There are a great many misconceptions existing around what marketing is really about. If you’re not involved in the process, it’s easy to have a view of marketing that doesn’t align with what the marketeers know it to be about. There are a few key points to remember though, that will help clear up the confusion and help you understand more clearly what marketing is actually all about and what marketeers are actually trying to achieve.
It’s not sales.
The first thing to realise is that marketing is not sales. Selling is the skill of closing a deal, or brokering a commitment to enter into a deal or a purchase. Sales people will often have a different skillset to marketing people but each will have a thorough appreciation of the other’s discipline and the differences between their respective roles.
Branding and profiling.
Marketing is, in general terms, much more about branding and profiling, both of the product or service and of the customer community. A marketeer will be skilled in building brand image and raising the profile of brands within a target market. In some markets, brand image is of prime importance. A marketeer will build a brand image in such cases to meet the expectations of the marketplace and to ensure a brand is saleable. This is where the sales team takes over and can trade on the built brand image.
Show the requirement.
Identifying and understanding the requirement is a key factor in marketing. Marketing departments will provide a company with the information it needs to understand what the marketplace is asking for and what it needs to supply into that market. While it’s important to have great product ideas, they will not sell if there is no ‘pull’ for them from within the target market. Successful companies and products react to what the market is asking for, or ‘pulling’ from them, rather than giving the market something that the company wants to give it, which would be ‘pushing’ the product or service.
Service companies need to know what services their customer sector is looking for. Manufacturers need to know what products and features consumers want today and in the future. Remember the groundbreaking Sinclair C5 from the 1980s? In many respects it was a fantastic, simple idea but ultimately had no market, sold very little and failed as a saleable mass market product
Create the pull.
Creating the ‘pull’ from the marketplace is one of the most crucial elements of the marketing function. Creating the ‘pull’ is about making the market, not just individual people, recognise the need for the product or service being offered. Some of the most successful marketing campaigns have been able to create ‘customer pull-through’ resulting in the creation of a market around a specific requirement or perceived need. Look at the products available today to make your life easier. These products were heavily marketed and consumers recognised a benefit, giving the product market value. As an example, how did you ever manage without an electric toothbrush?
Understand the audience.
The market for each product and service is invariably different, making it imperative that the target audience or market is fully and intimately understood. The process of marketing allows the market to be classified by demographic, wealth, requirement and any other factor that may be appropriate. Marketing will analyse the market and provide profiles of potential customers allowing a company to design products or services to have the right level of features, functionality, price or quality for that specific market. In the automotive industry, are the same people who are looking at buying Audis also considering Protons? Generally, it’s not the case. They are both built to significantly different specifications, quality levels and ultimately, price. They are built for different markets. The respective marketeers analysed the market and determined what their potential customer base will accept and actively look for.
Marketing is a misunderstood discipline, often much maligned by those that fail to see the importance of the task. Many of the greatest and most successful companies and products in the world would have been no more than minor footnotes in history had their marketing teams not created iconic brands and made the world clamour for their products through a skillful combination of in-depth understanding of the market and creation of the perceived need for the product and the status it conveys to others.