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Marketing Defined Lecture Transcript
Hello Jobs University students and welcome to Marketing Fundamentals. In this lecture we
will cover what marketing is and what it means to be a marketer.
So, what is marketing? Marketing is the management process through which goods and
services move from concept to the customer. It involves equal parts of art and science and
the application of marketing changes from company to company depending on its unique
needs. Or as the MerriamWebster dictionary puts it, its the activities that are involved in
making people aware of a company’s products.
In business there are two basic types of marketing : B2B and B2C. The role of marketing
is a little different in each one so let’s cover each in a little detail.
B2C means Business to Consumer. In B2C, you will have personas that represent the
different customer segments you think buy your product. For example, if you are selling a
new brand of shaving cream called “Snow Shave”, you might choose to target new shavers
aged 18 to 25 who want a cool, low cost alternative to their Dad’s Gillette brands. Your
typical objective will be to pull your product through a distribution channel for example, you
could want Snow Shave sold in local grocery stores and men’s haircut shops. Your typical
activities center around brand building and demand generation. So you might want a cool,
frosty Snow Shave logo, and you might send models dressed as snowmen out to give guys
free shaves in front of participating stores. Company dynamics in B2C tend to be
marketing drive it’s all about building the brand and demand for the product or service.
In a B2B situation, you are selling to other companies. So you might be selling a software
system that helps retailers build email lists for their customers. In this case you would know
all of your customers by name, since you’d have a smaller, known number of clients. The
goal in B2B is to sell directly to a customer, or sometimes through a secondary distribution
channel. So typical marketing activities are around generating leads, perhaps by
advertising in retailer magazines, and supporting sales organizations. Resultingly, B2B
organizations tend to be sales driven, and all marketing activities should be generating
leads that lead to closed deals.
A classic view of marketing that was introduced in the 1960s is the 4 P’s. Although some
are challenging some of the notions of the 4 P’s in modern marketing, it is important to
understand the underlying principles. The 4 P’s are product, price, place and promotion. In
product, you answer the question, what does the customer want from the product. How are
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you appealing to them on both a logical and emotional level? Price relates
to the art of pricing and what the value of the product is to the buyer as well
as any discount strategy that should be built into the pricing strategy. Place
refers to where the customer finds your product or the distribution channel in which it is
found. Promotion is where, when and how you reach your target customer.
A good way to see the 4 P’s in action is to compare 2 products with pretty much identical
function, but entirely different 4 P’s. For example the Bic Pen and the Mont Blanc Pen. The
Bic Pen is designed to be a convenient and disposable pen while the Mont Blanc pen is a
luxurious and prestigious pen. They differ greatly in price as they have very different values
to their target customer with the Bic Pen being $.49 and the Mont Blanc Pen being $200.
They are sold in different places. The Bic Pen is sold at a big box or discount store while
the Mont Blanc Pen is sold in a Jewelry or a luxury goods store. They are also promoted in
different ways. The Bic Pen is a distribution driven product as they want to be near the
register for an impulse purchase, but the Mont Blanc Pen is generally purchased as a gift
or as a status symbol so promotion tends to take place in highend magazines.
Seth Godin, a wellknown marketing guru has an interesting philosophy about marketing.
He says that marketing shouldn’t be the last step in the process as it is for a lot of
organizations, but it should be the first. Engaging in marketing activities, even before the
product is built can tell organizations a lot about the product’s viability and how it should be
best designed. Seth Godin sums this up with a call to action on his website, go make
something happen.
What does Seth mean by “Go make something happen”? With today’s digital tools, it’s
easier than ever to visualize marketing ideas and concepts. You can even do it for free with
online tools such as Google Apps. By creating marketing collateral, ideas and
visualization, you can make an idea or concept seem more real. Doing this lets you test a
product’s viability and also get valuable feedback before anything is actually built. This also
builds your portfolio, relevance, knowledge, skills and confidence.
Here is what you are going to learn in Marketing Fundamentals. You will learn about
Marketing’s role, branding, positioning, market research, segmentation, personas,
storytelling and drip marketing.
Thanks and we hope you found this lecture helpful.
© 2014 Jobs University www.jobsuniversity.com