Are you running a business or planning to start one but you know very little about marketing? Are you feeling bad that you didn’t go to a business school? Don’t worry. This website is here to help you understand business marketing concepts, models, and trends. In about 3 minutes, you will learn some really useful concepts of marketing in this article.
Keep on reading and welcome to Unfreeze Marketing 🙂
What is Marketing?
AMA Defines marketing as, ““the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”
Dictionary.com defines marketing as, “the act of buying or selling in a market. the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling.”
In this series of Marketing Basics, you will explore the fundamental principles of marketing. Let’s begin with the marketing concept first.
What is Marketing Concept?
The marketing concept is a business philosophy where a company first identifies the customer’s needs and then offers a product or service to satisfy them. In other words, the marketing concept makes customers the top priority of a business.
The concept became popular after 1950 and it has significantly influenced how companies provide solutions to a customer problems. The rationale behind the concept is shared in the last section of this article.
Let’s look at the different business philosophies or concepts practiced by businesses before the marketing concepts.
Production Concept
Due to the industrial revolution, the capacity of businesses or companies to produce a large number of goods grew rapidly.
At the time, most business organizations felt that if they were able to produce a large number of goods at the lowest possible cost, people should buy the product. It is generally known as the production concept or the production era.
The focus of Production Concept: Excellent production capacity and operational capacities to keep the cost to the minimum.
Product Concept
The product concept is a further improvement on the production concept. According to the product concept, as long as you can add a lot of great features to your product, people would buy your product.
The focus: Excellent engineering i.e adding great features & quality to the product
Selling Concept
According to the selling concept, you need to employ a great sales team who would convince people to buy your product.
The selling concept is a natural evolution from the Production and Product Concepts. For example, if the competitors can match your company’s production capacity and the product features, what options do you have?
Yes, you should push your products through strong sales tactics or advertising. Offer discounts and create great deals to win over customers.
The focus: Great sales team and great sales/selling tactics
The Marketing Concept
Due to the inherent flaws in the first three concepts, businesses had to do better. Soon after WII, the marketing concept became popular because it preached that before producing a product, a business must find out about what a customer needs or wants.
In other words, you start with an idea of a product or service and find out if it can solve the target customer’s problem. Production of the product only makes sense once the business has determined what the customers want/need.
The focus: Customer’s needs and better solutions to a customer’s problems
The difference between the Marketing Concept and Production Concept/Product/ Selling Concept
The first three concepts have one thing in common i.e that they encourage a business to focus on its product or service. This is essentially characterized as a myopic approach to running a business. It is because the business cannot see beyond its own products or service. In marketing, it is called suffering from ‘marketing myopia’. Generally, this approach is called the “inside-in” perspective on business. According to modern marketing, it is a flawed business practice.
In this regard, the marketing concept is significantly different as it advocates, an “outside-in” perspective on business. Thus, the marketing concept proved to be a major improvement in business thinking since the 1950s.
It makes sense to go out there and do market research to find out what the demand is. It is the right thing to do from a business point of view. You can’t produce a product and then start looking for the customer.
Marketing can make you dumb: A discussion
Think about marketing for a while. It focuses too much on the current needs of a customer. How can you be innovative when you are focusing on the same thing as everyone else? There is hardly any chance of real innovation in such a situation. Right? Further, consumers might not always know what is the best thing for them.
What do you think?
This issue is addressed by some scholars but that is what I would expand upon when I return to this article again.
Next is Section 2 about some important terms
Section 2: What is Marketing? Marketing Terms & Concepts
Glossary of Marketing
The purpose of this page is to serve as a one-stop solution to all important marketing terms & concepts.
I suggest you use the Cntl + F command on the keyboard to search terms on this page.
1: General Marketing Terms & Concepts 2: Product & Service 3: Pricing 4: Business Market 5: Consumer Behavior 6: Branding 7: Advertising 8: Sales 9: Distribution/Retail 10: Digital Marketing
1: General Marketing Terms & Concepts
4 Ps: is a popular term frequently used in marketing and it stands for Product, Price, Promotion, and Placement.
Product/service: A product or service is a solution offered by your business. A product is tangible while service is intangible.
Branding: Branding is a name, perception, or healthy association that makes a product unique and elicits a positive response from a customer. Branding is simply a promise that a business makes to a customer. This promise is a public statement that the business would strive to deliver quality service, experience, or product.
Branding is often very time-consuming and expensive. Most businesses would find it difficult to develop a brand.
B2B: Business to Business
B2C: Business to Customer
Branding Terms and Concepts | Branding Dictionary
1: What are POP & POD? What is the difference between POP & POD in branding?
POPs & PODs are marketing terms used in branding.
POP stands for Point of Parity. It means when a brand matches the competitor’s offering in terms of benefits (proposition/offering).
POD stands for Point of Difference. It means meaning when a brand not only matches the competitors’ brands (offerings) but also creates a difference by offering something that the competition does not have.
Advertising
What is ATL? What is BTL?
ATL: Above the line
BTL: Below the line
What is Word of Mouth?
Word of Mouth: as the name says when people talk about your service or product, it is the word of mouth. It can be either positive or negative. Hence, the term Positive Word of Mouth and Negative Word of Mouth. When there is a positive word of mouth about a product or service, it is an ideal market or business situation for a brand.
What is Slice-of-Life in Advertising?
When an advertisement shows a real-time situation where a product is being used or solving the target customer problem, it is a slice of life.
Original of Guerrilla marketing
The term was originally used by Jay Conrad Levinson as Guerrilla Advertising. Later, it became guerrilla marketing.
Online Marketing Terms
SEO: It stands for Search Engine Optimization
SEM: SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing
SMM: SMM stands for social Media Marketing
PLC: It stands for Product Life Cycle
BCG Matrix: It stands for Boston Consulting Group Matrix. The matrix helps in assessing a brand or business portfolio.
Marketing Myopia: Suffering from nearsightedness in marketing: When you cannot see the drawbacks in your product or you can’t see beyond your product or service.
In other words, if you don’t focus on solving the customer’s problem instead you focus on your product which is most probably flawed as well.
Marketing Myopia has ruined big industries as they went out of business because they refused to think in terms of customer solutions. They were crushed as the wheels of time turned.
Price Skimming: When a business charges really high price mostly because its product has unique features or technology. The demand is usually good for the great product, therefore, the business can literally skim the market till a competitor produce a similar product.
CLV: It stands for Customer’s Lifetime Value
AIDA: It stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action.
Who developed the AIDA Model :
E. St. Elmo Lewis, An American businessman, developed the model in 1898.
What is Veruca Salt in Marketing?
According to the Veruca Salt doctrine, consumers say ‘ I want the product, and I want it now.’ You can encourage them to behave towards your product like Veruca, the fictional character from Roald Dahl.
