Marketing

Introduction

"...Marketing isn't about trying to convince people to purchase things they don't want or need. Marketing is about tapping into the genuine use for products and services that they find useful. Or fun. Or beautiful..."
Dave Balter as quoted by Jonah Berger, 2013

Aim of marketing provide the best customer experience:
"...always put the customer first. Customers shell out all that money; they should be treated right..."
Jonah Berger, 2013.

Marketing involves understanding and satisfying clients'/customers' needs and wants, stimulate their demand and offer a solution that brings value to both sides.

NB Marketing is not an exact science. There is much experimentation, ie trial and error and learning from mistakes.

Evolution of marketing (from production approach to now)

1. Production approach (this involves the belief that customers prefer cheap and widely-available products and/or services; focus on improving processes, optimising manufacturing and distribution costs with scale economies and standardisation; this includes outsourcing production to where labour is cheapest)

2. Product approach (this is based on consumers expressing their preferences according to quality, performance or innovative feature of a product and/or service; this focus on superior characteristics can be disastrous if price, distribution, advertising, sales, etc neglected.)

3. Selling approach (involves aggressive or persuasive tactics to encourage a customer to buy a product and/or service that is available, rather than selling what the market wants)

4. Marketing approach (change from the right customer for a product and/or service to the right product and/or service for a customer)

5. Holistic marketing approach (based around relationship marketing, integrated marketing, internal marketing & performance marketing)

 
(source: Albert Carniel, 2019)

i) relationship marketing (it represents strategies, processes and activities to establish and develop long-term and mutually satisfying relationships with main stakeholders, eg customers (most important), staff, partners (like suppliers, distributors, dealers, agencies, etc) and financial entities (like shareholders, investors, analysts, etc); need to build marketing networks relationships with the organisation and its stakeholders; usually acquire or build strong brands rather than purchasing physical assets; outsource production to external manufacturers, ie to reduce costs; need to acquire complete information on target audience (like demographics, behavioural traits, past purchasing trends, preferences, prices paid, etc); need to determine their customer's lifetime value; focus on retaining customers
"...retaining an existing customer can be 5 times cheaper than acquiring a new one..."
Kotler et al as quoted by Albert Carniel, 2019

Use that customer relationship management (CRM) program to link marketing and sales with customers' activities over time, including
"...historical records, what action they took on your website, what e-mail have been left unanswered, what stage of the journey they are in and so on......to better satisfy each customer and retain them over time..."
Albert Carniel, 2019)

ii) integrated marketing (based on 2 principles
"...1. marketing activities can communicate, create and deliver value together
     2. marketers should develop and implement marketing activities..."
Albert Carniel, 2019

An example of the first principle is an organisation selling goods online; it needs:

- an e-commerce system to handle online sales

- an automated client payment system

- a CRM to manage the orders and customers

- an automated e-mail marketing process

- an event manager to cover trade shows, exhibitions, new products launch, etc

- blogging to promote products/ideas

- a monitoring system to keep track of all stakeholders' activities and relevant KPIs

- advertising strategies, etc

In this example, an e-mail marketing process helps sell goods online and create additional value by providing information on new products, features, discounts, etc. Similarly, a blog post can attract new visitors and/or transmit new knowledge; though not necessarily make them buy. To make them buy, you will need to re-target them with the appropriate content to convert them into customers.

The second principle involves integrating any marketing system with other platforms, activities, etc in the organisation. Ideally minimise the number of interfaces and keep it simple.

 iii) internal marketing (in addition to having loyal customers, need to find, train, motivate and retain talent stakeholders, eg staff, partners, etc; everybody needs to be aligned with the vision, mission and overall marketing strategy so that a consistent message gets to the customer at every touch point.)

 iv) performance marketing (understanding financial and non-financial returns; the latter includes brand awareness, engagement, product quality, customer satisfaction, relationship with stakeholders (including suppliers, distributors, manufacturers, etc); this can be linked with social responsibility and environmental sustainability, ie preserving and enhancing society and considering ethical, environmental, legal and social context when developing a marketing plan)
(for more detail, see frameworks in the Knowledge Base)