Marketing refers to promotional activities that a business undertakes in order to advertise the sale or purchase of a particular product, service, or item. In recent years, The New York Times has defined it as “the science of telling great stories so compelling that individuals lose track of their bills”. Without doubt, marketing is crucial to the survival and prosperity of any business. Therefore, when setting up your company, you should not overlook the importance of marketing. However, marketing can be an extremely tricky task. If you fail to perform the task properly, then you will definitely have a difficult time surviving in the cutthroat market.
Before anything else, let us define what marketing actually is. According to Wikipedia, “Marketing is a process by which a firm advertises its products and services to generate sales”. This definition clearly indicates that marketing encompasses different concepts, some of which are selling, advertising, and promoting. All these concepts are related with one another and are interrelated with the overall concept of selling and promoting a particular product or service.
In general, marketing concept is related to satisfying consumers. Satisfying consumers basically means that a firm has to cater to the needs and expectations of the customers, which ultimately results into increased sales. Therefore, if you aim at satisfying consumers, then you should first and foremost to create a market plan that concentrates on creating a satisfied customer base. This means that you should adopt a coordinated marketing strategy that will provide a positive impact on the sales figures.
There are various concepts that constitute the foundation of successful marketing management. These include market research, promotion management, consumer marketing, and societal marketing. Market research involves collecting pertinent data that will help you understand the current trends and patterns in the market. Consumer marketing refers to creating appealing advertisements for selling your products and services. Promotion management focuses on launching a targeted campaign that will increase brand awareness and sales.
A lot of marketers tend to focus on only one or two marketing concepts when forming their overall marketing strategy. While some marketers choose to focus on a single concept such as selling houses and building communities, there are other marketers who prefer to focus on a number of concepts. For example, marketers may prefer to develop a residential community and sell residential communities, or they may prefer to develop a community and sell outpatient services. The important thing here is that marketers develop a concept that will give them a comprehensive marketing strategy. This ensures that their overall marketing plan will cover a wide spectrum of issues and will also cover a wide range of market segments.
Promotion and market research are crucial aspects of marketing because these two marketing activities will determine whether your product or service will be successful or not. Moreover, these two activities are interrelated because the success of one marketing activity depends on the success of the other. A good example of this is the success of selling houses and building communities largely depends on whether people live in those communities and whether or not the houses and the buildings are selling well.
Marketing research and marketing strategies are designed to find out what sells and how consumers behave. Marketers also conduct studies to find out how consumers think about various marketing concepts. These studies are crucial in formulating appropriate marketing strategies. For example, if a marketing concept is effective but consumers do not think much about it, then marketers should find a way to make the concept appealing to consumers.
Marketers can do this by coming up with a marketing concept that is attractive to consumers and making it appealing to their competitors. If they come up with a good marketing concept, then they can be assured of getting consumers’ approval and help in increasing their sales. They can also do this by developing complementary marketing tools such as television commercials, radio ads, and other kinds of print advertising. It should be remembered that in order for a marketing concept to be effective, there must be enough evidence to back up its effectiveness. In short, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.