Key Strategies for Successful Marketing Thinking

1. Solve problems. Think in terms of benefits rather than features. Successful marketing propositions don't start with a product, but with the answer to a customer's problem. Know what customers want to buy and WHY they're buying it. If you don't know the driving forces, learn them. That way there are no misdirection or expensive false starts.

2. Learn to manage chaos and manage in chaos. Things don't happen in order, even though management types often crave linear time and work flows. The successful marketer manages chaos-in the corporate world, and in buying patterns. He finds sales patterns where none seem to exist on the surface and builds on them.

3. Build relationships  as well as sales. Most people can sell a good product once. But it's the relationship that spurs future sales. Especially in a service environment, the company is buying you, not just your product.

4. Stay in tune with your customers. Know that consumers buy on emotion first and physical benefits next. How one sells to the consumer is just as important as how it is sold. There will be much more on this in the coming chapters.

5. Borrow ideas from the competition. Do this freely and without remorse. Know how the competition will react to your marketing strategy and the plusses and minuses about competitive products. Become your competitor's best friend and customer until you know almost as much about competitive products as they do.

6. Listen. Listening is an underrated art form. Customers will give you as much information as you need if you probe correctly. Successful marketers ask-and then listen! The second part is where most people go wrong. It's physically impossible to talk and listen at the same time and the weak marketer spends more time babbling than listening. Customers will tell you everything you need to know about how to make them buy your product when you ask the right way. Successful marketers ask questions and know when to shut up.

7. Continuously think of ways to make your product better. Constantly evolve your products and your strategic thinking. Avoid tunnel vision by always looking for peripheral strategies and markets. The ideal product and target market has never been invented. Improve your product and look for new target markets even before the product or strategy hits the market.

8. Never see yourself as a victim. It's an easy mind-set to get into: you feel your product is not ideal, the competition too strong. These are all temporary conditions. Moses had hundreds of thousands of followers hanging on to his every word. But many people don't know that Moses had a speech defect (Exodus). There always will be negatives but you will overcome almost any negative with solid marketing that puts a spin on the product and turns a negative into a selling point.

9. Think proactively 100 percent of the time. Locate problems before they occur, along with potential solutions. There are always going to be problems that you didn't think of when you started a strategy. Find remedies for potential dysfunctional situations before they occur.

10. Fill your bead with minutia about anything and everything. It doesn't have to be related to the task at hand. Mind chatter feeds on those little scraps of information you keep in your head. The answers to questions rest in your subconscious waiting to be set free at the proper moment.

11. Live and breathe marketing. Keep a twenty-four hour vigil for new opportunities. Opportunities don't come and kick you in the butt; they always have to be probed and ferreted out. And opportunities don't work the 9-5 shift. In our business society we have put marketers on a daily nine-hour schedule. But our body and brain rhythms don't fit that schedule. New ideas usually opt to surface at weird times when you're actually thinking of something else-i.e., driving a car, taking a shower, and even making love (unfortunately).

12. Take a break now and then. Having time away from work isn't just a good idea. It's mandatory. Continuous work brings circular thinking. When batteries are recharged during a vacation, you get a fresh look at your ideas and your marketing proposition.

Marketing and Selling

Marketing Mix

Now we move to the Marketing mix. The marketing philosophy, once adopted by a business, can be seen in its marketing mix. The marketing mix is a combination of all the factors that can affect the successful development of a profitable business.

The emphasis placed on any of the elements of the marketing mix may change depending on the type of business, its market place and its strategic objectives Once a business adopts the marketing concept, the marketing department. becomes the pivotal centre of the business, helping to coordinate the elements the mix and ensuring that everyone who contributes understands their involvement in helping the business to succeed.

The main constituents of the marketing mix are often known as 'The 4 Ps':

• Product

• Price

• Place

• Promotion

There are also other constituents can be added to the above specially when it comes to market a service. These constituents are:

• People (Participants)

• Process

• Presence (Physical Environment)

 

An Overview of Marketing

Marketing: What's It All About?

A traditional market square on market day is the natural beginning of the marketing process. Buyers meet sellers, and they trade. The best produce sells at good prices but poor produce is often left on the stall or has to be sold cheaply at the end of the day.

All over the world, for generations buyers and sellers have met face to face on the market square and bartered, argued, haggled and traded - they are natural marketers always in tune with the needs of their customers.

But then, as businesses all over the world became bigger and more organized, managers often lost that direct contact with their customers and as a result some companies, without realizing what was happening, started to produce products that their customers didn't really want. Having lost touch they continued to develop and sell the products that they could make, rather than finding out what their customers really wanted and adapting their production to make those products.

"You can have your car in any color you like, as long as it's black." (Henry Ford)

 One of the simplest definition is: satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process

According to the American Marketing Association (AMA) Board of Directors, Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

Professor Philip Kotler explained that marketing is meeting the needs of your customer at a profit. For me that definition extends beyond just communicating product features. Marketers are responsible for a 360-degree experience.

Academic Definition of Marketing is: The process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals.

In recent years the Chartered Institute of Marketing produced a more current definition of the marketing concept which is: 'Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements.

We can keep listing some other definition, but From the above I found out that Marketing is all about creating an exchange that satisfy the consumer needs and the company goals. 

That leads us to a new term which is " EXCHANGE ". What is exchange?

I believe most of the readers already know what is exchange. Basically it's the idea that people give up something to receive something they would rather have .

The secret of good marketing is not just to identify and satisfy your customer's requirements but to satisfy them at a price that is acceptable to both of you - one that provides you with a profit and also ensures that the customer is retained as a future purchaser:

Customer satisfaction + supplier profitability = repeat sales

Unless you are a monopoly supplier, to achieve this balance you need to be market focused, continually aware of what your customers think and how your market is behaving.

As we have already mentioned, the secret of good marketing is not only to identify and satisfy your customer's requirements but also to try to develop customer loyalty, encourage repeat purchases and make a profit (or achieve a defined objective).

Getting your customer to like you, or at least to like doing business with you, is becoming increasingly vital to businesses of all types - transport, retail, financial services and so on - as usually it is all too easy for the customer to walk away and buy elsewhere.

Getting your customer to like you means that you have to make an extra effort to find out what they want and then provide it - at a profit.