The Ultimate Marketing & PR Book

Understand Your Customers, Master Digital Marketing, Perfect Public Relations

Eric Davies, Nick Smith, Brian Salter

• Publisher: Teach Yourself
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781473683976
• eBook ISBN: 9781473683983
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

If you want to be the best, you have to have the right skillset. From strategy, mobile and ecommerce to social media, SEO and PR, THE ULTIMATE MARKETING & PR BOOK is a dynamic collection of tools, techniques, and strategies for success. Discover the main themes, key ideas and tools you need and bring it all together with practical exercises. This is your complete course in modern marketing. ABOUT THE SERIES
ULTIMATE books are for managers, leaders, and business executives who want to succeed at work. From marketing and sales to management and finance, each title gives comprehensive coverage of the essential business skills you need to get ahead in your career. Written in straightforward English, each book is designed to help you quickly master the subject, with fun quizzes embedded so that you can check how you're doing.

PART 1

Your Marketing Masterclass

Introduction

Marketing is about the relationship between an organization and its marketplace, and in particular its customers and potential customers. Customers are the lifeblood of a business; without customers a business has no future. In order to succeed and make a profit, a business must therefore aim to identify and satisfy the needs of its customers. The purpose of marketing is to help the business achieve these aims. In this Part you will learn about the nature and techniques of successful marketing and how it can improve business performance.

Today’s business world is highly competitive and changing fast, and marketing, as a body of knowledge and best practice, must respond to these changes. However, there is one fundamental fact about marketing that remains constant: it is that, to become successful and remain successful, an organization must be better at meeting customers’ needs than the competition.

Chapter 1

What is marketing?

In this chapter we will set out to define marketing and to dispel some of the common misunderstandings regarding the meaning and nature of marketing. We will look at established UK and US definitions of marketing and some current European thinking about the definition of marketing for the twenty-first century. We will also summarize the history of marketing and how this business philosophy developed in response to increased competition.

We will consider the relationship between marketing and business performance and some of the key evidence to support the view that a ‘customer/marketing orientation’ can have a positive effect on profitability and performance.

We will also touch on the issue of competition and the need to consider the relationship between our customers/potential customers and our competitors in any discussion of our approach to marketing our business. We will return to this theme in more detail later in Part 1.

Finally in this chapter we will look at marketing and the business as a whole, and identify some of the key behaviours of businesses that have effectively (and profitably) made the customer/marketing orientation the basis of their operations.

Defining marketing

In essence, marketing is a relatively simple concept but at its root lies a fundamental approach to directing a business. Its simplicity can lead to the real meaning of marketing being misunderstood or misconstrued – and this can lull us into a false sense of security. And, if we don’t understand what marketing is, we had better hope that our competitors don’t know either – because, if they do, they will have a competitive advantage over us.

A good way to explain marketing is to start by dispelling two common misunderstandings regarding its meaning and nature.

• Marketing is just a posh name for selling. WRONG! A sale is often the ultimate objective of a marketing strategy, but marketing covers a much broader range of activities than just the sale event. Selling is the exchange of a product or service for, most commonly, a monetary value. Selling can be viewed as the last step in the marketing process. If marketing has been effective, it should make selling ‘easier’ (although selling is never easy!) because promotional and sales effort will have been directed at those customer groups who have a perceived need for the company’s offering.

• Marketing just means advertising. WRONG! Promotion (including advertising) is a strategic activity that focuses on transmitting informative and/or persuasive messages via a medium or range of media to defined target audiences. In simple terms promotion is, again, part of the marketing strategy (as we will see later). This potential misunderstanding is further compounded when news media talk about a ‘marketing gimmick’ when they mean a ‘promotional gimmick’.

Some definitions of marketing

The UK Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) says that

‘Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying consumers’ requirements profitably.’

The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines marketing as:

‘The process of plann...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title
• About the Author
• Contents 
• Part 1: Your Marketing Masterclass
• Part 2: Your Digital Marketing Masterclass
• Part 3: Your Social Media Marketing Masterclass
• Part 4: Your Public Relations Masterclass
• Answers
• Notes
• Copyright