Marketing Basics
Marketing
Basics
Marketing is an integral part of any modern business’s development. Any business’s success depends on marketing strategy. But what is marketing about? Marketing is often defined differently. Some people think that it’s simply a different name for advertising, but it’s not the point. The last is only an integral part of marketing. Putting it short it’s about the way your product can help people solving their problems. It’s about understanding people’s needs, about persuading them that your product will help them satisfy those needs. Actually, we all use marketing when we talk our friends into going into a certain café, or our family members into buying a new TV. Marketing is about explaining how your product can become valuable to potential customers. Moreover, in many cases marketing is about creating value. People often act emotionally, so relying on this fact you can make your customer feel special by providing a special package or delivery. So, marketing is about a lot of aspects around a product and customers. Marking isn’t an activity that appeared in the modern world. It has a long history.
Steps of Marketing Development
According to archeological data in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, some merchants organized sales and advertising of certain products. Later, in Medieval Europe merchants sold different goods at the markets and that is where the term “marketing” came from. The Industrial Revolution of the 19th century boosted the production of different goods and of course, international trade flourished too. It was the time when the first billboards appeared. The 20th century was the time when new types of communication, like the radio, TV, and the telephone were invented. They made absolutely new ways of advertising possible. And in the 1960s first marketing departments were created by businesses. Those departments were trying to work in different ways with customers to widen markets. In the 1990s many companies started their websites and used them for marketing needs as well. In the 2000s digital revolution and the Internet opened new horizons for marketing. Social media, blogging, voice messages, along search engines help to increase marketing effectiveness (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/conducting-effective-test-marketing/) nowadays.
Functional Areas of Marketing
They say that marketing deals with the 4 Ps. They are product (it’s necessary to distinguish your product from the others), price (it’s important to prove that the price of your product is reasonable), place (it’s necessary to find the proper place for the distribution of your product), promotion (marketing is about finding the best ways of promotion). Marketing teams at companies differ depending on the size and the type of business. Such teams might be different in size themselves, but they usually deal with the following functions:
- Advertising
- Market Research
- Search Engine Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Media relations and PR
- Content marketing
- Brand Marketing
- Product Marketing
- Direct Response
This list is not final and it will definitely grow due to the development of technology, sociology, and psychology. Marketing is taught at many colleges and universities worldwide. So, no wonder that there are students who choose to write about marketing in their grad school application essay
Responsibilities of Marketing Teams
The tasks of a marketing team might differ depending on the type and the size of the business. But, generally, its main task is to create and implement a strategy as well as to do the planning and supervising of a marketing campaign. To fulfill these tasks marketing teams conduct a lot of activities, such as:
- Outlining the marketing strategy
- Conducting market research
- Performing competitive differentiation
- Crafting positioning and messaging
- Building marketing roadmaps
- Creating leads
- Running A/B tests
- Optimizing landing pages
- Communicating with clients
- Preparing for product launches
- Cultivating press and analyst relations
- Raising brand awareness
Marketing is a practical activity helping businesses to be successful. This activity is very creative and it has science behind it. So, with the development of new communication technologies marketing will get new functional areas. Little businesses can’t afford to have marketing departments, but to be successful they need to hire professionals to organize marketing campaigns for them. This means that a profession of a marketing consultant or manager will be on demand for years to come. This is not a profession that might disappear due to technological progress.