What is Marketing?
What is it? What’s included? Where do I start?
You’ve spent ages setting up the business, learning about finance, tax, HR.
Now you have to add a whole other string to your over-stringed bow — Marketing your company.
You may have spent hours trawling through articles to find out what you need to do. Perhaps you’re weighing up hiring an agency.
It’s overwhelming.
But it’s ok.
Let’s bring all that information into one place.
But, where do you start?
What is Marketing?
Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?
“Marketing is the science of educating customers about your products or services and showing them that they deliver a better value than the competition.”
Many sketchy agencies want you to believe marketing is magic, not science.
What’s the difference?
Read enough of the right books, and you’ll have basic science knowledge. You can do experiments that work and deliver data.
Magic is all about sleight of hand and fooling your audience. It’s a hidden art where the magician never reveals his secrets. While, sure, there may be some genuine wizards in the world (Penn and Teller, Gandalf, etc.), there are many terrible children’s party magicians where even the kids aren’t convinced.
Marketing is a science — a careful mix of ingredients that deliver results if you know what you are doing.
Luckily, Marketing is MUCH easier than biology and physics. But, like biology and physics, there are principles and frameworks to follow.
The two main ones are The Buyer’s Journey and The Marketing Mix. Getting these ironed out is the key to a great marketing foundation.
Introducing the Marketing Mix
The Marketing Mix is a group of areas you should consider when building your marketing plan. E. Jerome McCarthy initially developed the marketing mix in the 1960s. Booms and Bitner then expanded the mix to include three new areas for the modern marketing era. These areas are:
Product
The product section covers the actual thing that is involved in a transaction. This could be a service, digital product or physical product. The product could be free or incredibly expensive. You want to think about the quality, look and feel of the product and the packaging. When Apple packages a product, opening the box is part of the pleasure of the item. It’s stunningly designed. Perfume brands have intriguing bottles that are often shaped in strange ways. Usually, this is what gives a perfume a more expensive price tag, more so than the actual fragrance of the perfume.
Price
Pricing products is a science in itself. You’ll want to ensure your product reflects the quality of your product. There’s no point charging excessive amounts of money if the product is cheaply made. You’ll turn away customers and end up with bad reviews. But, by building a brand and an excellent marketing campaign, you can justify higher price tags, as Nike has done with their Air Jordans or Jimmy Choo has done with high heels.
Pricing can also help you position yourself in the market. You could be cheaper than everyone else or be more expensive but provide a much better experience than your competitor.
Place
Place covers anywhere your product is sold or displayed. If you are selling a product or service online, you’ll want to think about the look and feel of the website. For example, what colours will you use? How will customers navigate around? Do you want it to feel expensive? Or modern? Or budget?
If you are a service and conducting business in person, how do you want that experience to go? Will you be using your own offices or hiring a meeting room else where? Do you want customers to see your operation is huge or are you wanting a more personal feel?
You also need to consider if you’ll sell your product exclusively on your website or in your store, or if you’l also distribute through department stores, local shops or sites like Fiverr.
Promotion
Promotion is the advertising bit of marketing. How do you want your product to be seen and found. For example, will you use SEO and PPC to bring people to your brand? Will you use PR to generate interest? Will you use influencers?
One thing to think about is whether you will use discounts. Some companies, such as fashion brands, love discounts and customers will wait for the sales or avidly watch any emails that come in for a cheeky discount. Other companies, such as tech or high-end brands will avoid discounts to protect their pricing structure. This makes people believe that the discount is associated with a discontinued product, so customers may choose to pick a full price item, regardless of the discount.
People
The People section covers any staff or public-facing interactions. It all depends on how you treat your staff and how they are trained up. Do you want your staff to be incredibly knowledgeable about the product, or are you just wanting them to offer basic information from a script? Do you want one person to be the public face of your brand, such as Dyson using James Dyson as a public figure, or do you want to focus on using a broad range of your staff, as companies like Cisco do? Will you have sales development teams who are out on the road, or are you more inbound marketing focused?
Process
The process includes every step to get the product from an idea through to your customer’s hands. Will your product be made locally or made abroad? How many stages will be needed in the sales funnel? Will the product be simple to use, or will it need instructions?
Physical Evidence
The physical evidence part is about the physical proof that your business exists and delivers on what you promise. Evidence can be shown through reviews, testimonies, case studies or Word-Of-Mouth advertising.
Physical Evidence can also come through tangible things, such as a bricks-and-mortar store or even physical marketing such as a flyer or direct mail piece.
The trick with the marketing mix is writing down a rough plan for each of the seven steps. This will help improve your business overall too.
Now you have the marketing mix ironed out, it is time to understand the customers. This is where the Buyer’s Journey comes in.
The Buyer’s Journey
Every customer goes through the same cycle before purchasing a product or service. This is known as the Buyer’s Journey.
The Buyers go through the following steps, no matter how big or small the purchase.
1. Awareness
Sarah realises they have a problem they would like to solve.
Example: “I have NOTHING to wear for Stephanie’s Wedding next week.”
2. Research
Sarah starts to research their predicament to look for a solution..
Example: “I’ve started a Pinterest board of ideas, I’ve snooped around Instagram and looked through latest trend articles.”
3. Consideration
Sarah starts to weigh up options and compare products.
Example: “Shop 1 has a high quality but expensive outfit I love. Shop 2 has a similar outfit for a lot cheaper, but I’m not sure if it’s going to fit quite right”
4. Conversion
Sarah buys the outfit that best suits their needs.
Example: “I’ve gone for the outfit from Shop 1, it is more expensive but has better reviews”
5. Loyalty
Sarah’s outfit was perfect and went down a storm at Stephanie’s wedding. They raved about the company to anyone who would listen and is an active social media follower.
Example: “I love Shop 1, I’m always going to go back to them when I need an outfit”
Why is this important?
By following the buyer’s journey, you can organise your marketing efforts to improve conversions from start to finish.
This is called a marketing funnel.
Everything you do in marketing will relate to the marketing funnel. Each piece of content you create will need to hit your target customer in a way that guides them towards their purchase.
By organising your funnel this way, you can easily see where your funnel is leaking and fix your marketing accordingly.
Conclusion
As you build out your marketing plan, you’ll want to keep everything above in the back of your mind. Ensuring your marketing tie back to your marketing mix and your buyer’s journey is the key to a successful campaign. You may want to hire a marketing consultant to help you work through the elements of your plan and keep your business moving.
