Marketing is one of the keys to success of a business. Let’s review what does marketing mean and think again why marketing is so important to our business. So that we can have a deeper thinking on marketing and come up with a better marketing strategy with working marketing tactics.
What exactly is marketing and why it is important to us as an entrepreneur?
If you do some research, you will find that there are many definitions of marketing.
By American Marketing Association, marketing is “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”
Generally, there are three ways of doing business: the customer-driven approach, the market change identification approach and the product innovation approach. For small business, we usually choose the customer-driven approach.
Customer Orientation Marketing
Another definition of marketing, which is focused on customer orientation is as the following.
“The right product, in the right place, at the right time, at the right price.” — by Adcock
Customer Orientation Marketing is based on that a business survives and thrives by producing products or services that people are willing and able to buy. Consequently, discovering consumer demand is crucial.
In the consumer-driven approach, consumer wants are the drivers of all strategic marketing decisions. Every aspect of a market offering, including the nature of the product itself, is driven by the needs of potential consumers. The starting point is always the consumer. The rationale for this approach is that there is no reason to spend R&D funds developing products that people will not buy.
A formal approach to this customer-focused marketing is known as SIVA (Solution, Information, Value, Access). The SIVA Model provides a demand/customer-centric alternative to the well-known 4Ps supply side model (product, price, placement, promotion) of marketing management.
Product → Solution
Price → Value
Place → Access
Promotion → Information
If any of the 4Ps were problematic or were not in the marketing factor of the business, the business could be in trouble.
In summary, marketing focuses on the satisfaction of customer needs, wants and requirements. Marketing is used to identify the customer, satisfy the customer, and keep the customer. Marketing activities include finding out what are the potential customers’ needs and wants and setting a right market price by marketing research for the developing products or services, and promoting the products or services by building public relations, advertising, and marketing communications.
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