What Is Marketing? Complete Guide & Walkthough
Definition of Marketing
Marketing is the whole of organizational activities that direct goods and services from the producer to the consumer or user to achieve business objectives and satisfy the wants and needs of current and potential customers. Marketing is the process of developing, pricing, distributing, and promoting goods and services that meet customers’ needs.
Marketing is a complicated set of activities using different marketing channels and marketing technics, to reach the customers and also potential customers. Marketing is the science and art of seeking, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market at a profit.
What are the Functions of Marketing?
Aditionally marketing is the act of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising. Marketing covers an extensive area that is included in almost all processes of a business or company and follows the processes. The marketer creates the short and long-term strategies of a firm.
Marketing undertakes many roles, including promoting the product, brand awareness, promotion of the product, increasing the market share, creating customer satisfaction, developing and changing the product or service, introducing new products or rearranging the product according to needs, creating distribution channels.
What is the difference between sales and marketing?
Notably marketing covers the process of the product to be delivered to the consumer from production to the consumer and after. Attracting the attention of the consumer to the product is one of the important tasks of marketing. Sales are the goal that marketing wants to achieve. The process of reaching the buyer of the products produced or offered is expressed as sales.
What is Marketing Mix?
The marketing mix, which is used to define the dominant elements of marketing, is based on the basic strategies that the relevant departments apply in order to manage their marketing activities healthily and sustainably. Answering the questions of what the 4Ps are and why they are important, the marketing mix is based on the function of marketing management and the benefit it will bring.
4Ps of Marketing
By introducing the concept of 4Ps, Philip Kotler, who summarized the marketing principles, answered the question of what is 4P as “the sum of the marketing tools used to follow the target market.”
1) Product: A product is something that is produced and put forward in line with needs or demands. The product you will sell can be tangible or intangible, goods or services. Before launching your product, it is important to know which market it will be in. It is essential to conduct market research and start production in line with the needs and demands.
2) Price: A crucial variable for the entire marketing strategy, price, is the customer’s willingness to pay for a product. If the price is too high, potential customers are lost; If it is too low, it will be difficult to make a profit. Competitors should be considered when determining the price. Price encompasses cost, profit, and value in customer perception.
3) Place: Location involves choosing where products will be offered for sale. The primary purpose of managing trade channels is to ensure that the product is delivered to the customer at the right time and place. It also includes decisions regarding the positioning and pricing of wholesale and retail outlets. E-commerce has radically changed the marketing concept of place.
4) Promotion: Promotion is any attempt to create sales awareness and increase interest in the product, such as all online or print advertising activities, events, or discounts. You may encounter activities such as public relations campaigns, advertisements, or social media promotions during this process.
The 7 Ps of Marketing: 3 additional items
A new generation of marketers recommend extending the 4 Ps of Marketing to include services:
5) People: The service involves direct interaction of providers and consumers, thus increasing the scope of subjectivity. Appearances, communication, appreciation, consumer interaction, behavior, and service attitude are important elements.
6) Physical Evidence: The atmosphere, layout, and design of the workplace can greatly affect the brand image.
7) Process: Standardized procedures are often adopted in policy, systems, and consumer engagement situations to create continuity in service delivery.
E-Commerce and Marketing
e-commerce gives companies the capacity to sell their products online to users using B2C, B2B, and any e-stores, that is, the ability to trade worldwide. Elimination of place and time limitations keeps e-commerce at its peak. E-commerce; It offers companies the opportunity to market products in a way that can go beyond the borders. In order to utilize these opportunities offered by e-commerce and reach more target audiences, digital marketing techniques have emerged and gradually shaped. There are lots of e-marketing techniques that can be used in the digital marketing category.
Marketing and Advertising
If marketing is a wheel, advertising is nothing but a spoke on that wheel. Marketing is a job that requires product development, market research, product distribution, sales strategy, public relations, and customer support. Marketing is essential at all stages of a business’s sales journey. In addition, marketing can be used on numerous platforms and points to define and communicate with target audiences, raise their voices and build brand loyalty over time.
What are Digital Marketing Techniques?
1) Social Media Marketing (SMM): Social media channels, which enable you to reach many users in a short time, mean potential consumer mass for companies. Social media marketing enables you to run your brand promotion, PR, and advertising campaigns by interacting with the target customer group interactively. SMM is the most effective digital marketing technique today.
2) Content marketing: Search engines carry the most useful, most effective, and most sought-after content to the top. In short, you should constantly update your website and social media channels with impressive and rich content.
3) Mobile marketing: Mobile use is much more common than computer or tablet use. For this reason, developing mobile applications suitable for mobile device access and focusing on mobile marketing brings brands one step ahead.
4) Email Marketing: Email marketing; is the delivery of advertisement content to the predetermined target audience via email. Users who are notified of innovations and discounts via email can stop receiving messages if they wish.
5) Affiliate Marketing: We can call affiliate marketing the more comprehensive version of the direct sales process on traditional marketing, which is made over the internet.
6) Influencer Marketing: The purpose of the infuser system is to develop when people who are followed by a large audience through social media channels try the products and share and recommend the results with their followers.
7) Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO can be defined as all of the processes carried out in order to rank the sites higher in the search engines with the optimization and improvement studies carried out on the sites for search engines.
8) Search Engine Marketing (SEM): It is a form of digital marketing based on the logic of advertising on search engines for your target audience with the keywords you want using a certain budget.