Marketing is not just about Advertising
Tuesday, October 25th, 2011
The word ‘marketing’ is one of the most maligned business terms. In common parlance it’s often thought of as synonymous with advertising, a form of sales puffery to reach into our pockets. However, if you subscribe to that misconception you might have something to learn.
Marketing, in the strategic sense of the word, begins with product design. The functionality, the ingredients you choose, the colours, fabrics, durability… the quality. They all work at marketing to a target customer (not many successful products are created without a user or a customer in mind). Other product choices are where and how it will be put together and under what conditions. These are all marketing decisions.
The marketing mix has five Ps – Product, Price, Place (Distribution), Promotion and People.
Apple is probably the best example that I could feed you off the top of my head. It is clear that Apple products are marketed within the design process and not just within the advertising. Apple devices, how they look and feel, what they are made from and where they are manufactured are all targeted at making the device desirable to the market. That’s the function of marketing.
As the five Ps of the marketing mix are not independent of each other you can see that the decision to manufacture in China was a marketing decision that affected price. And again, price impacts the desirability of Apple devices in the market. The decision about Apple device pricing is not about being the cheapest – it’s about being the most attractive to the market and it’s about profit maximisation. Product assembly in China means you can buy that premium product much cheaper and Apple make greater profits.
Again, you can look to the way the product is distributed – another marketing decision. It’s not good enough to just get products to market – how many iPhones needed to be manufactured was a marketing decision, where to deliver them, speed and timing of delivery, how to physically deliver the product and along which logistical highways. It’s not enough to produce the best product and only throw twenty on a shelf then fail because of over-demand and under-supply. The strategic marketing decisions at Apple affect the target market’s willingness to pass cash across the counter.
Promotion is the most noticable element of the marketing mix – the choice of channels, frequency and duration of promotion are going to affect customer perception. This is where cross-channel marketing is important. They may run a series of television advertisements, full and double page runs in specific magazines targeted at their customers and run their Apple expo. They do way much more than that but you should get the idea – the promotion mix will be different for each company based on their budget, their market customers and their ability to reach them.
