Learn Marketing in One Day A Complete Guide on How to Teach Yourself the Fundamental Marketing Skills

Acknowledgments

No book is the work only of its authors. We greatly appreciate the valuable contributions of several people who helped make this edition possible.

Learn Marketing in One Day has been influenced and improved by the inputs of more people than it is possible to list. We do, however, want to express our appreciation to those who have played the most significant roles, especially in this edition.

We are especially grateful to our many writers/editors who have reviewed, edited, and critiqued every word had written. Indeed, in many ways, our writers/editors hard work, positive attitude, and dedication to quality throughout the whole process is without a match.

The book probably wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for them because without them help it would have been just too overwhelming and we’d have quit! In particular, we would like to recognize all the helpful contributions.

Introduction

Marketing focuses on attracting customers, getting them to buy, and making sure they’re happy enough with their purchases that they come back for more. What could be more important?

Marketing is part science, part art, and it can be challenging to bottle up both parts into a winning campaign. Your business (or nonprofit or service agency) needs to do a lot, including Great communications, clear strategies, and tight planning pave the way to success, along with creative implementation.

True, being a successful marketer requires careful planning and creative strategies but it also requires a solid, focused marketing program (the coordinated activities that produce profitable sales growth and build your brand reputation). Growth and success are the basic goals of any marketing program, and a well-designed marketing program produces a reliable flow of orders and ensures that marketing spending generates a profitable return.

After you wrap your mind around the components of your marketing program and find the formulas that produce sales and profits for your business, then you can turn your attention to the future. How will you translate this year’s level of success into greater success in the future?

The trick to future growth is to have a good strategy and a plan for how to accomplish that strategy. You need to write a plan and budget carefully to make sure your marketing activities are productive, effective, affordable, and controlled.

This book offers you the insight you need to build your foundational marketing tools: your program, your strategy, your plan and Much More.

Preface

This book is aimed to give a complete overview of what marketing really means in the contemporary business environment. It’s not a background/reference document it’s more a how-to guide to help stimulate some thinking and discussion about marketing, which is an essential part of any successful business.

Whatever you are a small business owner, entrepreneur or marketing student, this book will help you gain the insight, focus, and tools you need to be successful in marketing endeavors. Marketing success unfolds with an understanding of the environments in which you operate.

All commercial businesses have products and services to sell and these are both the result of, and the reason for, marketing activities. Goods & Services, collectively called Products, are developed to meet customer needs and so those needs must be researched and understood. Each product can then be targeted at a specific market segment and a marketing mix developed to support its desired positioning.

As a marketer, your job is to position and differentiate your brand(s) in the minds of consumers. That takes strategy. Learning to employ the full spectrum of the marketing mix, in a strategic way, will help you shape and reinforce your brand image. As you speed up brand recognition, you will provide critical support that tees up and reinforces the sales effort and paves the road to profit.

So, where do you start? The bean counter will tell you, to begin with, the end—your profit motive—in mind. Before investing money in marketing (or developing) products and services, start with marketing research to validate that product headed for the market are relevant, needed and primed for success, the marketer evaluates market segments, chooses target markets, recommends pricing, and plans marketing promotions. Finally, a Web presence is developed, ads are run, telemarketing, e-marketing, and networkers are sent out to prospect. Then, salespeople are charged with selling. Easy? It is if you do it right.

Whether you’ve just entered the market with spanking new products and services, plan to stretch a growing brand across the new geographic terrain, or extend a successful brand into different product lines, chances are that your business concept began with a heartfelt a-ha! That exclamation probably left you giddy with the belief that you had just hit upon something that the world was missing. No doubt you were tempted to bring that unique idea to buyers who would clamor for your concept, if only they knew about it. At that point, you may have launched your new business venture with devil-take-all bravado. Then, you set your sights on a killer plan that would jump-start your success.

and this book brings several powerful marketing realities into sharp focus. It guides you in considering what aspects of your marketing strategy must adapt to changes in our quickly transforming market sphere. And, it shows you how to do that—through information, strategies, tips, and tools.

Where to Go from Here

If you read only one chapter in one business book this year, please make it Chapter One of this book. We’ve made this chapter stand alone as a powerful way to audit your marketing and upgrade or enhance the things that you do to make profitable sales. We’ve packed the rest of the book with good tips and techniques, and it all deserves attention. But whatever else you do or don’t get around to, read the first chapter with a pencil and action-list at hand!

Whatever you’re doing, we have a hunch that this book has a chapter or two to assist you. So don’t let us slow you down. Get going! It’s never too early (or too late) to do a little marketing.

Chapter One

Marketing Fundamentals

what is marketing?

