The Complete Marketer

60 Essential Concepts for Marketing Excellence

Malcolm McDonald, Mike Meldrum

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780749466763
• eBook ISBN: 9780749466770
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

What is 'the marketing mix'? Is marketing a concept, function or process? How do you construct a good SWOT analysis? What are the strategic marketing benefits of key account management? The Complete Marketer is a solid introduction to the marketing discipline, which is broken down into easily digestible chapters on topics such as digital marketing, understanding consumers, understanding markets, market audits, segmentation, sales forecasting, mobile marketing, advertising and PR, and managing a sales team. It features clear diagrams and definitions throughout to make concepts easy to understand. Malcolm McDonald and Mike Meldrum have simplified the discipline of marketing by translating jargon and creating an encyclopedia of marketing terms, concepts and fundamentals. It applies the authors' marketing expertise to every aspect of the marketing mix, making The Complete Marketer an invaluable resource for general managers, non-qualified marketers and students studying marketing as part of a broader degree.

PART ONE

Understanding the basics of marketing

1

The discipline of marketing

Marketing has long been recognized as important for the long-term survival and success of organizations, be they commercial, government or third sector activities. Indeed, any analysis of the more successful companies in the world usually confirms their use of sound marketing principles or disciplines within their management processes. In less successful organizations, it is often observed that marketing is something not done particularly well.

To understand marketing, it is helpful to understand where it came from. In essence, it started when entrepreneurs began experiencing difficulties selling their wares. When putting ever increasing efforts into sales proved ineffective, smart traders instead put effort into identifying what they would have to do differently to keep trading. People like Josiah Wedgwood (1730–95) became known for their ability to ‘sense’ what the market wanted in terms of design, quality and price; and then to organize production and distribution accordingly.

Although this was not called marketing, it is the formalization of these processes that evolved into the discipline of marketing. And even then, it did not become a widely recognized discipline until well into the second half of last century.

Thus, the focus of marketing is on creating an environment in which sales can be made. Selling is therefore part of marketing. Where there is an excess of demand over supply or a monopoly of some kind, it is often all that is needed. Even where this is not the case, for some businesses smart or hard selling are their main competitive weapons.

This is not to say that organizations cannot survive without marketing. They can and sometimes do – usually because they have some natural advantage over competitors such as a patent or a monopoly, or there is excess demand for their products. In the long run, however, these advantages are rarely sustainable.

There are many definitions that try to provide a clear insight into what marketing is all about. One of the best describes marketing as ‘the way in which an organization matches its human, financial and physical resources with the wants and needs of its customers’. This is a bit of a mouthful and, on the surface, does not mention any of the things we usually associate with marketing such as advertising, mail shots, loss-leaders and so on. The definition does, however, focus attention on the crucial elements that the whole organization has to manage correctly – the mechanisms by which a relationship is developed between the organization and its customers so that mutually beneficial exchanges will take place.

Success, of course, requires attention to more than just marketing. Other activities such as operating efficiency, financial matters and supply chain management are also important, not least because they have an impact on an organization’s relationship with its customers. This makes implementing the discipline of marketing difficult as it implies influencing the co-ordination of a wide range of organizational activities.

Underlying this, however, is a set of ideas, principles and concepts that are relatively simple to understand, but which (like most simple things) are quite deep in their meaning. Getting to grips with marketing is thus a two-stage process: first, the development of an understanding of the discipline and its principles; and second, the application of these principles to individual circumstances.

At the heart of the relationship between an organization and its customers is the product or service the organization offers or sells, which must match the wants and needs of its target customers. If one company offers a closer match, this will be to the disadvantage of its competitors. The process of creating this match, however, is complex. The substance of a matching relationship and the factors that affect it are at the heart of any understanding of marketing.

The key question this approach generates is thus: ‘What will make a potential customer want to enter into an exchange with our organization as opposed to another?’ In other words: ‘Why will they buy our product, give to our charity or co-operate with our service, given that they have plenty of choice?’

The answer to this question is a long list of different factors. Some of these will be under the control of the supplying organization, while others will be beyond their control but can still fundamentally affect their chances of completing the exchange. No matter how good a product is, other factors such as interest rates, new laws, fashion, etc, can affect its attractiveness to customers. In order to make sense of these factors and to put them into an understandable form, they are usually classified as the marketing mix and the marketing environment. The marketing mix is the offering we control; the environment is the set of uncontrollable variables within which the marketing process takes place.

The marketing mix is usually classified as product, price, promotion, or place – the four Ps:

Products can be varied in terms of quality, tangibility, size, functionality, range, etc.

Price can be high or low, can involve a discount or can be affected by credit terms.

Promotion can utilize television advertising, the domain of sales people, or can involve branding, public relations or social media.

Place includes the channels through which we choose to make a product available plus the service elements involved in delivering the offering, such as after-sales service or quality of accompanying documentation.

The importance of the marketing mix is that successful matching depends on customers being aware of the products or services on offer, finding them available and favourably judging their attractiveness in terms of both price and performance. If any important element is missing or wrong from the customer’s point of view, a long-term relationship will be difficult to sustain. Effective marketing management welds these variables into a co-ordinated whole in the market place in exactly the right combination and positioning for the targeted customer.

The marketing environment features a similarly complex set of factors, which can be considered under five distinct headings:

Social or cultural factors, which can include fashion, religious preferences, population trends and other developments such as more working women and an increasing awareness of green issues – all of which will affect people’s perception of the appropriateness and value of a product or service.

Competition, which exists whenever an organization places an offering in the market place – there will always be some form of substitute somewhere. This may be direct, such as a Ford Focus versus an equivalent Citroen, or it may be indirect such as a holiday versus a home extension. Organizations should never underestimate the power of different sources of competition.

Technological change, the pace of which appears to be increasing at an ever-faster rate. It is therefore dangerous to assume that existing products will continue to be demanded by customers. There are many examples of products being superseded by advances in technology elsewhere, for example, slide rules, mechanical watches, copper pipes, fax machines, and more recently CRT televisions and video recorders. At the time of writing, cameras are under threat from mobile phones and printed books are under threat from portable tablets. Technological developments will determine what is both possible and attractive in all markets.

Government activities, which include political, fiscal, environmental, economic and legal activities. All of these will affect what can be done in a particular market. Interest rates will affect the willingness to purchase on credit; deregulation will alter entry barriers to a market and the nature of competition; exhaust emissions requirements will affect the saleability of motor vehicles, and so on. Governments, even if they do nothing, will still be a significant influence on an organization’s marketing environment.

Institutional changes will impact marketing activities and it is therefore important to understand the effect of institutions and to predict the consequences of any change. Important examples include the changes that have occurred in food distribution, from small local outlets to large out-of-town supermarkets to internet shopping; the role of the standards institutes; the influence of the press; the rise of consumer associations and popular pressure groups; and the expansion of the activities of telecommunications companies.

Both consciously and subconsciously, customers are constantly performing a matching exercise between their needs and wants, and the products and services they see in the market place. When the match is sufficiently good they will purchase. The methodology for creating a match is the manipulation and management of the marketing mix and the monitoring and evaluation of the environment.

To clarify what marketing i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Imprint
• Table of contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Part One: Understanding the basics of marketing
• Part Two: Different types of marketing
• Part Three: Marketing in the digital age
• Part Four: Understanding customers
• Part Five: Understanding markets
• Part Six: Managing the marketing mix
• Part Seven: Planning and control
• Index
• Full imprint