Firstly, it’s easier to tell you what it isn’t. It is not just advertising, PR, email marketing, internet marketing, or direct mail. These are all tools and disciplines used by marketers.

Marketing is so much more.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) definition of marketing is “The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably” Most businesses do some of this without even thinking about it. Performance success comes to the companies that fully exploit the marketing process and put the customer truly at the centre.

Marketing is more important today to obtain and retain customers as well as increasing revenues and profits, with increasing competition, more complex communications channels with the likes of the internet, global competitor presence, and customer decreasing time.

The marketing process can be broken down into what used to be referred as the “4 P’s”, which has now been extended to the” 7 P’s”. This is also known as the marketing mix.

Product – the service or product which you are offering.

Price – in the definition is “profit” and this is important, as well as setting the price for customers that is not too high and not so low.

Promotion – this is the area most people first think of marketing. This is the communications to your prospects and clients as well as your other stakeholders such as employees and shareholders.

Place – how do customers obtain the product, the channels used such as distributors, e-commerce, and sales teams.

People – how do you provide the product or service (increasingly service is also part of the product offering) to your prospects and customers with your all staff.

Physical evidence – how do you demonstrate, particularly to prospects, the benefits of them using your business?

Process – have you got systems in place for taking the suspect to prospects through to customers and retaining them?

All these “ingredients” of the marketing mix can be used in forming a marketing strategy rather than an ad-hoc approach typically in using one of these tools. Often the tool is tried for a short period without any measure and abandoned. Of course, some tools work better than others for different businesses and situations. Some trial should be considered, but as we have mentioned before start with a plan of where the business is going and then place your marketing strategy on achieving these goals.

At The Business Marketing Company we write and implement marketing strategy, so if you need assistance please contact us, and we will be more than pleased to help.
If you need to discuss your sales and marketing then please contact us.