Marketing For Beginners

In order to help a product or service reach its target customers a business would start marketing. This process plays a major in the success of a business, especially in startups. It is plain that if no one knows about the product you produce, who is going to buy your product? Increasing the sales of a business is a well-known use of marketing.

Another word that evokes in our minds when we talk about marketing is 'Advertisement'. It’s not all about a 30secs movie that encourages people to buy the product, but also there are several things to consider when a business starts its marketing plan. 

If you're starting your own business that requires sound marketing, it is much better to understand some basics. How to market a product or service? An efficient answer to this question would be the "4Ps marketing concept" or the marketing mix, the basic framework of the marketing discipline. This concept was put forward by American marketing professor Edmund Jerome McCarthy. Checking the 4Ps in your marketing plan is very important. The 4Ps are product, price, place, and promotion.

Understanding these 4Ps of your business will lead to a successful marketing plan.

Starting from the first P Product, you can begin to analyze your product with the question "why do people need this product, and who needs this product". This would help you to understand the life cycle of your product. Is it an easy-to-use product? you can also compare the efficiency of your product with the existing companies which produce the same. The name of your product, can it be pronounced easily? The size and color, is it attractive? What makes your product unique from other competitors? Does it really provide what customers need? These types of clear understanding of your product are what lead you to the next steps price, place, and promotion.

Price decides your profit, it is important to know the total cost of one product. Knowing if there are any established price points in the market and the selling prices of your competitors can not be denied. With the basic idea of the price tag of the product in the market, you should calculate the possible price of your product which should be giving you a profit covering all the costs also this price should be supported to make even a small profit after the discounts during the promotion and sales seasons.

It is obvious that selling sweaters at a sunny beach would make no sense. Likewise, selling your product in a place where the same product is abundant already would make a slight disturbance to increase sales as well. Understand the places where your target customers could meet your product, it can be the convenience store, shopping mall, or even online.

Now it's time to think a little about advertising, promotion is a way of telling people that we are selling the product they need at an appropriate price. Some big companies have separate teams to research the psychological way to attract customers through advertising. Well, you do not need a research team, but you better understand some fundamentals like where you should advertise, on TV channels, radio, leaflet, or online, and when you should advertise. You can get an idea by analyzing your competitor’s way of promotion too.

These 4 considerations would give you a framework to build your own marketing plan for your business. Yet, there are enough marketing strategies to learn and to be used in a business. Using this marketing mix would help you create a business that fulfills customers' real needs.