What is marketing? In short, marketing is a process to satisfy customers needs. It starts with product development, continues to pricing, and where to sell the product all the way up to advertising until the customer buys the product. Marketing can continue even after the customer has bought the product.
Marketing belongs to the whole organization, instead of just the marketing department. It is important to consider, what customers want and how to fulfill their needs the most efficient way.
Why we need marketing?
We need marketing to make sure, that the right products find the right people. It is important to consider, what people really want, not what you think people want. It is useless to use years of work to product that nobody wants. Customer surveys and including customers into the product development process can help the product become what the customers really want.
What are the tasks of marketing?
Marketing is done best when long term customer relationships are built. The idea of marketing is not to get people to buy once and disappoint them. The point is to build long-lasting relationships and satisfy your customers needs all over again. This can be done by following the next steps:
- Determining, what people want
- Creating demand in the market for the product
- Satisfy the demand the market has for your product
- Adjust the demand to keep it going
You should start your product development from the needs and wants of the customer. Then work the way from there up to the new product. Not building the product first and then trying to make people need it. This way can work too, but it is much easier to satisfy the need the customers already have, than to make them need something.
Marketing is about understanding the customer
Marketing is about understanding, what customers value and what they really want. Is the most important part durability or price? Maybe it is a brand-new design your company offers. Find out what it is that people value the most.
For example, when buying smart phones, the most important thing for your customers can vary in different groups. For some, the important thing might be the looks of the phone. Others value cheap prices.
Some people need long-lasting batteries, and for some it is purely the price tag that matters. You don’t have to build a phone that suits everybody. Pick a segment that you are going to build and market your product for.
What is segmentation
Segmentation is dividing customers into different categories. This can be based on their age, place of living, interests, personal needs, what ever suits your product. When you have identified the exact segment, you are trying to bring value for, it is much easier to think about how to market it to your customers.
If you are making a product for old people, the best think to reach old people might not be through Tik Tok. Better ways might be through local newspapers, if studies show that old people on average are more likely to read news.
If you try to reach Xbox gamers, the best way might not be through newspapers, but through websites that contain information about new topics in the gaming space. It is very situational to what group you should be targeting.
Marketing is a two-way street
Best deals are the ones, where both ends are satisfied with the outcome. This applies to your customers as well. If your customers are not happy with the product you sold them, they probably wont return and buy more. If you sell your product for too cheap, you probably are not happy with the outcome and in the worst situation, you might be out of business.
Try to make the product and price so, that the outcome of the deal is good for both ends. Do not try to rip off your customers, that will cause you to lose them to your competitors. Try to understand your customers needs are developing every day and understand them the better way. Think about how you can satisfy their needs even better and you should soon have a very loyal customer base.
Customers surveys as part of the marketing process
Customer surveys can be a good thing. They can give you valuable data on what people want, but they are not always correct. Even if in the survey people said they want something, doesn’t guarantee there is demand for such product.
The same applies the other way around. If the survey told us that customers would not need such a product, there might still be huge demand for that. This can be the case more often when new technologies are being invented.
If you ask people if they need something they don’t even know, they probably won’t be needing it. But after they see it in action and realize how it can ease their lives, there might be huge demand for that product.
Final words
Internet has made information available to everybody. It has also brought new tricks into the hands of marketers. There has never been easier ways to access very narrow group of people, based on their interest, for example. With Facebook ads, for example, you can target very narrow groups of people. People who live in a certain area and are interested in dogs and training dogs, for example.
Marketing should not be ignored in the process of product development. It should also not be ignored in any department of the company. Think about how you can make the product suit better for your desired audience. Please note that this is just my take on marketing. There can be different approaches and things I left out.
Other business-related posts can be found here.
Hopefully this was helpful to you, have a nice day.