August
8
2011

The concept “marketing” was developed by entrepreneurs to provide their organizations with a competitive advantage at a time in the middle of 19th centuary when healthy competition between firms started to erode sales volumes and therefore also profit margins.

You will realize in reading this compact article that the basic logic, which underpins the concept “marketing”, is very simple, practical and highly effective.

The concept “marketing”, in its early development stages was only build on advertising and personal selling techniques. The advertising part of the concept was derived from the fact that the human mind gets programmed into a state of belief, by a repetitive message. In other words, if you hear something over and over, you’ll start to believe that specific message is true and real.

• We should therefore realize that the effectiveness of advertising (promotion) will mainly be determined by repeating the same message up to the “belief” point. In a good advert, the content of the message should communicate a solution, for a specific problem, the potential client (target market) is experiencing. In other words, promotion is all about telling prospective customers about an economic solution (product or service) for a problem they are having, and to convince the target market that this specific product/service (solution) will solve their problem(s) This will be achieved when the advert is communicating an effective message and in repeating it over and over again. These will then engrave the solution in the sub-conscious minds of customers in the target market.

• Media advertising works best for soughed products/services, but are less effective in selling unsought products/services. The solutions provided by unsought products/services are more complex and normally aimed at providing more long-term benefits. Life insurance policies are good examples. In these cases, advertising had to be supported by “personal selling” actions. The other promotional techniques are “publicity” and “sales promotions”. The entrepreneur needs to create an effective promotional mix, by the creative utilization of the techniques as described above in order to optimize communication with potential buyers.

The other part of the marketing concept was later developed, and was built on the fact that different groups of people have different needs, preferences like’s dislikes fears and dreams. The market was then segmented (divided) into prospective customer groups (target markets) who have the same profiles. For example, women, children, old people, etc. When this was done, a specific marketing mix (The traditional 4 P’s: Product, Price, Place and Promotion) has to be created. This simply means that a specific product/service, at a specific price, to be delivered in the best possible manner to optimize convenience for the customer (place). The advertising message should, last but not least, be specifically designed to optimize the communication with prospective buyers (promotion). A marketing mix specially created for every target market is therefore the core of an effective marketing plan.

In order to get the relevant information needed to create an effective marketing mix (the 4 P’s) for every target market, the entrepreneur has to do proper “market research”.

The information from market research plus creativity, logic and plain common sense is needed to build an effective marketing plan for the entrepreneurial business.


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2 Responses

  1. Celestine Ukpere says:

    Interesting and very informative read. Especially to the new entrepreneur the tips are very use full.

    • Admin says:

      Thank you for this feedback. Very much appreciated. There will be more of these type of articles posted to assist entrepreneurs.

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