If you asked 1,000 people for the definition of marketing, you’d get 1,000 different answers. Actually, if you asked 100 marketers to define marketing, you would still get 100 different answers. You would probably hear something like, “the 4 P’s of marketing…” and “well you have to consider product, price, place and promotion” – all the responses will probably go something like that. At the very least, some would be right or be on the right track, but still give an answer that’s incomplete. Advertising or promotion in marketing is still only part of the answer.
Marketing is everything you do to get your product or service noticed by the customer, and that includes advertising and promotion.
If you take my years as an undergraduate and add them to the years I spent as a graduate, you get a lot of marketing classroom time. I have been doing internet marketing for not even half of that time, but have found great success with it. That is until recently.
I am launching a new product very soon. I usually have no problem with the marketing piece of the puzzle. But, I am faced with a tremendous roadblock. I can not, for the life of me, come up with a marketing plan for this product. And this is one of my own products!
So after thinking about this all morning, I realized that roadblocks happen to every internet marketer – I am not the only one!
To move past it and put a plan into action, I am going back to the basics and hopefully this will propel me to new heights. According to one of my old marketing textbooks, Marketing is broken down into what’s known as the 4 P’s. These make up the “marketing mix” as it was defined by Harvard business professor in the 1960s. Product, price, placement and promotion.
- Product simply means the product you’re offering and all that it entails like its warranty, guarantees, etc.
- Pricing is simply the act of choosing an appropriate price for the product. This can include things besides money, like time and energy.
- Placement is the distribution of the product—how it gets into the customers’ hands. Point-of-sale, retail, online, which area the product is sold in, the demographic and exact selling environment all make up this part of the definition of marketing.
- And finally, the last P, promotion include advertising, publicity, selling philosophies and branding.
People become one of the crucial factors in the definition of marketing a service. Each person we come into contact with (and this includes online) is even more important than usual when service marketing.
Process refers to the process of providing the service. Physical evidence is a part of the definition of marketing
services that no one would consider purchasing a service without. This makes up all of the testimonials and case
studies that demonstrate how other people liked or were helped by the product. Since a service is something that
can’t be seen or felt until it’s delivered, this evidence that others benefited from the same thing is very
important.
Web marketing has its own set of 4 P’s, as well.
- Personalization is an important part of marketing online because it allows customers to create their own products.
- Participation in a company’s website and activities attracts customers.
- Predictive modeling is a term that refers to the mathematical formula for sales models that most of us never need know about it.
- And peer-to-peer is an important and relatively new term. Social networking and social bookmarking are two prime examples of this. Peer-to-peer or word of mouth is a crucial part of the definition of marketing successfully online.
Going back to basics has helped me tremendously and I hope it does you as well. It never hurts to have a refresher on what the role of marketing really is. We serve and provide value to our customers and that, my friends, is where my ah-ha moment begins.
