The game of Marketing.

What is Marketing?

Marketing is a lot of things. Going by classic textbook definitions, it is fundamentally a mix of product, price, place and promotion, all aligned psychologically and physically towards the ultimate goal of profitability and customer delight. But, is this all? Or are there other things that matter a lot more? Lets find out, but before that let’s clear what Marketing is not.

1. Marketing is not a one step process between the product and the customer to close the deal.

2. Marketing is not an activity that involves only the marketing team, just as finance cannot work without understanding the budgets of various teams.

3. Marketing is not just about art and design.

4. Marketing is not a trick or a gimmick that is played on the customer to close the deal.

Now that we know what it is not, the burning question is, “What Is It”?

Marketing is not a singular concept or a subject, it is rather a beautiful conglomeration of various subjects ranging from behavioral science to art in the right proportions with the ultimate goal of solving business problems.

Now what are the various subjects?

1. Behavioral psychology.
2. Communications.
3. Analytics.
4. Art/Design.
5. Advertising.
6. Game theory.
7. Business strategy.
8. Economics.
9. Systems thinking.
10. Sales.

And the list goes on. To put it simply, it is one of the most versatile disciplines of study which is as natural and close to basic human behavior and especially explores the influential side of it to drive beneficial outcomes. Being the most related to human behavior, It is the ultimate discipline that can either make or break any organization for that matter. Ranging from for-profit to non-profit organizations and also individuals.

We will get into more detail about where, how and why marketing is implemented in the upcoming sections. Before we dive deeper, lets understand the fundamentals.

The 4 Fundamental elements of marketing:

The marketing mix is the elementary set of ideas or items that need to be aligned towards a common goal for any marketing activity to be fruitful. It is generally referred to as the 4P’s.

Product:
This is the tangible product or the intangible service that a customer pays for. As it goes without saying, what the customer pays for is the outcome and not the product alone. The outcome can range from the ease of completing a mechanical job with something as simple as a hammer or it could be the satisfaction one gets from taking his/her partner out for a roof-top, candle-light dinner.

Price:
This refers to the ideal price or the monetary value placed on the product/service in accordance to the outcome experienced. Where marketing differs from economics is that the price does not directly relate to demand just as it does not relate to what a customer thinks is the right price to pay.

Place:
This refers to the ideal place where the product will be a natural fit. For us to arrive at this, a detailed view of demographics, psychographics etc is necessary. Popcorn is now a natural fit for movie theaters, not because it always was, but because it was strategically understood and designed through marketing principles.

Promotion:
Everything in this world can have lasting or effective impact when its promoted the right way via the right channel. Promotion is not just about running ads, posters, radio announcements etc. Promotion is ultimately the journey towards exceeding your customers expectations and sub-consciously turning them into your brand ambassadors.

Marketing at the very crux is the art and science of achieving the above in a profitable and efficient manner with the help of various subjects of study listed above put through the lens of certain laws of human behavior which we will explore further.

Digital Vs Traditional Marketing.

We now know the various aspects of the marketing framework. But how do we make it work in the real world and see real profits?

The answer is to reach prospective customers. But, how can we reach them? It is through something we term as a ‘channel’.

By definition, a channel is a medium through which we can get our prospective customers to notice or engage with us. For example, our eyes are attracted to large billboards with creative ads on the highway. The channel here is the Billboard. Similarly, most of us from our childhood probably heard about Dairy Milk from the classic TV ads from that era. The TV is the channel here. Better yet, many of us heard about Zomato via youtube ads, the internet or youtube is the channel in this case.

Just as times change, the channels of engagement also change. We have now transitioned from TV to mobile phones very rapidly and most of us do not even watch tv any more. Broadly, we can segregate the various channels of engagement as traditional and digital channels. Marketing efforts leveraging the internet is termed digital and any other channel such as magazines, TV, billboards etc are considered to be traditional channels.

Just as the channels have been segregated as Digital and Traditional, the marketing mechanisms related to each is named accordingly as Digital Marketing and Traditional Marketing.

What is Digital marketing?

Digital marketing leverages the internet and digital software to create marketing funnels through which prospective customers are taken through a journey. The journey starts with identifying the state of awareness of the customer and taking them from ‘unaware’ to ‘conversion’. Unlike traditional marketing, digital tools help with tracking certain vital metrics that further help in designing the right kind of content and user-experiences that are engaging and greatly reduces the natural resistance for the conversion to take place. This level of power to predict, prepare and nurture the customer has never been possible in the traditional marketing channels.

What is Traditional Marketing?

The traditional channels such as TV, Newspapers, Print media etc and the actions taken by the customers due to these marketing efforts are very ambiguous or nearly impossible to track. And this makes it very costly and majorly inefficient. Further, the inherent cost in acquiring licenses, air time, billboards via auctions etc add to the cost and make it a futile effort. Although not as effective as digital marketing, the traditional marketing channels do have their place for certain kinds of products and services such as FMCG products.

Now that we have an elementary understanding of the two marketing styles, we shall further explore digital marketing in more detail.

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