Marketing

At premiercallcentre.co.uk UK's leader in Call Centres can help you with Marketing; we cover all aspects of the industry to help your company succeed. Marketing is an integrated communications based process through which individuals and communities are informed or persuaded that existing and newly identified needs and wants may be satisfied by the products and services of others. Premiercallcentre.co.uk has long been providing clear, innovative and marketing solutions for both individual and corporate clients, call us today for advice.

Marketing is used to create the customer, to keep the customer and to satisfy the customer. With the customer as the focus of its activities, it can be concluded that Marketing is one of the premier components of Business Management - the other being Operations (or Production). Other services and management activities such as Human Resources, Accounting, Law and Legal aspects can be "bought in" or "contracted out".

Marketing can be commonly misunderstood term

Before you learn more about marketing, you should get a basic impression of what marketing is. Basically, you might look at marketing as the wide range of activities involved in making sure that you're continuing to meet the needs of your customers and are getting appropriate value in return. Think about marketing as "inbound" and "outbound" marketing.

Inbound Marketing Includes

   1. What specific groups of potential customers/clients (markets) might have which specific needs (nonprofits often already have a very clear community need in mind when starting out with a new program -- however, the emerging practice of nonprofit business development, or earned income development, often starts by researching a broad group of clients to identify new opportunities for programs)
   2. How those needs might be met for each group (or target market), which suggests how a product might be designed to meet the need (nonprofits might think in terms of outcomes, or changes, to accomplish among the groups of clients in order to meet the needs)
   3. How each of the target markets might choose to access the product, etc. (its "packaging")
   4. How much the customers/clients might be willing pay and how (pricing analysis)
   5. Who the competitors are (competitor analysis)
   6. How to design and describe the product such that customers/clients will buy from the organization, rather than from its competitors (its unique value proposition)
   7. How the product should be identified -- its personality -- to be most identifiable (its naming and branding)

Outbound Marketing Includes

   1. Advertising and promotions (focused on the product)
   2. Sales
   3. Public and media relations (focused on the entire organization)
   4. Customer service
   5. Customer satisfaction

Too often, people jump right to the outbound marketing. As a result, they often end up trying to push products onto people who really don't want the products at all. Effective inbound marketing often results in much more effective -- and less difficult -- outbound marketing and sales.

Definition

Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as 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. The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to a market to buy or sell goods or services.

The marketing concept

The term marketing concept pertains to the fundamental premise of modern marketing. This concept proposes that in order to satisfy its organizational objectives, an organization should anticipate the needs and wants of consumers and satisfy these more effectively than competitors.

Marketing orientations

An orientation, in the marketing context, relates to a perception or attitude a firm holds towards its product or service, essentially concerning consumers and end-users. There exist several common orientations such as: Product orientation, Sales orientation, Production orientation, Marketing orientation, Customer orientation and Organizational orientation.

Mutually beneficial exchange

In a transaction in the market economy, a company gains revenue, this thus leads to more profits/market share/sales. A consumer on the other hand gains the satisfaction of a need/want, utility, reliability and value for money from the purchase of a product or service. As no one has to buy goods from any one supplier in the market economy, firms must entice consumers to buy goods with contemporary marketing ideal.

Marketing mix and the ‘The Four Ps’

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 scope of a product generally includes supporting elements such as warranties, guarantees, and support.

Pricing: This refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts. The price need not be monetary; it can simply be what is exchanged for the product or services, e.g. time, energy, or attention. Methods of setting prices optimally are in the domain of pricing science.

Placement (or distribution): This refers to how the product gets to the customer; for example, point-of-sale placement or retailing. This third P has also sometimes been called Place, referring to the channel by which a product or service is sold (e.g. online vs. retail), which geographic region or industry, to which segment (young adults, families, business people), etc. also referring to how the environment in which the product is sold in can affect sales.

Promotion: This includes advertising, sales promotion, including promotional education, publicity, and personal selling. Branding refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company.

These four elements are often referred to as the marketing mix, which a marketer can use to craft a marketing plan.

The four Ps model is most useful when marketing low value consumer products. Industrial products, services, high value consumer products require adjustments to this model. Services marketing must account for the unique nature of services.

Other marketing Ps that developed later

In order to recognize the different aspects of selling services, as opposed to Products, a further three Ps were added to make a range of Seven Ps for service industries.

Process: The way in which orders are handled, customers are satisfied and the service is delivered.

Physical Evidence: is tangible evidence of the service customers will receive (for example a holiday brochure).

People: the people meeting and dealing with the customers.

As markets have become more satisfied, the 7 Ps have become relevant to those companies selling products, as well as those solely involved with services. Customers now differentiate between sellers of goods by the service they receive in the process from the people involved.

Some authors cite a further P - Packaging - this is thought by many to be part of Product, but in certain markets (Japan, China for example) and with certain products (perfume, cosmetics) the packaging of a product has a greater importance - maybe even than the product itself.

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The marketing environment

The term "marketing environment" relates to all of the factors (whether internal, external, direct or indirect) that affect a firm's marketing decision-making/planning. A firm's marketing environment consists of three main areas, which are:

• The macro-environment, over which a firm holds little control
• The micro-environment, over which a firm holds a greater amount (though not necessarily total) control

The macro-environment

A firm's marketing macro-environment consists of a variety of external factors that manifest on a large (or macro) scale. These are typically economic, social, political or technological phenomena. A common method of assessing a firm's macro-environment is via a PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Ecological) analysis. Within a PESTLE analysis, a firm would analyze national political issues, culture and climate, key macroeconomic conditions, health and indicators (such as economic growth, inflation, unemployment, etc.), social trends/attitudes, and the nature of technology's impact on its society and the business processes within the society.

The micro-environment

A firm's micro-environment comprises factors pertinent to the firm itself, or stakeholders closely connected with the firm or company.

A firm's micro-environment typically spans

• Customers/consumers
• Employees
• Suppliers

By contrast to the macro-environment, an organization holds a greater degree of control over these factors. These all factors a firm can handle/ control by using the marketing tools.

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