Surely you have heard the phrase “it’s pure marketing” referring to the fact that a product is not of quality even though it is being advertised. Contrary to popular belief, marketing and advertising are two different things. Marketing is not focused exclusively on sales, and what people mean by those types of phrases is “false advertising.” In this entry we will talk about what marketing is. To do this, the first thing we will do is give a series of definitions and later we will delve deeper into what this concept means. The topics of this entry are:
What is marketing?
“The object of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.”
Peter Drucker
“Marketing is the activity, group of entities and processes for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for consumers, clients, partners and society in general.”
American Marketing Association
“Marketing management is the art and science of selecting target markets and obtaining, retaining and developing customers through the generation, delivery and communication of superior customer/consumer value.”
Philip Kotler
In summary, we could answer the question what is marketing as the discipline that identifies and satisfies the needs and desires of various markets, in a profitable way for organizations. Through activities and processes to deliver value to customers, partners and society in general, goods, services, events, experiences, people, places, properties, organizations, information and ideas are commercialized.
Needs, desires and demands
Needs are basic human requirements such as air, food, water, clothing and shelter. Other needs are fun, education and entertainment.Needs become desires when they are directed at specific objects that could satisfy the need. Demands are desires for a specific product backed by the ability to pay. Another popular misconception is that marketing creates needs. The truth is that the needs are already there and marketing seeks the best way to satisfy them.
The psychologist Maslow (1943) hierarchized needs in the following pyramid, which is now known to operate at all levels simultaneously. We all want to feel love as well as have enough food to satisfy our physiological needs.
Another way Philip Kotler classifies needs in his book Marketing Management is as follows:
- Expressed needs: The customer wants a cheap car.
- Real needs: The customer wants a car whose operating cost is cheap and not whose initial price is low.
- Unexpressed needs: The customer expects good service from the dealer.
- Pleasure needs: the customer would like the dealer to include a GPS navigation system in the car.
- Secret necessities: The customer wants his friends to consider him a good consumer.
Marketing process
It all starts from a business process, in which a value is selected and followed by a marketing mechanism to deliver that value to ideal consumers.
- Investigation. It is a process that consists of setting objectives, defining a problem, designing a research plan, collecting information through surveys, market studies, phone calls, among others, develop the findings and serve as a basis for companies and brands to take concrete actions, to deliver the selected value.
- Segmentation. At this stage, diverse groups of people with similar needs, desires and characteristics are detected. The bases for good segmentation are geographic, demographic aspects, life cycle stage (if you are a child living in the family home or a newly married couple, for example), psychographic profile (also known as VALS), personality, lifestyle and generation to which one belongs.
- Targeting. It is the process of selecting one or more of the segments detected in the previous step, by criteria such as how substantial they are, how differentiable they are and how susceptible they are to responding to an offer. The target is the goal market to which the offer will be directed.
- Positioning. It is the action of designing the offer and image of a company so that they occupy a distinctive place in the minds of consumers in the target market.
- Marketing Mix. This is the execution part, where the company employs a set of tools to achieve its marketing objectives. At this stage, the media through which the offer will be communicated are selected and what is known as the 4 p’s (product, price, place and promotion) is applied, as well as the 4 c’s (customer, cost, convenience, communication). Some examples of communication media are television, radio, magazines, newspapers, social networks, billboards, product placements in movies, among others.
- Control and improvement. Particularly now in the digital age, everything is measurable and susceptible to improvement.
What is advertising?
Advertising is just one step of marketing, that of promotion, which consists of communicating the offer. Marketing takes into account the consumer and the product, and is a process prior to advertising that guarantees the delivery of value. When a person has a great experience with a brand, whether in an activation or simply when purchasing a product in a store, this is a consequence of good marketing, a good brand strategy.
Advertising advertisements serve to stimulate the consumption of products and services, or to promote ideas or publicize aspects of the life and profession of public figures (think of artists and politicians).
If brands skip this marketing process to deliver value and only begin to advertise their products, and they do not fulfill the promise they make in their communication, then we are faced with a case of misleading advertising. People commonly mistakenly use the phrase “it’s pure marketing” to refer to this type of advertising.
In conclusion…
- Marketing and advertising are two different things.
- Good marketing contributes customers to have good experiences
- If you want to know more or require marketing advice for your company, contact us!
