Marketing Essentials
Unless you’re clear on the destination, the GPS and the sexiest car can’t get you there. Start at the very beginning, follow the steps and hit your destination every time.
What’s old is new again ...
Marketing Essentials
First comes Strategy, then comes Marketing!
The simple process for marketing as an essential and integrated business function:
- Define the organisation’s business and purpose of the organisation
- Marketing Strategy (there’s a whole section on this!)
- Formulating product/market strategies
- Develop go-to-market and sales plans
- Budgeting: Financial, production, HR
- Monitoring, evaluating and adapting
There are many ways marketing can be valued and integrated in the business, we like this one best:
“Marketing is the term given to those activities which occur at the interface between the organisation and its customers. It comes from the original concept of a marketplace, where buyers and sellers would come together to conduct transactions (or exchanges) for their mutual benefit.”
Sometimes you have to look back, to decide the best way forward
The old school way of marketing may not be as relevant today however the founding principles are. For now, this is a good old cut and paste from a textbook but bear with us as we are working on a cool cheat sheet for you, that makes these even more relevant for today. So for now, read, absorb, ponder and scribble away as you like.
PRODUCT
Product. The product should fit the task the target consumers want it for, it should work, and it should be what the consumers expected to get.
PLACE
Place. The product should be available from wherever the firm’s target group of customers find it easiest to shop. This may be a high street shop, it may be mail order through a catalogue or from a magazine coupon, or it may even be doorstep delivery.
PROMOtion
Promotion. Advertising, public relations, sales promotion, personal selling and all the other communications tools should put across the organisation’s message in a way that fits what the particular group of consumers and customers would like to hear, whether it be informative or appealing to the emotions.
A little inspo
As we said earlier, the delivery and channels may change, our customers certainly do, yet the founding principles of great marketing do not.
“Whether B2B or B2C, I believe passionately that good marketing essentials are the same. We all are emotional beings looking for relevance, context and connection.”