What is Marketing? Marketing is the term that covers a huge part of a business that could be defined in many ways.
For any kind of business, marketing involves certain management activities to attract customers and build a relationship with them.
Marketing activities include advertising, selling, and delivering the product or service to the customers.
It is essential for your business to attract a large number of customers by adopting and implementing the perfect Marketing strategy.
But before that, every entrepreneur needs to know about what marketing is and its essentials to reach out to the customer.
Here in this article, we are going to explore marketing and its importance to your business.
Let’s check it out.
Definition
Marketing is the set of activities to promote a product or service of a company to attract customers and to offer a good value to the customers at a nominal profit.
The entire marketing process involves researching the target audience, promoting, selling, and delivering the product or service according to their needs.
American Marketing Association (AMA) define marketing as:
Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.
Purpose Of Marketing
Different business people have different opinions if we ask about the purpose of Marketing. They have an insight according to their needs and perspective. But the question is what exactly you need to do with marketing?
The ultimate purpose is to generate revenue for the company which holistically includes several functions, right from researching the market to selling the product.
It cannot be explained easily, as it demands comprehensive guidance to understand the purpose, pertaining to all these functions. Besides that, it could be categorized briefly into three main purposes:
- To identify the target audience and create awareness about the presence of the product to customers that should meet their needs.
- To explain the developed product to the customers that solve the problem, and attract them.
- To convert the leads into customers by offering them a reasonable money value to make a good decision to buy a product.
Types Of Marketing
Marketing is sub-divided into several types for both B2B and B2C types of business, where the marketer should adopt and integrate some of the methods while formulating the marketing strategy.
Let us look at some of the essential types in general:
Traditional Marketing
The traditional method is also called Offline marketing. When we look back into the history of marketing, for years and decades, the traditional method has been adopted for all kinds of business.
Traditional method includes advertising products through print media, radio, and television channels.
This method also includes promotional activities by conducting events like shows, fairs, etc…it seems to be old and traditional but till now and even in the coming decades, it will be suitable for many businesses as it pulls a larger group of the target audience.
Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing is exactly a non-traditional method, which is contrary to the old one that comes after the advent of the internet. It helps many businesses to reach and stay connected with customers on a large scale.
In this 21st century, digital medium is growing immensely with the help of mobile technology, where the business is connected with the customers using many channels such as e-mail, social media, search engines, websites, and other mobile applications, etc…
Content Marketing
Content Marketing is simply defined as creating and publishing the information or material online related to your business, which creates brand awareness and interest among the customers.
It is not directly used to describe the product or service, but it is intended to make the customer purchase your product or service indirectly by delivering high-quality content.
Some of the important elements of Content material are social media networks, blogs, websites, e-mail, infographics, and videos.
Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a type of activity that makes your product or service appear on the search engine results pages (SERP).
This includes Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) techniques to rank higher in search engine result pages when people search for a particular keyword related to your niche business.
These methods give more organic traffic to your website which attracts a huge audience for your business.
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing is the most used method for promoting any kind of product as it gathers a large group of people through various social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
According to research 83% of marketers get succeed by using social media marketing in their business.
It requires unique and informative content to attract customers to your business.
And it is also important for business owners to keep the audience engaged by posting text, videos, images, links, infographics, surveys, etc… on social media platforms regularly.
Email Marketing
Email Marketing is a marketing activity that involves sending commercial messages using Email to customers who subscribe to receive messages.
It involves sending messages like advertisements, the weekly newsletter, launching a new product for both acquiring a new customer, and retaining the existing customer.
To make the customer engage with your business, you may need to use an email marketing strategy which would be helpful for you to create email templates and to monitor the progress using some email marketing software.
Video Marketing
Video Marketing is another important method for marketing your business which shares the video content on many social media platforms like YouTube and your company website.
Research tells that 83% of marketer says video marketing helps them in getting lead generation and good ROI.
The video content clearly explains the product and it would make the viewers get more engaged than any other type of content, thus, it will help to generate more leads for your business.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a kind of Social media marketing that uses Influencers to create an endorsement for your Product.
