Marketing begins by undertaking research into your customer.  

That research allows marketers to assess and measure whether there is a need for a new product or service, how significant the demand would be and how much profit an organisation could potentially earn if they delivered that product or service.   

Once you understand your customer and their needs, you can then develop products to meet these needs. 

The entire process of Marketing revolves around a continuous succession, known commonly as The Marketing Cycle.   

Firstly, there is a general need, want or demand by consumers which, in turn, creates a collective group, known as a segment or market. This market, comprised of consumers who all share the same demand, is evaluated for its potential by an organisation. They look at several different factors in an attempt to evaluate how profitable it will potentially be, such as the level of competition that does and could exist, the size, the characteristics, how accessible the customers are, how well the organisation can answer their demands, and so on.  

If an organisation deems the market a profitable opportunity, they create a solution to the demand in the form of a product. A product can be a good, a service or a mixture of both, and is anything that can be offered to a market that is of value to them. This product is specially designed with specific features which satisfy the market’s requirements to a certain extent, creating value. 

An exchange takes place, and then the process repeats.   

As an example, a financial organisation conducts market research and discovers a niche audience of younger couples between the ages of 20 to 30, looking to purchase their first home.   

However, the larger banks are currently too restrictive, making it far too difficult for these couples to apply for a mortgage. The financial organisation may believe this niche is something they can successfully appeal to by offering a more ‘young-couple-friendly’ package. They therefore investigate the features that the target audience desire (such as less restriction, more flexible payment options, greater customer service, and so on), and determine if there are enough potential young couples to make it a viable offering, as well as the level of current and potential competitor activity, and so on, before finally deciding to enter the market.   

They then launch a new, more flexible mortgage product and advertise it directly to young couples, filling that niche.   

These customers take up the offering and gain satisfaction, paying the financial organisation and thus completing the Marketing Cycle.   

Marketing is of vital importance to any business.   

It is the key process of researching, promoting and selling products or services to your target market successfully to generate revenue. Marketing is an important business process where you inform, attract and convince people that your products or services are of value to them.  

Without Marketing, most businesses would fail to exist. You could have the most amazing product or service, but if no one knows it exists or understands the value, you won’t make a single sale. It’s important that you use marketing to promote your business, brand and offerings. 

Message Marketing is about presenting a message to an audience that compels them to take the desired action.   

That is essentially how marketing works- communicating to educate and trigger a response.  

This begins with a comprehensive understanding of your target customer and getting to know their pain points (or challenges). You then identify the products or services which can provide a solution, and use marketing to bring them together. 

There are many types of Marketing that you can use to bring your audience and products closer together (see the next section), however the goal always remains the same.   

Many people say Marketing is the art of building your audience, some say it’s building awareness about your products or services, while others say it’s a complicated process of promoting your business.   

While these are all true, they are all secondary to the core of marketing, which is bridging that gap between a customer’s needs and your products. 

Marketing is a broad professional practice and covers many forms.  

Most businesses use more than one to reach their audience and achieve their goals. The following types of marketing specialisations can help grow a business.   

1. Digital marketing – the majority of marketing today is done through digital and online media. This includes using your website as a powerful information, sales and marketing tool. Digital marketing has almost become synonymous with marketing and overlaps with a lot of other types today.  
    
2. Social Media Marketing – building your brand by being present on social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook either organically or through paid posts.   
    
3. Newsletter Marketing – newsletters, both on paper and in digital format, can increase the authority of your brand and therefore increase the number of conversions. They also keep your brand top of mind, however they must contain relevant information and be frequent enough without becoming spam. 
     
4. Content Marketing – this is another significant (and popular) part of marketing today. Highly related to Inbound Marketing, content marketing is about creating all forms of written, audible and visual content to demonstrate the relevancy of your brand to your customers. This builds trust with them in a user-friendly way by offering value.  
    
5. Offline Marketing – Sometimes referred to as traditional marketing, offline marketing provides awareness of a brand’s products and services through the use of TV, radio and print advertising – including billboards, signs and pamphlets, telemarketing, magazine promotions and television ads.  
    
6. Outbound Marketing – Overlapping some other types of marketing mentioned above, outbound focuses on sending your marketing message to the largest number of people possible through advertising, cold calling, direct mail and other aggressive techniques that pushes itself to an audience. While outbound is becoming less effective due to its disruptive nature, it still has its place.  
    