Marketing is commonly misunderstood as an ostentatious term for advertising and promotion; in reality, it is far more than that. This perception isn’t in many ways unreasonable, advertising and promotion are the major way in which most people are exposed to marketing. However, the term ‘marketing’ actually covers everything from company culture and positioning, through market research, new business/product development, advertising and promotion, PR (public/press relations), and arguably all of the sales and customer service functions as well;

Why study marketing?

There are several important reasons to study marketing: Marketing plays an important role in society, marketing is important to businesses, marketing offers outstanding career opportunities, and marketing affects your life every day.

Marketing is also vital to understanding businesses of any sort, thus any study of a business that excludes an appreciation of marketing is incomplete. In particular, at the highest levels marketing becomes an integrating holistic culture that drives integrated, coordinated and focused business practices with the interests of the customer at its heart – a combination that makes such businesses difficult to beat in the market.

The value of Marketing; Needs, Utility, Exchange Relationships & Demand

It is a fundamental idea of marketing that companies survive and prosper through meeting the needs and wants of customers. This matching process takes place in what is called the marketing environment and involves both strategic and tactical marketing within the company’s structure. A truly marketing oriented business is actually structurally designed to facilitate the Marketing Concept as a philosophy and as a way of operating.

Businesses do not undertake marketing activities alone. They face threats from competitors, and changes in the political, economic, social and technological aspects of the macro-environment. All of which have to be taken into account as a business tries to match its capabilities with the needs and wants of its target customers. A company that adopts the marketing concept accepts the needs of potential customers as the basis for its operations, and thus its success is dependent on satisfying those customer needs.

• A need is a basic requirement that an individual has to satisfy to continue to exist.

People have basic needs for food, shelter, affection, esteem and self-development. In fact, many of these needs are created from human biology and the nature of social relationships, it is just that human society and marketers have evolved many different ways to satisfy these basic needs. All humans are different and have different needs based on age, sex, social position, work, social activities etc. As such, each person’s span of needs is likely to be unique and this it follows that customer needs are, therefore, very broad.

• A want is defined as having a strong desire for something but it not vital to continued existence.

Consumer wants are shaped by social and cultural forces, the media and marketing activities of businesses; as such a want is much more specific and goes beyond the basic to include aspirational values as well as the need satisfaction.

This leads to another important concept – that of demand. Demand is a want for a specific product/ service supported by the ability and willingness to pay for it, i.e. there is a market of customers who both want and can pay for the product/service.

The concept of demand is absolutely fundamental to marketing, and is what much marketing research is actually aimed at; establishing the level of demand, and what Product Managers & Planners in many businesses spend their time trying to predict – patterns of demand and how they change as new products and services come to market and the needs/wants of the consumers and customers in the market evolve.

Indeed, the concept of demand is how we in marketing actually define a market – a group of potential customers with a shared need that can be satisfied through an exchange relationship to the mutual satisfaction of the potential customers and the supplier. Indeed, looking at this you should be able to see that this very neatly brings together the Marketing concept with more traditional views on exchange, utility, needs and wants.

What can be marketed?

We satisfy our needs and wants by buying goods and services. Goods are items you can see and touch, such as a book, a pencil, a folder etc.; they are physical, having form and substance. Whereas services are provided for you by other people, such as; doctor, designer, haircut and eating out at restaurants, they are intangible. When you purchase a good you thus get physical ownership of it, whereas when you purchase a service you gain ownership of nothing.

However, this split was traditionally based on an economics-based view and such a dichotomy between physical goods and intangible services are not given too much credence within contemporary marketing.

It is only when you get down to the individual adaptation of the marketing mix elements that such a consideration is required.

Firstly, we have to note that these are not discrete categories, there is, in fact, a continuum with a pure service as one terminal point and a pure commodity good as the other.

It is thus better to actually think in terms of goods and services in terms of what actually makes them different from each other because it is these factors that impact on the marketing mix. The goods and services continuum enables marketers to see the relative goods/services composition of total products. By determining a product’s position on the continuum marketers can spot opportunities.

Goods and services are the outputs offered by businesses to satisfy the demands of consumer and industrial markets. They are best differentiated on the basis of four characteristics:

• Tangibility: Goods are tangible products such as cars, clothing, and machinery. They have shape and can be seen and touched. Services are intangible; hair styling, graphics design, and equipment repair, for example, do not have a physical presence.

• Perishability: All goods have some degree of durability beyond the time of purchase. Services do not; they perish as they are delivered.

• Reparability: Goods can be stored for later use. Thus, production and consumption are typical, separate. Because the production and consumption of services are simultaneous, services and the service provider cannot be separated.

• Standardization: The quality of goods can be controlled through standardization and grading in the production process. The quality of services, however, is different each time they are delivered.

