The fundamentals of marketing

Marketing is the way in which companies or organizations communicate with their customers, and deliver goods and services to their customers. It is used to help companies and/or organizations control the relationships they have with their customers, assess the needs that their customers have, and marketing helps the company to satisfy those needs. This article discusses some of the fundamentals of marketing.

What is the point?

The main point of marketing is for a company to try to satisfy the needs, wants, and demands of their customers. Marketing makes it possible for customers to give their money or credit (something of value) to the seller to receive services or goods (also something of value.) So essentially, marketing helps get the company profits while giving the customers the things they want or need.

What effects marketing?

There are at least four different factors that tend to affect marketing. These factors include cultural factors, competition, economic and/or social conditions, and regulations and laws. Many of these factors change a lot and it can be hard for a marketing team to predict how these factors will affect marketing. While sometimes these factors can be a threat for a business, they can also make opportunities for businesses.

The four P's

There are some certain activities that as marketing team can control to help produce results that they want from their target market. These activities are usually known as the four P's of marketing. Promotion, price, place, and product are these four P's. Promotion is how a marketing team raises awareness with their target market. Price is how much a company charges for their goods and/or services. Place is where the companies goods are services will get to the customer. And product is the goods or services that the company is offering their customers.

Sometimes people add an additional P to the fundamental four P's. The fifth P is positioning. Positioning means where the marketing team will position their goods or services in the minds of their customers.

Marketing research

Every marketing team needs to use some type of marketing research to help them create a successful marketing strategy. There are two types of marketing research, secondary data and primary data. Secondary data is the marketing research that has already been done and was likely collected for some other reason. The primary data is the information that the marketing team collects for the purpose of creating a marketing strategy.

There are three great ways for a marketing team to collect marketing data. They can observe people whether in an artificial setting or in a natural setting, they can do a survey, or a marketing team can do an experiment using two groups with different treatments and measuring the different effects.

The environments of marketing

There are two different marketing environments. These marketing environments are a microenvironment and a macroenvironment. A microenvironment is the environment that tends to affect the company's ability to serve their customer. A macroenvironment is the environment that affects all of the microenvironment.

For the marketing team to create a good marketing strategy they need to analyze the microenvironment and the macroenvironment. A marketing team can do this by working with the other departments in their company. This can help the marketing team make good marketing decisions for their company.

The plan

After a marketing team conducts their marketing research they can then formulate a marketing plan. A good marketing plan should include information about the market and the strategy of the plan, the marketing materials they will use, and the plan they have to use the media. After the marketing team makes a detailed marketing plan they will be able to carry out a successful marketing strategy.