Marketing is defined as the process that ensures the right products and services get to the right markets at the right time, and at the right price. The challenge in that sentence lies in the use of the word ‘right’. The deal has to work for the customer, because if they don’t want what you have to offer the game is over before you begin. You have to offer value and satisfaction, otherwise people will either choose an apparently superior competitor or, if they do buy from you and are dissatisfied, they won’t buy again. With online review websites such as Trustpilot and TripAdvisor there is now no hiding place for shoddy trading practices. Worse still, they may bad-mouth you to a lot of other people. For you the marketer, being right means that there have to be enough people wanting your product or service to make the venture profitable; and ideally those numbers should be getting bigger rather than smaller. So inevitably marketing is something of a voyage of discovery for both supplier and consumer, from which both parties learn something and hopefully improve.
The boundaries of marketing stretch from inside the mind of the customer, perhaps uncovering emotions they were themselves barely aware of, out to the logistic support systems that get the product or service into customer’s hands. Each part of the value chain from company to consumer has the potential to add value or kill the deal. For example, at the heart of the Amazon business proposition are a superlatively efficient warehousing and delivery system and a simple zero-cost way for customers to return products they don’t want and get immediate refunds. These factors are every bit as important as elements of Amazon’s marketing strategy as are its product range, website structure, Google placement or its competitive pricing.
Marketing is also a circuitous activity. As you explore the topics below, you will see that you need the answers to some questions before you can move on, and indeed once you have some answers you may have to go back a step to review an earlier stage.
The marketing mix describes the tools available to win business in your chosen market. The term ‘marketing mix’ has a pedigree going back to the late 1940s when marketing managers referred to mixing ingredients to create strategies. The concept was formalized by E Jerome McCarthy, a marketing professor at Michigan State University, in 1960. The mix of ingredients with which marketing strategy can be developed and implemented was originally the 4 Ps – price, product (or/and service), promotion and place. That has been extended with a focus on the more subtle and less tangible elements that comprise the marketing arena. It is now generally accepted that 7 Ps have to be considered, with the final three being: the people we use to communicate and deliver our product, the process customers have to go through to get the product and the suitability of the physical environment from which a business operates.
Just as with cooking, taking the same or similar ingredients in different proportions can result in very different ‘products’. A change in the way these elements are put together can produce an offering tailored to meet the needs of a specific market segment.