Lay man Marketing

Marketing is something that people have been practicing, understanding, studying, selling, and buying for decades or even centuries. So into a world where there is already so much about Marketing I would like to put in a few words of my own. And no they are not original ideas. They are my understanding of what Marketing is explaining it in my own words about the do's and don'ts of marketing. The ideas that I am going to share is acquired from my teachers, books, the internet, the papers, etc. So don't sue me if you find your words up here, just be flattered that I remember them. 

Marketing is the strategies applied to sell a product or service. Now it is not as simple as it sounds. It is a perfect blend of selling the right product to the right people, at the right price and managing a good reputation at the same time. Yeah, it is a pretty difficult task. But how do people do it then? It is a very subconscious level process actually, like creating a good impression.

Now imagine you meet someone. You want to extend your friendship (sell your service) to this person so you put on your best personality suit (create a good brand image), you try to understand what this person needs (market demand or people's needs) and make a conversation accordingly (sell your product). And if the person likes you (good customer review) he / she will tell other people about how nice you are (word of mouth publicity) and Voila!! Everyone comes forward to talk to you (more people come to buy your service/product and you are in market demand).  

So now you see why people are so much into marketing? Because we do it all the time. We do it when we meet people. We do in when we try to impress a girl or a guy. And in my personal experience, the most challenging marketing of them is all is when you sit for a job interview. You get max up to an hour's time to sell yourself out there and convince the organization to invest time and resources to you. Your educational qualification and work experience being the only thing backing up for you and this degree and work experience are what I would like to call as product placement. 

Anyway enough said with the analogies, let’s get to the real deal. 

‘Make what you can sell and not selling what you can make.’ Though essentially marketing is all about the art of selling your product no matter what, it woud be wiser if take precautionary steps to ensure that we are making only product that can be sold no matter how good the product is on innovative levels, if there is no utility people wont buy it. Let’s say you make a very good machine that can clap hands. A machine that has plastic hands and it will clap continuously for about a minute when you press a button. Now in terms of innovation it could be considered brilliant. It could be even kept as a show item, but it has no utility and hence will not be bought by people.

So do a market research even if you don’t do market research as a social human being you would know what the needs of the people in the society are. Rainy season, living in heavy rains area and demand for umbrellas is more than what the industries in the area can produce? Then that is an ideal product to make and sell. It is not just about the demand.

You can also make a product for which there is no demand, because it is not manufactured yet. You can be creative with your product just be sure it has a utility value or at least a demand for whatever reason it might be.

So now that you have decided what your product is going to be and you are fairly sure there would be quite a number of buyers for your product. Send out a research team to find out more information on your potential buyers. What do they like, how much money can they afford for a product like yours, how much do they focus on the product packaging, where do they shop from, is there some taboo or traditions that people there follow that might be in support or against your product or cause. Find out all that because even if you know people want to buy it, there might be various reasons they wouldn’t buy it.

So now that you know buyers, the product, it is time for you to fix the marketing fix, the famous four P’s. The product, price, place and promotion. This basically means deciding on the packaging of the product, the price you are going to sell it in. The place you are going to sell at, big shopping malls, urban cities, rural areas, colleges, schools, etc. And finally the promotion you are going to do for the immediate launch.

I will talk about the marketing Mix more in the next post. Thank you for reading