What is Marketing?
Business makes the world go round, but very few people are really familiar with how things get manufactured, sold, bought and distributed. The process of getting one’s product to the public is known as marketing, coming from the term market which is an area used to buy and sell things in pre-industrial times. In past generations farmers and other people brought their goods to the town center and sold them for either currency or barter. In today’s economy each process is usually conducted by a different person for a different party. In other words the system is heavily dependent on many separate entities which subsequently renders the process volatile to change.
After making a product, one much determine what purpose it serves, and who is likely to use it. For example, let’s take boy t-shirts. By being a boy’s t-shirt it automatically narrows down to a smaller targeted audience consisting of just young males. Even so, by targeting such a large group the product is unlikely to be success as it needs to fill a niche. A niche is a small but intense demand fueled by a small population of people that really want what you have and are willing to pay big bucks for it. If you are selling t shirts of a specific band, then dedicated fans of that band will be willing to pay more than for just a generic shirt.
Once you have your market, you have to employ a sales team. They should be paid on commission so that they will have incentive to go out and make personal profit. The sales team is a key player in the entire business since it brings income into the company.
Once you have this frame work in place you need a logistics team to get the product from the manufacturer to the customer. In many instances there are many more steps than this, sometimes resulting in ten or more middle men. Of course the fewer the middle men, the greater the profit will be, and the cheaper the price will be.
Once you have the sales and logistics efforts in place you want to institute your own personal branding which will bring customers to your company personally and differentiate you from the competition. Brands are usually based on emotional issues instead of tangible truths. For example you will seldom hear a slogan proclaiming how cheap they are compared to their competitors but instead proclaim that they are cooler or offer a better quality of life to their clients.
About the Author:
Dan Blinman is writing on behalf of marketing experts- Cascade Group
