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MARKETING 101
Introduction to Marketing
Definition of Marketing
Marketing refers to activities a company undertakes to promote the buying or selling of a product or service.
Marketing includes advertising, selling, and delivering products to consumers or other businesses. Marketing
as a discipline involves all the actions a company undertakes to draw in customers and maintain relationships
with them (Twin, 2020)
Importance of Marketing (Varsha, n.d.)
For the Business
• Marketing helps businesses to keep pace with the changing tastes, fashions, and preferences of the
customers. It works out primarily because ascertaining consumer needs and wants is a regular
phenomenon and improvement in existing products and the introduction of new products is a continuous
process. Marketing thus contributes to providing better products and services to the consumers and
thereby improving their standard of living.
• Marketing plays an important role in the development of the economy. Various functions and sub-
functions of marketing like advertising, personal selling, packaging, and transportation, among others,
generate employment for many people and accelerate the growth of a business.
• Marketing helps the business in increasing its sales volume, generating revenue, and ensuring its success
in the long run.
• Marketing also helps the business in meeting competition most effectively.
• Marketing builds up the company’s reputation. To conquer the general market, marketers aim to create
a brand that helps in name recognition and product recall.

For the Consumers

• Marketing promotes product awareness to the public. Marketing creates a win-win situation for both
customers and the company. With the help of marketing, product/service awareness is generated among
people, thus making them capable of identifying their needs and satisfying them.
• By the process of new product development, marketing managers identify the needs of customers,
thereby finding ways to cater to them.
• With the help of the marketing of different products, a customer can compare the competitors’ products
and buy the best one among the available choices.
• By way of promotion activities conducted by marketers, customers get extra benefit for buying the
products.
• With the development of various new marketing concepts like Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM),
customers get benefits since companies have now realized the importance of existing customers and thus
try to maintain them.

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Extended Marketing Mix (Professional Academy, n.d.)

Product - The product should fit the task consumers want, it should work, and it should be what the consumers
are expecting to get. (The good or service that the customer buys).
Place – The product should be available from where the target consumer finds it easiest to shop. This may be
High Street, Mail Order, or the more current option via e-commerce or an online shop. (How the product is
distributed to the customer).
Price – The product should always be seen as representing good value for money. This does not necessarily
mean it should be the cheapest available. One of the main tenets of the marketing concept is that customers
are usually happy to pay a little more for something that works really well for them. (How much the customer
pays for the product).
Promotion – Advertising, public relations, sales promotion, personal selling, and, in more recent times, social
media are all key communication tools for an organization. These tools should be used to put across the
organization’s message to the correct audiences in the manner they would most like to hear, whether it be
informative or appealing to their emotions. (How the customer is found and persuaded to buy).
People – All companies are reliant on the people who run them from front line sales staff to the Managing
Director or whoever is at the top of the business. Having the right people is essential because they are as much
a part of the business offering as the products/services. (The ones who make contact with customers in
delivering the product).
Processes –The delivery of the service is usually done with the customer present so how the service is delivered
is once again part of what the consumer is paying for. (The systems and processes that deliver a product to a
customer).
Physical Evidence – Almost all services include some physical elements even if the bulk of what the consumer
is paying for is intangible. For example, a hair salon would provide their client with a completed hairdo and an
insurance company would give their customers some form of printed material. Even if the material is not
physically printed (in the case of PDFs), they are still receiving a “physical product” by this definition. (The
elements of the physical environment the customer experiences).
Marketing Strategies and Promotions (Chi, 2020)
Traditional Marketing
Traditional marketing refers to brand promotion on any kind of channel that has been around since before the
advent of the internet. Because information wasn’t as easily accessible and readily available, the majority of
traditional marketing relied on outbound tactics such as print, television ads, and billboards.
Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing, or SEM, includes all activities in the effort of ensuring the business's products or
services are visible on search engine results pages (SERPs). When a user types in a certain keyword, SEM
enables the business to appear as a top result for that search query.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a key instrument in inbound and digital marketing because the content is what allows
audiences as well as search engines, such as Google, to find the information they need on the web. By