7. Inbound Marketing – Inbound marketing focuses on your brand being sought out by your customers, as opposed to reaching out to them directly. Instead of using paid advertisements, inbound marketing uses search engine optimisation (SEO) to be present when people are actually looking for you or a relevant solution.  

There are many other subsections of marketing, such as email marketing, video marketing and Electronic Direct Marketing (EDM) too. 

Marketing has evolved over the years. 

Basically, the modern practices and concepts of Marketing began roughly in the 1960s to 1970s. From that time to now, the approach to Marketing has shifted and evolved.   

The first philosophy was called the production concept, which focused on the mass production of products and selling them to a market as is. However, while this was cost-effective and fairly simplistic, organisations started to discover that just one product didn’t always fit the demands of a versatile group of consumers.   

This is how the product concept developed, and it saw a focus on differentiating a product’s features. Following this came the selling concept, which revolved around utilising promotion and a sales force to drive sales through communication with the market.   

The next step diversified Marketing further, which interestingly enough, was called the marketing concept.   

This involved conducting business by focusing on the customer as the origin. This was done through connecting far better with consumers, segmenting the market and investigating their individual needs, then maximising consumer value and satisfaction by tailoring the product to match, setting an appropriate price, communicating effectively and ensuring delivery was convenient. Basically, it put the consumer first, and answered them with production, selling and product concepts, rather than the other way around. This was a very internally focused concept and was extremely effective, employed by most organisations even today.  

Often, organisations take it one step further.   

While not all do this, the benefits for an organisation which focuses on what’s known as the societal concept are quite high.   

This is basically taking the above marketing concept and adding a socially responsible aspect to it. The societal concept looks externally and not just internally within an organisation. For example, products can be environmentally friendly, contribute to charities, sponsor events and so on, benefiting the larger community. It revolves around making a profit by simultaneously satisfying consumers and acting in a way which benefits society too.   

The positive repercussions of this can be very beneficial for an organisation as consumers seek more from them than just a good product.   

I believe we now need to shift forward to the next stage, which I have coined as Empathetic Marketing.  

This means not simply scoping out the consumer and surrounding society alone, then throwing a generic blanket over it all, but to delve deeper to really connect to truly understand what the priorities of consumers are and what parts of their external and internal environments actually have relevant meaning to them. This is completely possible now too, given the advancement in technology: it is now up to us as Marketers to catch up. 

The practise of marketing is very different these days, with organisations shifting away from just advertising, and towards what Christopher Melotti calls Empathetic Marketing. 

Empathetic marketing is the development of a strategy which focuses on catering to the human person, while encompassing the marketing and societal concepts, above.   

Advertising is all about forcing messages onto potential customers, but modern methods of marketing are now far more effective and people-friendly.   

Organisational blogging, for example, is a way to reach people with general informative content which engages them in a less intrusive way. PR activities draw people in and encourage them to join the conversation, thus creating highly coveted word-of-mouth. Podcasting is usually free and enjoyable for people to listen to at their convenience, and if produced well, will gain a following of consumers who actively download each episode, ending up as advocates.   

Social media connects consumers to each other and offers advice and open forums, thus easing the barriers to purchase. These examples demonstrate the approach of empathetic marketing in that they treat customers as humans with individuality, not just as consumers with money to be extracted. The distinctive feature of empathetic marketing is that it encourages all marketing efforts to offer people value, and not just the final product itself.   

By offering information and interesting content rather than pretty pictures of the product with a price tag, it’s more catered to their satisfaction at all touch points.   

Today’s consumers expect more than noisy, forceful messages.   

They want to be catered to, appreciated, wooed and persuaded. They distrust forceful messaging, and look to other sources they deem as more trustworthy. These other sources are essentially other types of marketing executions (for example, blogs, podcasts, etc), so it’s, therefore, crucial for an organisation to provide these avenues, facilitate them or at least participate. However, this doesn’t mean that you can use marketing to manipulate them in newer, subtler ways, as that’s not true. Today, people are highly educated and informed, and are extremely judgemental about these channels, so effective marketing requires high-quality efforts. Poor executions and uninspired campaigns will surely fail.  

Today’s marketing channels are new, innovative, fluid and highly digital, and so marketing efforts must reflect this, offering the consumer engagement, well-researched information and interactive advice.   

The key to successful marketing is to value your customers.  

