Some form of primitive marketing existed the first time one of our prehistoric ancestors bartered a flint for a piece of food but, obviously, we have become a lot more sophisticated since then.
The science of marketing, if we can call it that, probably started in the 1950s with Philip Kotler but it really began to gain more widespread acceptance and use in the 60s and 70s. Now it is a major and indispensable business discipline made only the stronger by the advent of the internet.
Marketing has always comprised lots of different facets and probably means different things to different people. Some people see it as sales, others as advertising, others as market research and some as business management or strategy. All of these have their part to play in marketing but the discipline relies on the integration and interplay of all these elements – and more – to produce desired outcomes.
A marketing oriented business has to understand the importance of research, planning and analysis; realise whom their target audience is, what characteristics define them and what sort of product offers and messages they are likely to respond to. But marketers also have to understand the nuts and bolts of the techniques of getting goods to market, creating demand for the goods, building image and awareness and aftersales service. Layered over all of this is the critical understanding of the financial and budgetary aspects of marketing. It is no use selling millions of units at a price where each unit loses money or spending budget on an ad campaign that generates less than it costs. All of these factors have to be carefully calculated and weighed in order to produce coherent and effective marketing.
This compilation looks at all the varied aspects of marketing that make up the whole of this crucial and, sometimes, complex discipline. From basic principles through to some of the more detailed aspects of research, online marketing and media this opens the gateway to effective marketing in your business and could start you on the road to success – or push you further along if you are already on the journey.
Happy marketing.
In some ways marketing is as old as civilization itself. You may have seen films based in ancient Greece or Rome with images of bustling market stalls and traders actively engaged in persuasive communications. Of course these traders would not have called their activities marketing and their activities may seem far removed from someone ordering airline tickets via a website.
The concept of marketing that we now see has more to do with developments during the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. This was a period of rapid social change driven by technological and scientific innovation (see BBC history website). One result was that for the first time the production of goods was separated from their consumption. Mass production, developing transport infrastructure and growing mass media meant that producers needed to, and could develop more sophisticated ways of managing the distribution of goods.
For much of the industrial revolution goods were generally scarce and producers could sell pretty much all that they could produce, as long as people could afford to buy them. Their focus was therefore on production and distribution at the lowest possible cost and what marketing management that there was considered these issues (for example, reducing distribution costs, opening new markets).
From the start of the twentieth century to the period following the Second World War (although the development was interrupted by the wars) competition grew and the focus of marketing turned to selling. Communications, advertising and branding started to become more important (see archive at the History of Advertising Trust website) as companies needed to sell the increasing outputs of production in an increasingly crowded market. Marketing was therefore still a ‘slave’ to production, but focussed on distribution, communication and persuading customers that one manufacturer’s goods were better than another’s.
From the 1960s onwards most markets have become saturated (the size of the market remains the same). This means that there is now intense competition for customers. The sophistication of marketing management has therefore developed into what we now see in a modern marketing department. Marketers are involved at a strategic level within the organisation and therefore inform an organisation about what should be produced, where it should be sold, how much should be charged for it and how it should be communicated to consumers. Modern marketers research markets and consumers. They attempt to understand consumer needs (and potential needs) and allocate organisational resources appropriately to meet these needs. Modern marketers are particularly interested in brands. They are also increasingly interested in ensuring that employees understand marketing, i.e. that everyone within the organisation involves themselves with marketing activities.
So what might you take from this very brief historical perspective?
Firstly, consider that marketing started as an inward looking discipline – focussing on what the organisation produced. Now marketing is outward looking. It brings an understanding of markets and of consumers into the organisation.
Secondly, you might consider that the marketing that you are familiar with today is, in fact, a very recent development – marketing is still a very new subject. You might also note that although we can talk about a ‘marketing orientation’, many organisations – especially small and medium enterprise – act as though they are still in the period of production or sales orientation. In the absence of a good understanding of marketing, organisations may still focus on production or sales.
Thirdly, modern definitions of marketing hide the fact that the development of modern marketing management has not been a coordinated process. Origins in production and managing distribution mean that manufacturers have been quicker to adopt marketing practice than, say, the service sector, including banks and much of the tourism industry.
Finally you might consider that marketing has changed rapidly over this century and it continues to change. The sorts of activities that you might be involved with at the end of your marketing career might be very different from the marketing we see today. As a professional marketer you should be particularly sensitive to changes in society, technology, and the world economy.
If you are interested in history, the Zenithmedia timeline provides a good overview of the major media developments that have influenced marketing
http://media3.bournemouth.ac.uk/marketing/02defining/01history.html
Marketing has gone through rapid changes these past five to ten years, and it’s definitely not slowing down anytime soon. These past years of trying to acquire prospects, leads, and customers is beginning to get more and more difficult. Simply placing ads in the local newspaper or yellow pages doesn’t bring in the same business that it once did. The major shift of marketing has moved to the internet. Even though the internet is nothing new, it’s now become one of the best ways to attract potential customers and clients.
