The Fundamentals and Beyond for Beginners

Here’s a Quick Question: What is the main propellant of practically any business – the mechanism that keeps it alive and thriving?  If your answer is marketing congratulations!! And I’m happy to tell you that you’re one of the few people in business that understand this fundamental truth. If your answer wasn’t marketing then here is a quick explanation that could provide you with a very secure future.

Marketing is the mainspring of every business, and is the science of getting people to come and try your product or service, getting them to come back again and again, and getting them to purchase more when they do come back. It incorporates sales, advertising, product design, public relations and a host of other ingredients that are less obvious. Many businesses fail because they fail to understand marketing without marketing, you lose customers, and without customers you lose business.
In the words of the famous speaker, trainer and author Brian Tracy   “If your business is succeeding it’s because your marketing strategy is good.  If your business is failing it’s because your marketing strategy is poor.
Marketing means many things to many people, and in the main seems to mean to most people a fancy name for selling, advertising and other promotional activities associated with fast moving consumer goods such as beer, cigarettes, breakfast cereals, toiletries etc., or packaged holidays and branded goods and consumer durables such as videos, cameras, televisions, etc.
These activities can also give the impression that marketing is an expensive, large company activity and not applicable to the small business making industrial products or to the self employed.
Marketing is vital to each business, no matter how small.  Selling, advertising and other methods are important, but are only parts of marketing.

The term “Marketing” has various meanings.
Marketing is a Concept, a philosophy, and a driving force behind the business. A way of doing business. The guiding force that permeates into all aspects of our dealings with the customer.
Marketing is a Mindset, a way of thinking that determines whether you are just going to do enough placate or minimally satisfy the customer or whether you are going to go the extra mile and delight the customer so much that they would never, ever think of going anywhere else for the services or products you provide and shout from the roof tops to all their friends, colleagues and everyone in their centres of influence, that you are “The best thing since sliced bread”.

Marketing is a Function that must be performed by someone in or connected with the business. This is one of the most problematic areas for owners and managers of

Small to medium size businesses that have to spend most of their time working in the business and not working on the business.  This is a recipe for frustration, stress and a feeling of not being out of control. The fire extinguishers come out and you are often into crisis management.

Marketing is a Technique these will be the methods and the strategies through which you will be able to maximise the return for any marketing investment made. It is the obligation of any businesses not only to gain a return on any resources invested in the business, but also to maximise the return on that investment and marketing is the only leverage that a business has available to increase their return on that investment.
Marketing starts from an essentially different viewpoint than selling.
Marketing starts not from the products and services, which the business can offer to customers but from the customers themselves. They have a range of needs and wants which demand to be satisfied, and to which products and services will need to be developed and adapted
When starting a business it is easy to fall into the trap of seeing the business with the products and services that will be provided, and that selling, advertising and other promotion will be the means by which customers will be persuaded to buy. There are many different definitions of what marketing is. All effective marketing definitions emphasise the customer as the person of the greatest importance to the of any business depend upon delighting the customer by meeting his or her needs and exceeding their expectations.
Marketing is, therefore concerned with every aspect of the business rather than being a single activity, and it just as important for a Sole trader, for a Partnership as for the large multinational corporation.
MARKETING IS EVERYTHING A BUSINESS HAS TO DO TO FIND, TO WIN AND TO KEEP CUSTOMERS SATISFIED AND DELIGHTED.

Marketing attitudes need to be continually fostered particularly where employees are concerned. Most people have had the experience of dealing with businesses large and small where the prevailing attitude seems to be “We could run a good business if it wasn’t for the customers”.
Becoming a business with a marketing outlook does to mean, “ Being all things to all men”. Indeed it is vital that in looking at its market that the business, having identified a whole range of customer needs and wants, then selects those areas which it can best satisfy and in the process develop the foundations for a secure future.

Components of the marketing function

• Searching for opportunities.

• Organising and managing the marketing project

• Implementing and controlling the marketing effort.

Searching for opportunities.
As you are a part of the marketing department of your business it is part of your responsibility to be continually search and identify ways to meet the spoken and unspoken needs of the businesses customers and continually searching for ways to serve them better.
Some questions that you may need to consider:
Who is my target customer?
What do they want?
How do they make their buying decisions?
What frustrates the customer when they are buying or using their services our industry provides?
What do I have to do for them to become their “first choice” supplier?
What needs and wants do my target market have, that are not being fulfilled right now?
Once a marketing opportunity has been found either in new products or services or in a new untapped market you have found. Then the project must be:

Organise and manage
Some questions that you will need to consider
What are my marketing objectives?
What strategies am I going to develop and use?
Who is going to be responsible for what?
What are the Unique Selling Points I am going to develop?
What marketing tactics will I use?
What is the marketing mix going to be?
What is the schedule?

Implementing and controlling the marketing effort.
The marketing effort will need to be implemented, monitored, analysed evaluated and adjusted in order to maximise the effectiveness of the marketing effort.

Marketing Environment
Your business does not operate in a vacuum and will be affected by the environment in which it operates the markets that it is competing in as well as the geographical markets in which you may be doing business?
There are a number of factors to consider:
Political, Regulatory and Legal Climate
Economic climate
Social Trends
Technological developments

Major Players
There are four Major players in the market place
Your Business
Your Customers
Your Consumers
Your Competition

Marketing Information Systems
In today’s marketing environment information is power, it is the difference between making the right choice, making the right decision and having the best opportunity for achieving the optimum result.
A Marketing Information System is a structure for gathering the information you need about customers, consumers, products, services, competitors, marketing communications, the market, strengths and weaknesses of your own business and of your competition.
A comprehensive, effective Marketing information System will allow you to develop marketing strategies.
It will give you the information necessary to gain an edge and to be able to differentiate your offering from the rest of the market It will help you to identify the best methods to reach and get the maximum response from your target audience with any marketing communication activity.
Marketing Mix
The marketing mix is the recipe book for your marketing. The ingredients you use. How its packaged, presented communicated and delivered to the market place will give you the option of selecting exactly the right formula to satisfy the specific and discerning tastes of your prime customers.

Product
Price
Promotion
Place
People

Marketing Planning

I am continually amazed at how many companies do not have a marketing plan, no specific destination to head towards.
The problem with not having a destination is that if you are not going somewhere specific you could end up anywhere.
Once you know your destination and you know when you want to arrive you can develop a strategy that will guide the actions you take.
The biggest benefit can be that you are in control. When you come to a crossroad you know which way to turn.
The lack means it doesn’t really matter, because you are not going anywhere except where chance and circumstance happen to take you.

During the course of these programs I will introduce you to marketing principles and techniques that have the potential to increase your business considerably and help you avoid:

The 10 most common marketing mistakes

1    Not testing
2    Using marketing communications that don’t work
3    Not ascertaining and developing your Unique Selling Proposition and articulating it clearly as an integral part of all of your marketing.
4    Not having a back end
5    Failing to determine and address you customers and prospects needs.
6    Forgetting, or never recognising that you have to both sell and educate your way out of a business problem.
7    Failing to make doing business with your company easy, appealing, desirable and even fun
8    Failing to tell customers the “Reason why”.
9    Failing to Plan
10    When preparing marketing communications, forgetting to focus on the target audience and no one else.