Chapter 1

Framing the Marketing Process

IN THIS CHAPTER

Taking the necessary marketing steps that lead to sales

Getting your marketing program started

Understanding how small business marketing is different

You're not alone if you opened this book looking for an answer to the question, "What is marketing, anyway?" Everyone seems to know that marketing is an essential ingredient for business success, but when it comes time to say exactly what it is, certainty disappears from the scene.

People aren't sure if marketing, advertising, and sales are the same or different things. And they're even less sure about what marketing involves and how to do it well.

To settle the matter right up-front, here's a plain-language description of what marketing - and this book - is all about.

Marketing is the process through which you win and keep customers.

• Marketing is the matchmaker between what your business is selling and what your customers are buying.
• Marketing covers all the steps involved in tailoring your products, messages, online and off-line communications, distribution, customer service, and all other business actions to meet the desires of your most important business asset: your customer.
• Marketing is a win-win partnership between your business and its market.

Marketing isn't about talking to your customers; it's about talking with them. Marketing relies on two-way communication between your business and your buyers. This chapter gives you a clearer idea of what the marketing process is.

Seeing the Big Picture

Marketing is a nonstop cycle. It begins with customer knowledge and goes around to customer service before it begins all over again. Along the way, it involves product development, pricing, packaging, distribution, advertising and promotion, and all the steps involved in making the sale and serving the customer well.

Following the marketing wheel of fortune

Every successful marketing program - whether for a billion-dollar business or a solo entrepreneur - follows the marketing cycle illustrated in Figure 1-1. The process is exactly the same whether yours is a start-up or an existing business, whether your budget is large or small, whether your market is local or global, and whether you sell through the Internet, via direct mail, or through a bricks-and-mortar location.

© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

FIGURE 1-1: The marketing wheel of fortune.

Just start at the top of the wheel and circle around clockwise in a never-ending process to win and keep customers and to build a strong business in the process.

As you loop around the marketing wheel, here are the marketing actions you take:

1. Conduct research to gain knowledge about your customers, product, market area, and competitors.
2. Tailor your product, pricing, packaging, and distribution strategies to address your customers' needs, your market environment, and your competitive realities.
3. Create and project marketing messages to reach your prospective customers, inspire their interest, and move them toward buying decisions.
4. Go for and close the sale - but don't stop there.

5. After you make the sale, begin the customer service phase.

   Work to develop relationships and ensure high levels of customer satisfaction so that you convert the initial sale into repeat business, loyalty, and word-of-mouth advertising for your business.

6. Interact with customers to gain insight about their wants and needs and their use of and opinions about your products and services.

   Combine customer knowledge with ongoing research about your market area and competitive environment. Then use your findings to fine-tune your product, pricing, packaging, distribution, promotional messages, sales, and service.

And so the marketing process goes around and around.

Successful marketing has no shortcuts - you can't just jump to the sale. To build a successful business, you need to follow every step in the marketing cycle, and that's what the rest of this book is all about.

MARKETING: THE WHOLE IS GREATER THAN THE PARTS

Advertising. Marketing. Sales. Promotions. What are the differences? The following story has circulated the marketing world for decades and offers some good answers for what's what in the field of marketing communications:

• If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign that says, "Circus Coming to the Fairgrounds Saturday," that's advertising.
• If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that's promotion.
• If the elephant walks through the mayor's flower bed, that's publicity.
• And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that's public relations.
• If the town's citizens go to the circus and you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they'll have spending money there, and answer their questions - and they ultimately spend a lot of money at the circus - that's sales.

Because marketing involves far more than marketing communications, a second part to this circus analogy shows how the story might continue if it went on to demonstrate where research, product development, and other components of the marketing process fit in:

• If, before painting the sign that says, "Circus Coming to the Fairgrounds Saturday," you check community calendars to see whether conflicting events are scheduled, study who typically attends the circus, and figure out what kinds of services and activities they prefer and how much they're willing to pay for them, that's market research.
• If you invent elephant ear pastries for people to eat while they're waiting for elephant rides, that's product development.
• If you create an offer that combines a circus ticket, an elephant ear, an elephant ride, and an elephant photo, that's packaging.
• If you get a restaurant named Elephants to sell your elephant package, that's distribution.
• If you ask everyone who took an elephant ride to participate in a survey, that's customer research.
• If you follow up by sending each survey participant a thank-you note, along with a two-for-one coupon to next year's circus, that's customer service.
• And if you use the survey responses to develop new products, revise pricing, and enhance distribution, you've started the marketing process all over again.

Understanding the relationship between marketing and sales

People make the mistake of thinking marketing is a high-powered or dressed-up way to say sales. Or they treat marketing and sales as two independent functions that they mesh together under the label marketing and sales.

In fact, sales is an essential part of marketing, but it's not and never can be a replacement for the full marketing process. Selling is one of the ways you communicate your marketing message. It's the point at which you offer the product, you make the case, the customer makes a purchasing decision, and the business-to-customer exchange takes place.

Without all the marketing steps that precede the sale - fitting the product to the market in terms of features, price, packaging, and distribution (or availability), and developing awareness and interest through advertising, publicity, and promotions - even the best sales effort stands only a fraction of a chance for success.

Jump-Starting Your Marketing Program

Small business leaders are most likely to clear their calendars and make marketing a priority at three predictable moments:

• At the time of business start-up
• When it's time to accelerate business growth
• When they experience a bump on the road to success, perhaps due to a loss of business because of economic or competitive threats

You may have opened this book because your business is in the midst of one of those three situations right now. As you prepare to kick your marketing efforts into high gear, remember that marketing isn't just about selling. It's about attracting customers with great products and strong marketing communications, winning them over, and then retaining their business by exceeding their expectations. As part of the reward, you achieve repeat business, loyalty, new customer referrals, and a better shot at long-term business success.

The following sections can help you get a leg up on beginning your marketing program.

Marketing a start-up business

If your business is just starting, your marketing plan needs to address a set of decisions that existing businesses have already made. Existing companies have images to build upon, whereas your start-up business has a clean slate upon which to write exactly the right story.

Before sending messages into the marketplace, answer these questions:

• What kind of customer do you want to serve? (See Book 1, Chapter 2.)
• How will your product compete with existing options available to your prospective customer? (See Book 1,...