Marketing Campaign uses Influencers who is an expert in a particular niche and has a strong social following.
The target audience for your business trust the Influencers, whom you use for marketing, and become the buyers of your product.
Choosing the Influencer for marketing is crucial because it entirely relies on the Influencer whom you work with must have relevance to your business niche and the number of active audiences for that influencer in social media platforms.
Also Read: How to create an Influencer Marketing Strategy.
The 5 Stages Of Marketing Process
Startup Stage
The marketing process begins at the very early stage of your Startup idea.
Knowing the target audience is important for you to understand the behavior of the end-user, thus it will be helpful for you to design the product or service before launching.
When you write the Business plan, you would also need to describe the marketing plan for your business. This should include the mission and vision statement of your company which defines the marketing goals, and budget for promotional activities.
Creating Brand Awareness in social media after the launch of your business is something you need to consider in the starting stage of the Marketing process, which lets people know the presence of your product or service.
Marketing Strategy
The next stage after creating Brand awareness among people is to create a Marketing Strategy for your business to get a large number of customers that generate more conversion.
But, before that, you will need to do Market Research and analysis. Have a clear understanding of the situations prevailing in the Market place.
Get to know how the competitors are performing, their price, and product details.
Finally, it helps you to differentiate your product from other players in the market which leads to secure a better place in the market by outperforming them.
Advertising
After creating the strategy, the marketer will look for the possible methods to promote the product ensuring the Marketing expenses should not exceed the allocated budget.
This is a prominent stage that includes all marketing activities like advertising, conducting campaigns through media and events, paid partnership, etc…
Selling
Selling and distributing the product is a significant part of the whole plan as it determines who buys your product.
It may be a wholesaler, retailer, or direct consumer.
You should decide on through which channel you will distribute and sell the product, after checking the purchasing power and behavior of the buyers. Because it varies with the different demographic factors.
Tracking And Monitoring The Results
All the efforts made by the Management of the company should be cost-effective that eliminates the extra spendings. Because any extra penny you spend would directly impact the profit and cash flow of the company.
Therefore regular tracking of the Marketing campaign, in the long run, is much needed for you to get the desired results.
Developing the reports is more important for you to give a better performance in the future.
The 4 Ps Of Marketing
In the whole Marketing process, the four Ps are essential to Market a product that involves all the activities from selling to buying.
The four Ps are also called as marketing mix and they are Product, Price, Promotion, and Place.
Product
The product should be well-defined and unique. It should solve the existing problem, meet the demand in the market, and satisfy the target audience.
The marketer should check these factors and compare them with the competitors to offer the best value to the customers. This will make your company stand out from all the competitors.
Price
Price is the amount of money for which the company sells a product.
The marketer will determine the price of the product from other competitors in the market, also estimate purchasing power, and how much money the customer will pay for a product.
The company should fix the price range that reasonably matches the market price.
Promotion
Promotion includes various activities like advertising, selling, sales promotion, sponsorship, paid partnership, direct marketing, and sponsorship.
All these campaigns and communications are managed by the marketing team integrated with other teams like sales and distribution.
Place
It refers to the place to sell the product. The marketing team determines where to sell the product, for example through retailers or by online shopping (e-commerce), then decides based on the potential buyers.
Marketing Vs Sales
The main objective of a Marketing and Sales department in a company is to attract customers, build a relationship, and sell a product at a good profit. Both departments share a common value for the benefit of company growth.
But there is a big difference at a functional level.
Marketing promotes to reach the new leads and attracts the customers for their needs that offer a product at a nominal price.
Sales, on the other hand, encompasses all the activities involved in converting the leads into customers by satisfying them for a good value of money.
Marketing Vs Advertising
Marketing is the process that involves the design, research, planning, and data mining to create awareness and interest among the customers.
It also includes both sales and advertising.
Advertising is the process of informing the customer about the product or service by paid promotions through many channels and media.
Reader’s Insight
Let us know if we missed out on anything in this article marketing and share your thoughts in the comment section.
