The role of Marketing in Business

🎯 *Marketing*

Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services.

💢 Marketing can be  done by the seller, a retailer or manufacturer.

🎯 *Marketing/ Advertising agency*

Sometimes, marketing tasks are contracted to a dedicated marketing firm or advertising agency.

♦️Marketing firm/Advertising agency is a business dedicated to creating, planning, and handling advertising and some other forms of promotion and marketing for its clients. 

💢 An advertising agency is generally independent of the client; 

➖An advertising agency may be an internal department or agency that provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services. *It may also be an outside firm.* 

🔆 An agency can also handle overall marketing and branding strategies, promotions for its clients, which may include sales as well.

🎯  *Business to business Marketing*

Sometimes businesses direct their products or services to other businesses instead of directing them to consumers.

💢 Business to business Marketing allows them to sell products or services to other companies or organizations that resell them, use them in their products or services or use them to support their works.

🎯 *Business to Consumer marketing*

Business and consumer markets 

are markets that are derived on demand. 

 ⚖️ An example given would be when items are in popular demand. The underlying consumer demand that has triggered this is that people are consuming more electricity (either by using more household devices such as cookers, geysers, washing machines and other electrical equipment).

🔺  *Rise in Business Markets*

❗ _Business markets do not exist in isolation._

A single consumer market demand can give rise to hundreds of business market demands. 

For example: The demand for cars creates demands for castings, forgings, plastic components, steel and tires. 

In turn, this creates demands for casting sand, forging machines, mining materials, polymers, rubber. Each of these growing demands has also triggered more demands.

♦️ *Marketing mix*

❗A marketing mix is a foundational tool used to guide decision making in marketing. 

➖The marketing mix represents the basic tools that marketers can use to bring their products or services to the market. 

💢 *Use of Marketing mix*

The correct arrangement of marketing mix by enterprise marketing managers plays an important role in the success of a company's marketing. 

These roles include:

🏹 *1* Develop strengths and avoid weaknesses. 

🏹 *2* Strengthen the competitiveness and adaptability of enterprises. 

🏹 *3* Ensure the internal departments of the enterprise work closely together.

 🔺 *Principles of Marketing mix*

The traditional marketing mix refers to four broad levels of marketing decision. These four traditional marketing mix are commonly known as the 4 Ps.  namely:

 ➖product, 

➖price, 

➖promotion, and

➖place.

❗However there are more marketing mix principles beyond these four traditional ones.

 🔻  *The 4Ps marketing mix method.*

⚫ *1. Product.*

The product aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual goods or services, and how it relates to the end-user's needs and wants.

➖ The product element consists of:

🔆 Product design,

🔆 New product innovation,

🔆 Branding,

🔆 Packaging,

🔆 Labeling. 

❗The scope of a product includes supporting elements such as:

📍 warranties,

📍 guarantees, and

📍 support.

❗📍 Branding is a key aspect of the product management. It refers to various methods of communicating a brand identity for the product, brand, or company.

⚫ *2. Pricing.*

Pricing refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts. 

❗The price need not necessarily be monetary;

➖ The price can simply be what is exchanged for the product or services, e.g. time, energy, or attention or any sacrifices consumers make in order to acquire a product or service. 

🔆The price is the cost that a consumer pays for a product. (It can be monetary or not). 

⚫ *3. Place (or distribution)* 

Place or distribution refers to how the product gets to the customer; the distribution channels and intermediaries such as wholesalers and retailers who enable customers to access products or services in a convenient manner. 

❗This third P has also sometimes been called Place or Placement, referring to the channel by which a product or service is sold. 

(Examples given could be: online vs. retail), 

📍which geographic region or industry, 

📍to which segment (young adults, families, business people), etc. 

📍It could be also referring to how the environment in which the product is sold in can affect sales.

