Chapter 3 Ebook
Session Three: Defining Marketing
Sales and marketing must evolve from being product focused to more customer focused. It all boils down to building a relationship with your audience. With a relationship comes credibility. With credibility comes trust. And with trust, when the time is right, the customer will buy. One of the rules we live by is that people buy products and services from people they trust. And you can’t establish trust without establishing a relationship first.
Marketing means finding out what your customer wants and needs, and then directing all your business efforts to making sure you can meet, or exceed, your customers' expectations.
This is where the actual 'doing' comes in. Marketing is the name given to the specific steps that you take to put your philosophy (your marketing orientation) into practice.
More specifically, it is a series of activities directed towards:
- Finding out what your customers (both existing and prospective) need or want.
- Directing the efforts of your entire business towards making sure your customers get what they need or want, and that their expectations are fulfilled or exceeded.
The Best Marketing
The best marketing is not about our products or services and their features or benefits. The best marketing isn’t even about our companies at all—not our unique selling points or our competitive advantages over other companies. Instead, really good marketing is about how what you offer your prospects and your customers will change their lives for the better.
The average person doesn’t give a darn about our products or services, except when our products or services can help them. If you can show your potential clients and your present clients how doing business with you will make them happier, richer, wiser, or healthier, then they will be interested. But don’t fall for the old myth that building a better mousetrap will bring the world to your door. There are lots of better mousetraps out there. However, if they are too expensive, or if the world doesn’t hear about them, we may just continue to use the mousetraps we already have and feel comfortable with.
And while it is important that we direct our message to our target market, it is even more important to figure out what to say and how to say it so people listen and are moved to buy. We should spend enough time getting our message right, so it will persuade others to want what we are offering. Once we have it right, we will want to repeat that message again and again, so people will hear it, remember it, and act upon it.
“In North America, there are more than twenty thousand different ways of earning a living and effective speech is essential to every one of them.”
- Andrew Weaver
Glossary of Terms
- Market Segment: A clearly defined subgroup of customers or potential customers with common characteristics relevant to the marketing of your product. (Example: Two couples with expendable income of $40,000-50,000.)
- Mission Statement: A short statement of the philosophy and fundamental nature of your business. It answers the questions: "What business are you in?" "Who do we serve?"
- Objectives: Concrete, measurable, realistic targets you want to achieve. (Example: "Increase sales of highest priced widgets by 10% vs. the previous year," not "Increase sales.")
- Plan of Action: A clear road map for carrying out all the tactics necessary for the marketing strategies in your plan. It specifies who, when, how long, and budget or other resources required for each tactic, and coordinates them in chronological order where necessary.
- Strategies: The general approach you will take to achieve an objective. (Example: "Increase widget sales through sales calls, direct mail campaign and sales incentives.")
- Tactics: The specific actions, decisions, and resources required to implement your strategies. (Example: "Tactics for Sales Calls. Hire full-time salesperson in the first two months of planning period; creative visual aid and large-size demonstration widget for sales calls; buy list of purchasing agents at companies in 20-mile radius of us.")
- Targeting: Channelling marketing efforts and resources to specific MARKET SEGMENTS that have the highest payoff potential.
