Marketing helps businesses sell products by adapting to customer needs. Focusing on their needs helps them achieve financial success and increase profits more easily.
Definition of Marketing
Objectives and functions of marketing
Marketing tasks
Business Purpose of Marketing
Marketing processes
Marketing structure
Planning levels
Principles of effective marketing
The place of marketing in a company depends on management decisions
Expert advice
Definition of Marketing
Table of Contents
The canonical definition was given by Philip Kotler: “Marketing is a type of human activity aimed at satisfying consumer needs through exchange.”
To better explain what marketing is, we need to consider its goals and objectives. Both for business and for the consumer.
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Objectives and functions of marketing
Marketing studies the needs of the target audience (TA) and competitors’ offers, looks for opportunities to produce the necessary goods and informs buyers about them. The goal of business in a competitive environment is to increase the attractiveness of its product, including through a competent price-quality ratio in the eyes of the consumer.
Marketing Goals for Business
● Create an offer: a product or service in demand.
● Ensure demand: effectively implement supply on the market.
Marketing Objectives for Consumers
● Inform the target audience about products and services.
● Help satisfy a need: buy the necessary product in a convenient way in a convenient place.
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Marketing tasks
Let’s look at what tasks marketing needs to perform to achieve each goal:
1. To create the perfect product – provide an offer:
✅ Find out what users want and what product they need. For example: people want to move around the city quickly and along their own trajectory, so the company produces electric scooters.
✅ Create a product that has rational and emotional advantages over competitors’ products. An example of a rational advantage is storm matches that burn in bad weather: the consumer is willing to pay more for additional benefits.
An emotional advantage is if the product offers individuality and the opportunity to try on the image that the product creates. For example, owning a rare perfume allows you to feel involved in the brand.
✅ Set a price that is consistent with the value of the product. It can be higher than the market average, but only if the consumer sees a special benefit in the purchase. For example, luxury cars are often bought because they are an elite product that gives a feeling of being chosen.
2. To inform the target audience and ensure demand:
✅ Determine the points of contact. To understand at what point the target audience is most interested in the product, it is necessary to study their habits, thinking and psychology. Then all that remains is to appear in the buyer’s field of vision in the right place at the right time. For example, launch an advertisement for soft drinks in the hot summer period.
✅ Select appropriate communication channels: TV advertising, shop window design, search and banner advertising on the Internet. New types of advertising are constantly appearing that can also be used.
✅ Generate and convey information. Marketing communications switch the consumer from routine to the product. Therefore, messages should be as concise as possible and convey only the most important idea about the product. Which one exactly is a question for the marketer.
3. To help meet the user’s need:
✅ If the consumer has learned about the product and wants to buy it, it is important to ensure a convenient and quick purchase: otherwise, another advertisement will come into the buyer’s field of view, and he may lose interest in the product he has already chosen.
Business Purpose of Marketing
Marketing is a long-term game. Its task is not just to encourage the user to buy, but also to satisfy his need and keep him in the loyal customer base. In this way, profit will be ensured for a long time. Of course, there are examples of dishonest and trigger marketing. Usually, such advertising campaigns are undertaken due to the short-sightedness of entrepreneurs or forced: for example, if the product is not in demand or the competition is too high.
Marketing processes
1. Market analysis
assessment of opportunities and threats . It is necessary to answer the question of whether it is profitable to invest in this business and whether there are more interesting alternatives. When assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the company, it is necessary to determine:
1.● Are there resources to create a product that is in demand?
2.● What can the company do better than others?
3.● What skills or resources are lacking?
2. Setting goals and choosing a company development strategy
The task is to understand what the company needs and how to achieve it. To plan the marketing mix, it is necessary to determine the product, its advantages, price and structure of the advertising campaign.
3. Implementation of the marketing complex
In other words, the organization of the necessary processes. The task is to do everything exactly on time, without loss of quality.
4. Monitoring and adjusting actions
At this stage, the marketer needs to:
1.● build a system of indicators that allows you to evaluate the success of the solutions being implemented;
2.● collect and track the dynamics;
3.● summarize the results.
The results show the correctness of the chosen strategy and sometimes require urgent measures. For example, abandoning an ineffective communication channel and quickly redistributing resources.
Marketing structure
Let us take a closer look at what tasks fall within the scope of activities of strategists and tacticians.
Strategic Marketing:
Analysis and Strategy
Assess the market
attractiveness, volume and structure. Compare with alternatives: for example, identify a particularly promising region of the country. Identify opportunities and threats for business.