⚫ *4. Promotion.*

Promotion includes all aspects of marketing communications, such as:

🔆 advertising,

🔆 sales promotion, including

➖ promotional education, 

➖public relations,

➖ personal selling, 

➖product placement,

➖ branded entertainment,

➖ event marketing, 

➖trade shows,

➖ and exhibitions.

 This fourth P is focused on providing a message to get a response from consumers. 

📍The message is designed to persuade or tell a story to create awareness.

🔺 *Customer focused approach marketing mix of the 4 P approach.*

A formal approach to customer-focused marketing mix is known as 4 Cs, which are:

➖commodity,

➖ cost, 

➖channel,

➖ communication. 

 

 ‼️The 4 Cs in the customer focused model provides a demand/customer centric version alternative to the well-known 4 Ps supply side model of product, price, place, promotion of marketing management.

📍 *1.* Product → Commodity.

📍 *2.* Price → Cost.

📍 *3.* Place → Channel.

📍 *4.* Promotion → Communication.

♥️   *Digital Marketing Mix*

❗Digital marketing mix is fundamentally the same as Marketing Mix, which is an adaptation of Product, Price, Place and Promotion into digital marketing aspect.

❗Digital marketing can be commonly explained as 'Achieving marketing objectives through applying digital technologies'.

➖ *1. Product*

 🔆 In the Digital  Marketing aspect, Product has been redefined as *'virtual product.'*

  🏹 Through the form of digital, a product can be directly sent from manufacturers to customers.  

(For example, customers could buy music in the form of an MP3 rather than buy it in the form of a physical CD). 

⚖️➖ *Making strategies for Digital Marketing*

In such cases, when a company is making strategy for Internet marketing, it is necessary to understand how to vary their products in the online environment. 

🎯 They have to have indications to adapt the product element on the Internet.

💢 In some cases there would be need to modifying the core product. 

📍Modifying of core products particularly refers to the products that can be remodeled into digital forms. These would include movies, music, books and other publishing, etc. 

For an example, *_Movies._* 

The wide use of Internet has changed its form of products from selling and renting DVDs through retail stores into selling and renting video online.

⚫ *Providing digital products:*

 In order to gain market shares in the Internet, companies need to widen its product range. 

For example, a psychological counseling could offer online consultation via video calls.

⚫ *Building the whole product:*

 E.g. Apart from selling products online, Amazon.com also provides a paid subscription service called Amazon Prime, with which customers could enjoy free delivery and videos on Amazon.

⚫ *Conducting online research:*

 The Internet offers a low-cost and convenient way of making marketing researches, which is helpful for companies to find out what products or services do customers prefer.

⚫ *Price*

❗Price concerns about the pricing policies or pricing models from a company. 

➖Due to the wide use of the Internet, many applications could be found in both consumer's and producer's perspective. 

📍From consumers' side, the Internet enables people to make a comparison to real-time prices before they make a consumption decision, which is time-saving and effort-saving for the consumers.

 📍As for the suppliers, they can adjust prices in the real-time and provide higher degree of price transparency with customers.

♦️ Besides, the Internet is more likely to ease the pressure on price because online-producers do not have to put budget on renting a physical store.

 Hence, making new or adjusting pricing strategies is essential for the company that wants to enter the Internet market.

⚫ *Place*

With the application of the Internet, place is playing an increasingly important role in promoting consumption since the Internet and the physical channels become virtual.

💢 The major contribution from the Internet to the business is not only making it possible to selling products online, but also enabling companies to build relationships with customers.

🏹 Furthermore, since the convenience of navigating from one site to another place, from the digital marketing perspective is always linked with promotion, which means retailers often use third-party websites such as Google search engine to guide customers to visit their websites.

⚫ *Promotion*

Promotion refers to selecting the target markets, locating and integrating various communication tools in the marketing mix.

 ❗Unlike the traditional marketing communication tools, tools in digital marketing aim at engaging audiences by putting advertisements and content on the social media, including display ads, pay-per-click (PPC), search engine optimisation (SEO), influencers etc.

By VICTOR KALUDZU