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definition, it involves creating, publishing, and distributing content to their target audience. The most common
components of a content marketing program are social media networks, blogs, visual content, and premium
content assets like tools, ebooks, or webinars.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is creating content to promote brand and products on various social media platforms
like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Businesses should remember their audience as they create
content. No one logs on to social media looking for something to purchase, so think through what types of
content that is useful, informative, entertaining, and/or compelling.
Video Marketing
Video marketing is a type of content marketing that involves using video as a medium. The idea is to create
videos and upload them to a website, YouTube, and social media to boost brand awareness, generate
conversions, and close deals. Some video marketing apps even allow businesses to analyze, nurture, and score
leads based on their activity.
Voice Marketing
Voice marketing is leveraging smart speakers like Amazon Alexa and Google Home to educate people and
answer questions about their topics of interest. Optimizing a website for voice search is very similar to
optimizing for organic search, but beyond that, businesses can also get inventive by creating a Google action
or Alexa skill.
Email Marketing
Email marketing involves sending educational or entertaining content and promotional messages to people
who willingly subscribed to a business’ newsletter. The primary goal is to deepen their relationship with the
customer or prospect by sending marketing messages personalized to them. Pushing that idea further, they
can also use email marketing to nurture leads with content that moves them along the buyer’s journey.
Conversational Marketing
Conversational marketing is the ability to have 1:1 personal conversations across multiple channels, meeting
customers how, when, and where they want. It is more than just live chat, extending to phone calls, text
messages, Facebook Messenger, email, and more.
Buzz Marketing
Buzz marketing is a viral marketing strategy that leverages refreshingly creative content, interactive events,
and community influencers to generate word-of-mouth marketing and anticipation for the product or service
the brand is about to launch.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is designed to tap into an existing community of engaged followers on social media.
Influencers are considered experts in their niches. These individuals have a large influence over an audience a
business might be trying to reach and can be helpful marketing to those buyers.

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Acquisition Marketing
While all types of marketing are geared toward acquiring customers, the majority of types have broader and
softer goals such as improving brand awareness or driving traffic. In contrast, acquisition marketing is laser-
focused on acquiring customers.
Contextual Marketing
Contextual marketing is targeting online users with different ads on websites and social media networks based
on their online browsing behavior. The number one way to make contextual marketing efforts powerful is
through personalization. A CRM combined with powerful marketing tools such as a smart call to actions (CTAs)
can make a website seem more like a “choose your own adventure” story, allowing the user to find the right
information and take the right actions more effectively.
Brand Marketing
Brand marketing is shaping the brand’s public perception and forging an emotional connection with their
target audience through storytelling, creativity, humor, and inspiration.
Native Marketing
Native marketing is when brands pay reputable publishers to collaborate in the creative process of crafting a
sponsored article or video that covers one of the publisher’s main topics and looks like a regular piece of
content on their website. They also pay these publishers to distribute this sponsored content to their massive
audience through social media and their website. In sum, when brands pay for a publisher’s native advertising
services, they can leverage their editorial expertise and reach to help their brand tell captivating stories to a
bigger and better viewership.

References:

Chi, C. (2020). The Ultimate list of type of marketing. Retrieved on May 21, 2020. In HubSpot.
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/marketing-types

Twin, A. (2020). Marketing. Retrieved on May 21, 2020. In Investopedia.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketing.asp

Professional Academy. (n.d.). Marketing Theories – The Marketing Mix – From 4 PS to 7 PS.
https://www.professionalacademy.com/blogs-and-advice/marketing-theories---the-marketing-mix---
from-4-p-s-to-7-p-s

Varsha, C. (n.d.). Importance of Marketing.

https://www.businessmanagementideas.com/marketing/importance-of-marketing/importance-of-
marketing/19442

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