Week 11

Hello Readers. This is the last week. It’s bitter sweat. Being the last week of the marketing course we were asked to contemplate this question, “What is Marketing?” In class this week our professor shared a quote with us and the piece that stuck with me was very relevant for this question. Marketing is intuitively simple but deceptively difficult. We all know what marketing is when we see it. We buy various products every day and we know what our reasons are for buying the products we do. But what is it that the companies actively and purposely do to impact our decisions? This is the difficult part. When you are in a position in a company to implement these practices it may be overwhelming. We intuitively know why we would or wouldn’t buy something but we have to figure out how to convey this people we don’t know in different cities, states, or event countries. This is the difficult part.

 

Marketing is truly a focus on customers, both new and existing. We have to evaluate customer’s values and their goals. In some cases we must understand the customers sort term goals or long term goals or a balance in between. What we in the company see as quality may not matter to the customer so we have to determine what does matter to them and fulfill their needs.

 

Marketing is not sales. This is a common misconception and it can confuse people. Drucker explained this in depth. He said that if marketing is done properly there will be no need for sales people. This is nearly impossible to achieve however. Marketing also is not focused on products, it is focused on the customer.

On a large scale marketing is essentially creating a brand. As it is said in Cohen’s book about Drucker’s thought on marketing, “Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.” With this in mind Drucker also says, “Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing people.” What he means is it needs to be reflected throughout the company. Everyone should be concerned with marketing or at least mindful of what the brand is from a marketing standpoint.

 

This is my last posting for this course but in the days to come I will update all of the readers as to my future plans. So this is not good-bye.