Introduction to Marketing: What is Marketing?

INTRODUCTION TO MARKETING: WHAT IS MARKETING?

 

Welcome! From all of us at Steps to Growth Ltd.,  we are delighted that you have become involved in Marketing.

This article “Introduction to Marketing: What is Marketing”, is the first in  a series of ten articles that give an overview of what Marketing is and the importance of the Marketing Plan to your business.

The aim through these articles, is that at the end, you:

• Appreciate what Marketing is, the value it can bring and how you can impact your business with the power of Marketing.
• Feel comfortable talking about Marketing concepts.
• Know some of the key tools and terms of Marketing.

SO, WHAT IS MARKETING?

Companies often spend much of their time focused on day to day sales activities.  This is great, but can mean opportunities to grow and develop the business longer term are often neglected.

To ensure a business continues to be successful, it is critical to look at the bigger  picture, finding opportunities to improve the customer offer and grow and plan for  the long term.

Some examples of how you can do this are:

• Gain insight into your target customer and competitors
• Identify wider market opportunities
• Generate new prospects or opportunities
• Monitor and measure business health and progress, and amend your activity in response to your learnings.

Marketing is often associated with  advertising and visual identity. In the digital world, people often talk about “reach”, “clicks”, “likes” etc. But there’s so much more to it than posters, point of sale and your “presence” online….

With a good understanding of what  customers want, delivered in a creative way,  Marketing can help us all focus on what  really matters to customers and as a result  – deliver business growth.

DEFINITION OF MARKETING

A definition from one of the Greats…

 

My simple definition, that has served me well:

Those companies that do this better than the competition – win!

THE VALUE OF MARKETING

Overall the role of Marketing is to:

1. Understand your customer, including who they are, what they do, and why they do it. This critical starting point is your first step towards becoming a good marketer, as it helps you to make decisions about what to do.

2. Develop products, services and experiences that meet your customer’s needs, and then promote them so your customers know that they’re available.

3. Track progress and adjust your offers appropriately, so they continue to deliver what the customer truly wants. Marketing teams are responsible for the Customer Value Proposition (CVP); from insights, to development to delivery and ultimately providing business growth.

MARKETING IS A PROCESS

Many in the Marketing world, academics and agencies love to make things more complex than they actually are…

The reason for this is they then get to charge you money to explain it to you or do the job for you.

Rather than being some mystical, esoteric “thing”, what most people miss is that Marketing is a PROCESS, based around finding customer needs and filling them.

with an easy to implement, step-by-step framework, anyone can cut through the “woolly jargon” to create a quality Marketing plan that delivers business growth.

We hope you have found this short introduction useful. In the next article, we will cover an important element of Marketing: The Power of Brands.

www.stepstogrowth.com