Engage with them, offer them advice, respond, invest your time in them and customise your offering to them, so that their experience is ultimately unique and rewarding. This is not simply recommended- it is essential, because your target audience now expects it. There are too many competitors out there waiting for your organisation to ‘drop the ball’.   

Marketing is no longer about forcing advertising down a customer’s throat; it’s about getting to know your customer and being interested in what they really want, their preferences and opening communication in order to build relationships. Think carefully about them and how your product will benefit them and then actively engage with them to demonstrate your empathetic marketing. 

The world is changing rapidly with advancements in technology, and this has shifted marketing from just a department in a business, to becoming synonymous with the entire organisation.  

Every time a customer interacts with your business (known as a “touchpoint”), that’s marketing! This includes when:   

• your customer service team talks to people  
• the sales team speak to customers   
• people visit your website  
• your team interacts with suppliers  

And so on.   

Marketing efforts are now everyone’s business, not just the Marketing team.   

Sure, they coordinate the strategy, but how far do you think the message will go if your team doesn’t deliver on the marketing message?  

For example, if your branding and advertising is promising a smooth and professional service, then your customer-facing team have to deliver that. If not, your branding gets damaged. Every touchpoint needs to deliver a consistent experience, so that the brand builds a strong reputation in the right direction.  

The Australian Commonwealth Bank do this extremely well. Every time you call their customer service phone line, the manner in which they provide assistance in a friendly and informative way never disappoints. This is excellent marketing, because as a customer, you will probably tell others how happy you are. 

Without customers, your business would not survive.   

To attract and retain customers, your business needs to understand the value of marketing and execute it correctly. People today are unlikely to simply walk into your business and buy something from you if they don’t know who you are, what you are selling and why they should choose you over the competition.  

Here are the benefits of marketing for your business:  

• Increases visibility of your brand  
• Develops lasting relationships with your audience  
• Provides value   
• Creates loyalty and trust, with both your current customers and prospects  
• Helps you to build authority and credibility  
• Improves brand awareness and recognition  
• Helps your customer move through the purchase decision more quickly  
• Positions your business as an expert in your industry  
• Generates traffic to your site to improve lead generation  
• Opens a channel of communication through social shares and comments 

In today’s highly connected and digital world, the heart of every successful business lies with marketing.   

This is not to say that other functions are not important! But, what it means is that consistent branding must be ingrained throughout the entire operation.  

So, it’s important to take the time to get it right. Without marketing, many companies would close because their sales would crash. Effective Marketing achieves the following:  

• Educates your audience 

The service or the product that you are offering must be known and understood so that you can have potential buyers. If your business is unknown in the community and you don’t have any form of communication with your customers, you need to use marketing strategies to build awareness and relevancy.  

• Boosts sales  

Marketing is important because it helps you make sales. The bottom line of any business is to earn revenue and marketing is an essential channel to reach this end goal. Without marketing, many businesses wouldn’t exist because marketing is ultimately what drives sales.  

• Builds reputation  

Having good marketing helps you develop your brand name. It truly can be the deciding factor in whether or not a consumer chooses to reach out to you or one of your competitors.  

• Grows the business  

Marketing is an important strategy to ensure the growth of your business. If you successfully educate customers, keep them engaged, create a strong reputation in their minds and smartly sell to them, your business will most likely do well.

Successful marketing is all about bringing your brand into the “world” of your ideal customer by demonstrating its relevance to them.  

Anything that doesn’t solve a real problem in their eyes is seen as irrelevant, and therefore ignored.  

Think about how many Adverts you see, hear or read and dismiss every day.  

You have to remember that today’s highly educated and time poor customer doesn’t simply take commands from marketing. Due to being so bombarded by noise, they have learned to quickly filter and dismiss anything even remotely disinteresting to them.  

As a result, your Marketing efforts have the important role of gaining their attention and trust by addressing their core, emotional needs – regardless of if they are B2B or B2C customers.  

Marketing promotes your business if you use it to bring your brand’s products and services in front of an audience and demonstrate its value.  

Marketing promotes your business successfully through the following:  

1. Raising general awareness  
2. Proving it’s a relevant option for a customer  
3. Gaining their trust  
4. Educating your audience  
5. Inspiring their purchasing behaviour  
6. Demonstrating value  
7. Converting them to take action  

If your combined marketing efforts tick off this list, then you’re on the right path to achieving success.