over the past two years, most small and medium businesses have been badly impacted by the recent economic downturn with TCL not having been spared from the impact. During this period most businesses are cutting costs in order to remain competitive in the business, this grossly affects TCL’s business as its revenue stream is mostly reliant on the marketing budgets that companies set. Over the past year, with reduced business, TCL recorded a drop in revenue by 25%, and the business is increasingly finding it hard to get new business and establish new clients. It is imperative that TCL make a change to its current business to business marketing. In view of this, this business report analyses and addresses various aspects of a business to business marketing that TCL needs to address in order to be able to efficiently meet its objectives. In doing so, the report will focus on how TCL can restructure its marketing mix, how the business networks and relationships impact TCL’s business, how it can rearrange its sales team for effective impact at low cost. With the recession, most of TCL customers are cutting back on their marketing spending. As can be noted from TCL’s product portfolio, TCL gives precedence to offline business marketing using tools such as radio and television for their clients. The very nature of such advertising means being expensive implies that TCL is losing a lot of money in this area. Since TCL also offers other marketing services such as online marketing, it is important for the company to explore its product portfolio and see how it can restructure it well enough for the business that is focused on cost-cutting. Trends in the recession show that more companies which are cutting costs are tending towards online marketing not only because it is cheaper, but because of the reasoning that most end consumers being thrifty during these periods also tend to go online in search of better and cheaper deals (Chlebisova, et al, 2011:1 234-1236). Indeed Court (2009:71) note that key advertising tools that most companies use for advertising and marketing during the recession are the use of the internet, mobile devices and the social networking which are far cheaper and much more effective in a recession-stricken economy. Most companies prefer to use a combination of these with traditional media (Bulearca, & Bulearca, 2010).