Marketing Basics For Students: Marketing Introduction For Beginners

In the next several minutes, you will understand the marketing theory:

– How to begin effectively promoting a business.
– How to avoid potentially costly pitfalls that beginner marketer typically makes.
– Four Pillars of Marketing.
– The difference between advertising and marketing.
– Unique value proposition.
– Market segmentation and selecting target market.
– CRM important factors.
– Market valuation and market sizing
– Customer development model.
– Marketing strategy concepts.

Before reading further, watch the video Marketing theory for student and beginner marketer.

Things to know about Marketing video lecture:

The Basic Theory number one: Four Pillars of Marketing.

Four Pillars of Marketing

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The related information you may read:

– Marketing basic Frequently-Asked Questions:
http://marketingforbeginner.blogspot.com/2014/04/marketing-basics-faq.html
– Fundamental marketing theory for Beginners:
http://marketingforbeginner.blogspot.com/2014/04/marketing-theory-for-beginners.html
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The key for getting success in business: being more efficient in developing, distributing, and communicating the values to selected target customers.

Four pillars of marketing:

1. Target market.
2. Customer needs.
3. Integrated marketing
4. Profitability.

Target market

Target marketing and market positioning are the fundamental processes in a market segmentation process.

A company must satisfy a set of people (customers). These people must be well-defined. The company must focus on these distinct groups of customers to get success. These set of people is called target market.

Customer needs

Who are the customers?
The customer is an end user or people who are interacting with the product. We can say it individuals who are affecting the buying decision.

Understanding your customer is important. Why? Because an organization can design specification of product or service based on needs of customers or target market. A company that produces the things based on the needs of targeted customer has a high conversion rate.

Once you set your well-defined set of customers (define a right target market) you can develop customer needs and then perform the next marketing action plan.

One of marketing concepts that the students and beginners must understand: translating customer needs into marketing action. It means company's marketing strategy is developed based on customer needs.

There are three steps developing customer needs

1. Gather customer information.

– Selecting target market (who are your customer?)
– Collecting what information must be gathered.
– Determining how the information can be collected.

2. Translate into customer needs.

3. Manage the needs.

The important thing must be remembered: gathering information from a customer (suggestion, complaint, idea, etc.) is an endless process. It is a nonstop process to make a continual improvement.

Integrated marketing

Integrated marketing means implementing marketing campaigns comprehensively to grow market share and finally to increase a company's profit.

We call it integrated because it comprises complete discipline including planning, brand development, advertising, social media marketing, digital marketing, research, marketing communication, analytics, public relation, and so on.

Profitability

The ultimate goal of every company is profitability. Without it, a business will not survive in the long term.

You measure the profitability with two factors; they are income and expenses.

Income is money that is generated from business activities whereas expenses are the cost of resources that are consumed by business activities.

Marketing activities like ads need costs. As a marketer, you have to understand budgeting. In addition to this, you must analyze whether your marketing expenses returns more income or your marketing expenses have no return. Therefore, you must learn financial for a marketer to sharpen your integrated marketing skills.

The Basic Theory number two: the differences between marketing and advertising.

Difference between advertising and marketing

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The related information you may read:

– ATL and BTL advertising: http://marketingforbeginner.blogspot.com/2012/07/atl-and-btl-advertising.html
– The difference between marketing and advertising from basic perspective: http://marketingforbeginner.blogspot.com/2015/01/difference-between-marketing-and-advertising.html
– Basic advertising techniques you must know:
http://marketingforbeginner.blogspot.com/2011/11/advertising-techniques.html
– Advertising techniques Question and Answer:
http://marketingforbeginner.blogspot.com/2015/10/your-4-foremost-advertising-techniques-question-answer.html
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My friends confuse the differences between advertising and marketing. They thought an ad is marketing and marketing is ads.

That's why I put the second marketing theory here to explain you the differences between marketing and advertising.

The easier way to comprehend this matter is by knowing the definition of those.

Marketing is the activity and process for developing, delivering, and communicating the business values for customers.

Advertising is about solving the marketing problem. It is a particular action in one of marketing activities that develop and delivering messages to the targeted people, at the right place and time. The ultimate goal is to make a sell.

