It is pretty standard for those working in the field of marketing to ask, “So what exactly is marketing?” and this can’t be answered by a short soundbite. This is my attempt to address it.
The most important responsibilities for an advertising department
1. Staying close to your customers, knowing their requirements and desires, and always looking for positive improvements to the product or service that you can introduce. Then, mobilize their organizations to begin introducing them.
2. Communicating the brand’s or product’s distinct advantages to prospective customers to ensure that they are aware of the reasons the reason why they should select the particular brand or product over rival ones.
3. For those who are already customers helping them faithful to the business, they can purchase more often (or) purchase in larger quantities. The loyalty schemes are an excellent illustration of this.
In the ideal case, the product or service promoted has something that is, to the eye of the customers, is distinctive and superior to its competitors.
The marketing team in charge can take advantage of this competitive advantage as the basis for the promotion they plan to do.
For the majority of companies, that “ideal” scenario does not exist. The reality across many industries is that products with genuinely unique advantages are difficult to come across, and if you locate them, they will be quickly copied.
Large-scale company marketing
This kind of scenario usually leads to a situation in which the most well-known marketing activities are usually crafted by more giant corporations that possess only a small amount of advantages in their product or service but have large gross margins. They are able to make use of these larger margins to finance substantial advertising in order to “talk up” the minimal differences that they do have.
If an item is experienced or perceived without any branding visible, consumers generally don’t see any noticeable distinctions with other products.
Marketing executives, therefore, strive to make the package of brand and product more effective by utilizing high-visibility and powerful marketing (often ads on TV).
The purpose of these marketing campaigns is to “wrap” the product in an image that will make people believe in its quality or shows them how it will satisfy any other need they may have. Some examples could be their psychological desire to have a better social standing or perhaps a desire for a more attractive appearance towards the other sex.
These kinds of psychological benefits are commonly called “emotional benefits.” Together with the “physical benefits” the product could have, they are essential elements to create a brand that is strong.
Marketing for smaller companies
Smaller companies have fewer marketing budgets, and the activities performed tend to be low-profile things such as trade shows, advertisement (but no television) products or company videos, e-mailing campaigns banners on the internet, and promotions using social media.
Conclusion
Marketing is a significant investment for companies to boost growth. It could be growth in revenue or profit growth or membership growth, but it is what they’re looking for and is the criterion for organizations that are well-run that determines how successful marketing is judged.
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