A major reason that marketing techniques are changing so fast is due to the fact that the internet and technology are constantly improving. With the majority of your potential clients having access to high speed internet, search engines and online video sites; consumers can quickly learn the product’s information from the comfort of their home or office. Websites like Facebook and Twitter are a great way to connect with your target audience and keep those relationships going. Blogging is also a great way to express ideas or products and to keep your business in the minds of your customers.
Marketing techniques are also changing because of the shift in which people communicate nowadays. Between text messaging and video conferencing, the need to set up a lunch meeting is becoming obsolete (As for the need to travel across the country to meet with someone face to face is also beginning to be viewed as a waste of money). Video conferencing has come a long way. With the combination of high speed internet connections and great conferencing websites, the technology is in place for people to feel like the person is in the room with them when they’re really on the other side of the country.
Consumers today have more choices than ever before. Unless you own a large franchise, offering products at a super cheap price probably won’t work for you. So instead of selling your products dirt cheap, focus on customer service and the quality of the product you are selling. Always remember that a comparable alternative is only a few mouse clicks away. That is why using the internet to market your business is more important than ever before. It’s cheap and can be seen by virtually everyone you would like it to.
http://www.ibank.com/iBank-Blog/December-2011/Why-has-marketing-changed-over-the-years
It’s been nearly half a century since Philip Kotler first published his Principles of Marketing, which has defined the practice of millions of professionals worldwide ever since. It’s no stretch to say that before Kotler, there was no true marketing profession.
What made Kotler different than what came before is that he took insights from other fields, such as economics, social science and analytics and applied them to the marketing arena. Although that may seem basic now, it was groundbreaking then.
Today technology is transforming marketing once again. Although up to this point, most of the impact has been tactical, over the next decade or so there will be a major strategic transformation. This, of course, will be a much harder task because we will not only have to change what we do, but how we think and many will be left behind. Here’s a short guide.
In the 20th century, promotion dominated the field of marketing. While evaluating opportunities was important, advertising, especially on TV, was what drove budgets and, as a result, strategic thinking. Not surprisingly, coming up with the right message and broadcasting to the right people at the right time was of paramount importance.
Today, however, digital technology has enabled us to retarget consumers when they respond to a message and that has changed marketing forever. In effect, we must make the shift from grabbing attention to holding attention.
That means that brands will have to learn to be more like publishers and develop content skills. It also means that marketers will have to create a genuine value exchange rather than just coming up with catchy ad slogans and price promotions. Like it or not, we’ve entered a post-promotional paradigm.
In the past, we focused on rational benefits to entice consumers to support our brands. Show that you are better in a clear, rational way and, so the thinking went, you could build a loyal following.
However, we’re not rational, calculating machines, but emotional driven creatures who are subject to an whole array of cognitive biases and new research has changed the psychology of marketing. For example, research shows that while a price promotion may spurs sales, it lessens enjoyment and can hurt the brand long-term.
In effect, it’s become clear that we are not operating in a rational economy, but a passion economy, where a sense of purpose determines how people will act and brand associations, rather than brand attributes, determine marketing success. So we’ll have to learn to focus on share of synapse as well as share of market.
Marketing strategy has always been numbers driven. We survey a small selection of the population and then scale up those samples to make decisions. Unfortunately, our numbers are always wrong. They are backward looking, fraught with data. As the Web of Things becomes more pervasive, this will allow us to truly co-create with our consumers.
In effect, by increasing our failures in the virtual world, we can improve our performance in the real one.
For most of the 20th century, businesses focused on developing proprietary value chains. As they became more successful and added scale, theircompetitive advantage would grow in terms of quality, efficiency and brand equity. Brands were, in effect, just another asset to be accounted for and then leveraged.
Digital technology is forcing marketers to rethink their historical approach to marketing. We are no longer operating in a scale economy, but in a semantic economy where the connectivity drives value and brands are becoming open platforms and ecosystems rather than assets to be closed off and protected.
This has already become clear in technology products, where API’s and SDK’s have become standard, but asthe world of bits invades the world of atoms, all marketers will need to connect in order to survive.
So, while Kotler reconciled marketing with the standards of business, over the next decade we will have to reconcile marketing with the standards of technology and, as Martin Heidegger once argued, technology isn’t important because of what it builds, but because of what it uncovers.