The conclusion is advertising is a subset of marketing.

The Basic Theory number three: Unique value proposition

The basic illustration of Unique values proposition 

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The related information you may read:

– The importance of value proposition:
http://marketingforbeginner.blogspot.com/2015/02/why-value-proposition-approach-is-important.html
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What is unique value proposition?

I will illustrate with a simple explanation below.

A value proposition is a statement which states the specific benefits of a product or service you provide to a buyer or client.

A unique means the statement shows the customers why they should buy your product because the product is superior offers among the competitors.

I repeat. A unique value proposition answers following question,”Why should customers buy from you?”

The Steps for developing unique value proposition

You can find your unique value proposition by answering the following questions:

1. Who are your customers? (target marketing, market segmentation)
2. What are their problems? (gathering information from them)
3. What do competitors solve the problems today? (research, competitive intelligence)
4. How do you address the issues against the competitors? (You must provide better solution than them)

Once you completely finished the final step, you will find your unique value proposition.

The Basic Theory number four: How to segment market and select target market?

Selecting target market

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The related information you may read:

– Market positioning concepts for Beginners:
http://marketingforbeginner.blogspot.com/2015/03/market-positioning-concept-for-beginners.html
– Target market for Beginners:
http://marketingforbeginner.blogspot.com/2015/03/market-targeting-concept-for-beginners.html

Watch this video about market segmentation introduction:

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The key marketing strategies are identification and selection of target market.

These things are related to others marketing activities. If this stuff is well performed, the others marketing actions are all right.

How to select target markets?

You can select it by performing two steps of actions, they are:

1. Market segmentation.

2. Selecting target market (the appropriate segmentation that is in accordance with your product specification or service)

Market segmentation

Market segmentation is dividing a market into segments. A segment is a potential target market. 

I reiterate the definition for clarity. Segmenting the markets means dividing customers into particular groups who have relatively similar needs or wants.

How to segment the markets?

The basic theory of segmenting a market : differentiate the people on some basis, such as demographic, geographic, psychographic, behavior.

– Demographic basis comprises gender, age, income, education, etc.

– Geographic basis includes region, state, neighborhood, nation, and so on.

– Psychographic basis encompasses values, interests, attitudes, etc.

– Behavior basis comprises purchase frequency, buying habits, media usage, etc.

You can comprehend more about segmenting and targeting your market by reading an excellent article by Michael Lynn (Cornell University) here: http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/articles/243/

Important factors for CRM

Customer Development Model 

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The related information you may read:

– Customer centric explanation:
http://marketingforbeginner.blogspot.com/2015/02/what-is-customer-centric-marketing.html
– Customer oriented approach:
http://marketingforbeginner.blogspot.com/2011/01/customer-oriented-approach-one-of.html
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Customer development model is an excerpt from The Four steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank.

There are four stages in the customer development model:

1. Customer Discovery

2. Customer Validation

3. Customer Creation

4. Company Building

Notes: each step in customer development is iterative. 

Customer Discovery

The goal is finding out who are your customers and make sure that your product or service can solve their problem.

Customer validation

The purpose of this step is building repeatable sales from a loyal customer and whether you can grow the market share or you only have a current limited market.

Thing to concern:

These two steps (customer discovery and customer validation) are an iterated process. It means you should verify the market, locate the customers, test your unique value proposition of your product, establish the price, and check out the sales cycle. 

If you find a group of repeatable customers with repeatable sales, then you move the next step. 

Customer creation

The goal in this phase is creating consumer demand and drive that demand into the sales channel. 

Company building

This step is conducted when you have stability in the previous steps. Now, you focus on building the company to get more success. 

Three fundamental actions in customer development phases.

1. Find out the exact problem from people, and make sure your product or service can completely solve the problem. 

It is done when designing the product and before launching your product. 

2. Get early feedback on your product from the customer. 

You can do it before soft launch by showing your product prototypes to the customers. So, you can soon improve your product in product designing phase or product development phase. 

3. Involve the customers/people.

Listen, listen, and listen the people talking your product, people complaining your product, etc. You can also educate the people about your product value and benefits and see the feedback.

Marketing Strategy Concept