Merchandising: with all that entails such as the dreaded double-glazing or financial salesman.
- Advertising: with all that entails such as the slick young artistic and smarmy account person.
Of course marketing also encompasses these functions - though, hopefully not as in the stereotypes that are in so a lot of minds - but marketing is about an excellent deal more than just merchandising or advertising.
Marketing is the wide range of activities affiliate in making sure that you're continuing to meet the needs of your customers and are getting benefit in return.
It includes:
- Discovering out what groups of potential customers or markets exist
- What groups of customers you prefer to serve - your target markets
- What their needs are, what products or services you might begin to meet their needs
- How customers might prefer to use the products and services
- Who competitors are and what they are doing
- What pricing mechanism and approach you should use
- How each of target markets might accept to access the product, etc.
- How much customers / clients might be willing pay and how.
- Whereby to design and describe the product such that customers/clients will accept from the organization, rather than from its competitors - the unique value proposition
- How the company or brand should be identified - personality -to be utmost identifiable i.e. naming and branding
- Advancing campaigns, which can involve advertising, public relations, sales and customer advantage
All of this was characterised many years ago by London Riley as the 4Ps:
- Product - making what customers aim at
- Place - delivering it with the channels they want to use
- Promotion - making them aware of its existence
- Price - making it available at a price they will pay
At the end of the day marketing is really about not losing sight of the basics. You have to be focused on what customers require as the outcome and then find out how to get there by
joining customers needs over a period of time, in a socially responsible way, whilst making a clear-cut profit.
Marketing is really a philosophy and attitude about customer focus that has to run through the whole organisation. If you get that you get marketing.
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