The The Fundamentals of Marketing

Only action creates action

Marketing activity helps you polish what you do best and identify what you should do more often. Important? Depends if you want to succeed.

Wise organisations adopt management processes, which are measurable by their outcomes and repeatable by those who implement them. Such processes, including marketing, also give you control. Though it may soon change, the current Chartered Institute of Marketing definition describes the activity as ‘The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably’. The keys are: process – manageable and repeatable; identifying – knowing not guessing; satisfying – not losing customers; and profitable – or you’ll go to the wall. So, marketing is a systematic activity for keeping your customers and finding new ones. It can help keep you in business and help ensure that your business meets its objectives. With it, you get to control your destiny, without it your future is a matter of chance.

- The key aims of marketing are to retain existing customers, to recruit new customers, to increase the value of your sales and to maintain, or more ideally to grow, your share of the available market. Setting aside planning and distribution for the moment, the marketing process includes five actions: knowledge – understanding what the market wants; alignment – ensuring what you offer is what is wanted; promotion – announcing your offering; transaction – exchanging your goods or services for customer’s money (usually); and finally, repetition – doing so again and again to build strength in your enterprise.

Marketing is a tap best left dripping.

- Marketing is not advertising, though that is something which could be prompted by the marketing process. Nor is it sales or selling, but it does help you understand what to sell, to whom and at what cost. Selling is a separate activity that follows as a result of good marketing. Marketing is a tap best left dripping. It is most effective as a continuous process in which the relationship between an organisation and its customers – and of course its competitors too – is routinely examined and polished. It should not be treated like the family sledge and dragged out of the attic annually, or when the weather has already deteriorated.

- Pleasing your customers requires that you understand, identify and emphasise the aspect of your service or product which customers value most. This must be based on their values – not your assumption of their values. Though this might sound simple it can often be difficult to pinpoint what makes customers value your widget more than someone else’s.

If you aim at everyone you risk hitting no one.

- When looking at your market it is important to realise that you might not be able to satisfy the broad range of customers within it. To attempt to do so will mean that you must shape the appeal of your offering so widely that its strengths will be lost. The marketing process is geared towards selecting the best customer targets – even if this might mean dismissing others. If you aim at everyone you risk hitting no one.

- Does marketing work for any organisation? Yes it does. Wise organisations use marketing as a tool to facilitate their journey to the next stage of growth or consolidation. Marketing action will give those at the helm the opportunity to plan and control outcomes rather than leave matters in the fickle hands of fate. Can anyone ‘do’ marketing? Ultimately, the success of any undertaking will depend on the calibre and expertise of those involved. Be prepared to seek specialist support if doubts arise.

- Spike Milligan was helpful in explaining how not to do it. He said ‘We haven’t got a plan, so nothing can go wrong.’ The only benefit of having no plan is that there are consequently no measures by which you might be judged. For tangible progress, something more substantial and methodical is required. As with any journey your chances of success will increase if you have a vision of your destination and a plan for getting there. Or, in more business-like terms, you should set your objectives, identify critical success factors and apply a strategy that will manage the process with least risk.

The most successful strategies are those focused on the needs of customers.

- Your marketing strategy should take realistic account of the conditions and circumstances surrounding it – or it just won’t work. Insularity is a danger. If your organisation seeks to build a plan based around its own ego or habits the plan will probably fail or else be ineffective. The most successful and robust marketing strategies are those focused outwardly on the market and specifically on the needs of customers.

- Any organisation, whether it’s just you and a canary or you and several hundred other committed souls, can grow in three ways: New customers; larger purchases from known customers; and more frequent or repeat purchases from known customers. Marketing is the mechanism to stimulate and maintain all three routes.

- Some would-be entrepreneurs begin with a hot idea, and then seek a market for it. Sometimes the idea is interesting enough to appeal and a sustainable business is born. But more often than not, any business taking this approach will find itself in difficulty before too long. Good marketing practice seeks to lay reliable foundations that are underpinned by knowledge.

The swiftest route to obscurity is to ignore the market you serve.

- The essence of successful marketing is understanding what your customers want – what they really want. Having understood what vital element captures your customer’s interest your organisation must be flexible enough to deliver it – and flexible enough to change again and even again if that’s what the market dictates. The swiftest route to obscurity is to ignore the market you serve or to assume you know what it wants without finding out for certain.

Summary

Hope is not an adequate strategy. You cannot assume that those who sustain you (customers) will know you, find you, like you, prefer you or keep coming to you. Continuity and success tomorrow will depend on how effectively you take tangible action today. The appropriate action is marketing. It should be routine and central to the management of any organisation that aims to succeed. Marketing actions taken on the hoof or in an emergency do not work in the long term – it should be a continuous planned process. You may not be able to control your market but marketing will enable you to better control your relationship with it.