Secondly, when one considers the real world such a split between goods and services is clearly tautology they are both products. Marketers draw on the same set of principles and skills to market all products, whether they are apples, designs or haircuts.

The Link between Marketing and Branding

Marketing and branding go hand in glove. Marketing is the umbrella under which branding resides. It is a multifaceted process used to develop and connect your brand presence and message with target customers. Marketing requires an understanding of consumer needs, products, planning, pricing, promotion, placement, and positioning, as well as the importance of people involved in the process. Together, these elements make up the marketing mix.

Branding is one aspect of promotional marketing, and it represents way more than your outer mark. It becomes your image, inside and out, reflecting the impression you make on people’s minds. The brand image conveys the kinds of experiences that people prospects, customers, employees, investors, and other stakeholders can expect from your products, services, and company. This expectation is translated as your brand promise. It communicates how you connect and engage with prospects and customers. It colors the business of every department in every company. Likewise, every department colors the brand in some way.

Branding is more about consumers’ actual experience with your products, services, and people than with what you tell them about your brand. The feeling people take away from engaging with your products, services, or company is what drives your brand. Engage people from inside and outside your company. Work to positively influence their sense of connection with your company and products, and you will build a marketing success story.

Branding may begin when research indicates a viable business concept. But brands grow based on missions and beliefs. They are promoted through marketing messages, taglines, expertise, and experiences. They are marketed in print, in person, and on the Web. They are built through internal relationships with employees and external relationships with customers, the community, and the media. Then, they are validated by consumer experience. When consumers experience predictable positive outcomes and when they are regularly exposed to a brand via marketing services brand awareness, presence, and value grow.

Marketing Core

Marketing is all the activities that contribute to building ongoing, profitable relationships with customers in order to grow your business. The immediate goal of marketing is to make sales. The long-term goal is to become increasingly useful or valuable to a growing number of customers so as to ensure your future success.

Your marketing program is the right mix of products or services, pricing, promotions, branding, sales, and distribution that will produce immediate sales and also help you grow over time. You’ll know when you’ve found the right mix for you and your company because it will produce profitable sales and enough demand to allow you to grow at a comfortable rate.

Knowing Your Customer

To make your marketing program more profitable and growth oriented, think about how to reach and persuade more of the right customers. When you understand how your customers think and what they like, you may find better ways to make more sales. The next sections help you get better acquainted with your customers.

Asking the right questions

To better know your customers and find out what they’re thinking, you must communicate with them. But before you delve into asking your customers what they want, you first have to ask yourself one important question: Why will people buy what I offer? You need to provide benefits that customers value. For instance, your product may offer benefits such as convenience, ease of use, brand appeal, attractive design, or a lower price than the competition. The right mix of benefits can make your product particularly appealing to the group of customers who value those benefits. Your specific appeal to customers may vary from your product having a better warranty to your store being open later than the competition.

Whatever the specific reasons, if you can’t list at least a few sound, logical reasons as to why people should buy from you, then you need to make some improvements.

However, even if you’re better from a logical or rational perspective, customers may still choose the competition. Is your brand appealing? Do you use an attractive design for your packaging? Is your presentation professional and trustworthy?

The image isn’t everything in marketing, but it is just about everything when it comes to the emotional impact you make. So pay close attention to your image when you’re looking for ways to boost sales. To truly know your customers, you also need to explore the answers to these two questions:

What do customers think about my product? Do they understand it? Do they think its features and benefits are superior to the competition and can meet their needs? Do they feel that my product is a good value given its benefits and costs? Is it easy for them to buy the product when and where they need it?

How do customers feel about my product? Does it make them feel good? Do they like its personality? Do they like how it makes them feel about themselves? Do they trust me?

Filling the awareness gap

Are prospective customers even aware that you exist? If not, then you need to bump up your marketing communications and get in front of them somehow to reduce or eliminate the awareness gap, which is the percentage of people in your target market who are unaware of your offerings and their benefits. (How? That’s what the rest of this book is about, so keep reading!) If only one in ten prospective customers knows about your brand, then you have a 90-percent awareness gap and need to get the word out to a lot more people.

If you need to communicate with customers more effectively and often, you have some options for bumping up the impact of your marketing communications and reducing the awareness gap:

• You can put in more time. For instance, if customers lack knowledge about your product, more sales calls can help fill this awareness gap.

• You can spend more money. More advertisements help fill your awareness gap, but of course, they cost money.

• You can communicate better. A strong, focused marketing program with clear, consistent, and frequent communications helps fill the awareness gap with information and a positive brand image, which then allows interest and purchase levels to rise significantly.

• You can become more popular. Sometimes you can create a buzz of talk about your product. If people think it’s really cool or exciting, they may do some of the communicating for