Heidi Cohen
To help us understand what marketing means in today’s evolving media environment, where increasingly connected prospects, customers and the public interact with a broad range of businesses, seventy-two senior marketing executives were asked to define their profession. Of course any large collection of marketing definitions is sure to yield a diverse set of responses. It’s like the group of blind men describing an elephant where each speaks of just that part of the elephant they’re touching at the moment.
Simply put, Dr. Phillip Kotler defined marketing as “the science and art of exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit.”
Here are twelve consistent marketing elements that ran across these seventy-two seemingly divergent marketing definitions.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2013/10/21/what-can-we-expect-from-the-next-decade-of-marketing/
http://heidicohen.com/marketing-elements/
Greg
If it weren’t for lawyers, marketers would probably be the most reviled professional class. Rodney Dangerfield has nothing on us.
Lately, the criticism has gotten unusually shrill. One prominent ad agency executive recently said thatmarketing is dead. Somebody else wrote the same inHarvard Business Review. A prominent VC says thatmarketing is just for companies with sucky products. It seems like we never get any respect.
I think that part of the problem stems from the fact that other professions have qualifications. Doctors go to medical school, engineers build things, financiers make money and even lawyers need to get admitted to the bar. Meanwhile, any jackass off the street can call himself a marketer. What we need are concrete principles. Here are seven.
Many financial types want little to do with marketing. They want to see hard assets, dollars and cents. The last thing they want to hear about is any softheaded notions of brand image. They want us to show them the money. Plain and simple.
Unfortunately, many financial types know little about finance. The fact is that, for most companies, intangible value makes up more than half of the total market value. Take a look at the chart below:
Estimates of Intangible Value | ||||
Company | Market Cap | Book Value | Intangible Value | Ratio |
Apple | 593 | 76 | 517 | 87% |
Coke | 177 | 32 | 145 | 82% |
Pepsi | 122 | 20 | 88 | 80% |
Kimberly Clark | 33 | 5 | 20 | 77% |
219 | 58 | 161 | 74% | |
Wal-Mart | 250 | 71 | 179 | 72% |
Verizon | 126 | 36 | 90 | 71% |
Viacom | 26 | 9 | 17 | 64% |
P&G | 188 | 68 | 120 | 64% |
exxon | 407 | 154 | 253 | 62% |
Target | 35 | 15 | 20 | 56% |
AT&T | 214 | 106 | 108 | 50% |
Chevron | 223 | 121 | 102 | 46% |
Time Warner | 40 | 30 | 10 | 25% |
Source: Yahoo Finance; Values in Billions USD |
The chart compares market capitalization (i.e. the value of a company alive) with book value (the value of a company dead). What’s left over is intangible value. If a business was merely a balance sheet, nobody would ever pay more for one than its assets minus its liabilities. Even a casual examination quickly reveals that’s not how the real world works.
A few things that I want to point out initially. First, intangible value is enormous, making up the majority of the worth of a successful business. Second, the ratio of intangible value does not depend on the industry (I’ve color coded competitors to make comparisons easier), the size of the company or even the age of the business.
So what does intangible value depend on? As I’ve argued before, brands are promises and the value of a business is the value of the promises kept.
Another interesting fact borne out of the chart above is that intangible value is not a matter of mere promotion. Wal-Mart has a higher intangible ratio than the more promotionally oriented Target, for example. Even in industries that require enormous capital investment, such as telecom and oil, intangible value is huge.
While effective promotion is obviously a very important part of marketing, it is certainly not the only, nor even the primary task. An effective marketing program identifies consumer needs and preferences, helps determine how those needs can best be met and how much people will be willing to pay for them.
In other words, successful marketing is mostly about finding profitable opportunities forvalue exchange. Often, those opportunities are product related, but they don’t need to be. For instance Zynga has unlocked value in people’s social relationships while American Express Open Forum has profited by giving their consumers valuable content.
In a nutshell, people need jobs done for them. The main task of marketing is to identify which jobs their organization can do most profitably and make sure people know about it.
Watching Mad Men, you get the idea that promotion is all about snappy taglines and slick TV commercials. In the past, that was mostly true, but digital media and the data that came with it, has changed a lot of what we thought we knew. Clearly, we now live in apost-promotional paradigm.
We were always aware that word of mouth existed, but had no idea how powerful it was. The new social era shed light on the fact that recommendations from people we know are more influential than anything else. Further, the digital nature of those recommendations means that they can go viral and get picked up by mainstream media as well.
Owned media, such as websites, Facebook pages and storefronts have the additional advantages of allowing for deep product information, customer service and conversion to purchase. Not surprisingly, publishing has become an increasingly important marketing skill.
The rise of owned and earned media has caused many to believe that there is no reason to pay for media anymore. That’s a mistake. While owned and earned media certainly have some advantages, they don’t guarantee that you will reach anybody. There’s no use having a party if nobody shows up.