Transcript:
There are certain fundamental marketing terms and concepts you should feel familiar with especially so you might be confident in marketing meetings and job interviews so let’s review some of them now starting with the marketing mix also called the four PS of marketing is popularized by jerome mccarthy in 1960 and the first p is product which stands for the goods and services you offer whether it’s bottled water or car insurance or even education and this p includes a product’s design and development as well as its branding and packaging the next P is place for location and it’s just where a product or service is offered for sale and how it gets there and this is how the product gets moved from the producer to the consumer thanks to interactive media place is now actually everywhere you can order pizzas and plane tickets books music even college courses from wherever you are on the planet and price determines at what charge a product or service is offered for sale to the customer this establishes the level of a company’s profit as it sells the product price has also been impacted by interactive media you can now simultaneously compare the price of a given product or service between any number of vendors such as when you purchase an airline ticket and promotion and this is how you let the consumers know about your product or service for sale and this is done through advertising personal selling sales promotion Direct Marketing and other forms of publicity now we could readily say these 4 PS are old-school marketing deeply rooted in 20th century and earlier eras of thought but if there is one ship that sums up the modern 21st century marketplace it’s that now the consumer is super empowered through instant access to information and competitors prices and even sharing reviews with one another so the traditional four PS may well be fit from a rewrite according to a customer’s perspective with the new foresees of marketing and all we’re going to do is take the old P principal and transfigure it to a consumer vantage point for example customer value and that’s how a product benefits a customer from the buyers point of view and cost to the customer and this covers price plus the other customers cost such as time spent traveling to a store or the shipping charges for a product bought online convenience for the buyer or how easy is it for the customer to find information about a product or service as well as purchase it and communication and this is now a two-way dialogue or conversations with multiple people as a customer makes a purchasing decision and positioning and targeting these are two of the most important aspects of marketing so much so that they weave throughout all the other P’s and the C’s and positioning is simply your differentiation from competitors or how different are you from everybody else as well as your value proposition or just what value do you have to offer and product dimensions and that means just what all does your product do and some sample positions maybe are you the newest or the best the most convenient the cheapest the best value the coolest the most prestigious or do you offer the most features for example how do you position yourself as a person are you smart hard-working skilled do you make the lives better for the people around you now that may be your position for example as you try to appeal to possible employers or even a potential mate and targeting simply answers the question who are you positioning your product for and this can also be measured in terms of demographic segmentation which we’ll consider in a moment now value proposition and product dimensions answer the question of just what do you do and what are the various dimensions of your product for example for many years the big toothpaste battle was between Colgate and crest Colgate promised white teeth crest featured the American Dental Association seal of approval as the top cavity fighter well then Along Came close up which offered a gel that claimed not only will we make your teeth cleaner but will make your mouth taste fresher too and their slogan was get a little closer with close-up it was a great proposition and they won a big chunk of the toothpaste market real soon Colgate and crest jumped in with their own gels then along came the pump dispenser and Armand hammers baking soda toothpaste well then Colgate Total offered a gel in the baking soda and a pump dispenser and said it will fight cavities freshen breath reduced tartar and fight gingivitis all at the same time all within a single product and it’s called adding dimensions or expanding your reach into new demographic segments or going deeper within your existing segments well marketers are going to position their product and services according to the demographic characteristics of their target audience some of the most important demographic measures are these gender especially in many cultures where women are the primary decision-makers for purchases an aged young people certainly buy different things than older people and income especially considering disposable income which can be important for the sale of non-essential items or even luxury purchases such as travel in education now asking how much someone makes may be a sensitive question but not so much asking about their education which most people will read we discuss and may give you some indicator of their earnings and location for example people in tropical climates will not likely be buying many heavy winter jackets and marital status married people have different spending patterns than single people especially once they have babies and culture and this is a complex measure and could well be the topic of an entire course in itself now each product dimension and each target segment requires a different marketing strategy for example in the 1990s coca-cola came up with 35 different attributes or dimensions for its soft drink flagship product as part of an always coca-cola campaign aimed at different market segments and some of these product dimensions were it’s refreshing its sociable trendy reliable cool smart it understands me it has a bite and a distinctive taste it’s modern it’s funny emotional simple large friendly consistent and everywhere always within reach and so on appealing to different target segments and they developed ads for each of those dimensions 35 and all and ran them simultaneously and it worked increasing sales of coca-cola soft drink by 50% in just five years now Philip Kotler who’s the Dean of marketing textbook says that if you nail positioning and targeting all the rest of your marketing campaign will fall into place and I’d suggest if you just nail targeting then even position will fall into place on its own let’s say I segment my market to a target of one which is you and if I know your happiest memory if I know what scares you in the middle of the night if I know what makes you feel safe and cherished and if I can make you feel that no one in the world matters to me more you do well then I might well win your loyalty simply based on the position that I know what you need and I can meet it and the moral of the story is know your audience know your target know your people first and last
The marketing fundamentals we’ll cover in this article are: Product. Price. Promotion. Place. People. Process. Physical Evidence.