Analyze the features of product use
When and how the need for a product arises, how the buyer chooses it, how he uses it, what needs remain unsatisfied.
Segment consumers
Identify groups that are most interested in the company’s products. If there are several such groups, offer special modifications of the product. For example, cosmetics for people with different skin types.
Conduct a competitor analysis
Compare your offer with others and make your product the most profitable.
Set specific goals
And use metrics to determine whether they have been achieved. Goals are arranged in a hierarchy: there are primary goals and those that help achieve the primary goals. For example, first you need to fulfill the sales plan by region, then the plan will be fulfilled for the entire country.
Choose a strategy
Determine the most effective development path, taking into account resources and circumstances. For example, if one company produces regular buckwheat and sells it at a minimum price, then another can sell organic buckwheat at higher prices and in smaller volumes, while the income of both businesses can be the same.
Define positioning
What is the company, what is its place in the market, how does the consumer see it? The company’s image must be defined and maintained. For example, if a manufacturer of road equipment claims that it has the most powerful quarry dump trucks, it must be regularly monitored to ensure that its product is actually like that.
Operational Marketing:
Tactics and Implementation
Select the target segment
to which the marketing will be directed. For example, the organizers of a rock festival choose rock fans as their audience, and when organizing a children’s song contest, you need to focus on children and their parents.
Develop a marketing mix
a set of marketing tools for implementing the strategy. The focus should remain on the needs of the target segment. Here, decisions are made about the range of goods, sales channels, prices, discount system, advertising.
Plan a marketing campaign and budget
The decisions made are digitized, a calendar plan is built, a budget is determined, target metrics are written down. The rigor of planning depends on the company: if in startups the deadlines are often minimal, then in companies with a long production cycle, annual planning is the norm.
Implement the plan
The tacticians’ job is to quickly respond to external circumstances and optimize individual solutions within the constraints. For example, a manager launching contextual advertising makes weekly adjustments to advertising campaigns to achieve the best results.
Monitor and adjust
This task is faced by both tacticians and strategists. The main goal is to react to changing circumstances in a timely manner. For example, advertising budgets can be redistributed if the promotion of one product becomes a priority over another, or redirected to tactical actions. For example, if advertising in a search engine works better than in social networks.
Planning levels
The main strategy of any company is corporate. It covers global business decisions, defines the general direction of the company’s growth, development of its production and sales. Corporate strategy can be formalized or only designated as the main idea of the business founder. The more complex the company’s structure, the more difficult it is to synchronize processes, and formalization helps with this.
All company strategies – research, development, production, sales, personnel, marketing – follow the goals of the corporate strategy. These goals are decomposed by departments into specific marketing tasks.
A marketing strategy should answer the question: How does marketing contribute to achieving the overall goals of the company?
Principles of effective marketing
Marketing is in demand if it brings profit. Here are seven signs that marketing is working as it should:
1. Marketing strategy helps achieve the company’s goals
For example, if a clothing brand launches a line for teenagers, marketing starts working with social networks popular with teenagers, using appropriate communications and visuals.
2. Marketing investments pay off
It is necessary to consider the cost-benefit ratio.
3. Marketers “keep their finger on the pulse of events”
For example, taking into account trends, a company enters a marketplace instead of opening its own online store.
4. The company’s previous experience is taken into account
This information helps make more accurate decisions and not waste resources on obviously ineffective processes. For example, do not turn off advertising at night if experience shows that the product sells well at this time.
5. Possible changes in the external environment are taken into account at the planning stage
Effective marketing foresees different scenarios in advance. For example, two scenarios for commercials for football boots are developed: one will be launched if the sponsor’s team wins, the other – if it loses.
6. Marketing adapts to changes in the external environment at the implementation stage
Force majeure should not stop the company’s activities. Marketing directs, but does not limit, the operational decisions of the performers.
7. Marketing processes are constantly improving
marketers collect the necessary information about market trends and feedback from partners and consumers. This is how the company improves, grows and develops.
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The place of marketing in a company depends on management decisions
The place of marketing in a business is determined by the owner and top managers. The competitive environment is very important: monopolists, such as the national railway, need marketing less than companies that operate in highly competitive conditions. Such businesses include, for example, clothing brands.
The hierarchy of marketing functions is influenced by the company’s area of activity. For example:
● Brand management is especially important for consumer goods;
● Assortment and distribution management is very important for retail products;
● Content marketing and building relationships with consumers should be a priority for manufacturers of industrial goods.
● Internet marketing is in demand for promoting retail goods and services through online advertising.
