Probably invented around 1960 in the way we know it today, the word ‘marketing’ derives from the old activity of “going to market”: in simple terms, this means taking your wares to the public, and encouraging them to buy. Today ‘marketing’ is more widely understood as a series of processes employed by an organisation to deliver value to a client.
So what are those processes? A quick look at a dictionary or academic definition will tell you in a series of bullet points what is required to market a person or company effectively. These will include: Product, Pricing, Promotion, and Placement. These four terms, which we will come to define in a moment, are the basis of all marketing theory, and were evolved before people had marketing jobs.
‘Product’ helps the marketing employee define what use the product is to a consumer, and may include such safeguards as warranties with a customer focus. ‘Pricing’ is the process of setting a price for an end product, and can be non-monetary (i.e. you might price your product in terms of time, or attention).
‘Promotion’ is all about the branding and commercialisation of a product, and how you show what your product is all about, via TV or print or other means of advertising. Finally ‘placement’ is working out where the consumer should find your product – at point of sale, retail, online and so on.
But these four ‘P’s are not enough, mainly because they are thought to represent an outward looking perspective, rather than an objective overview of a product’s marketing strategy. Three further ‘P’s add rounded value to the four basic precepts as well as allowing for the development of service industries, which require different guiding principles as follows:
‘People’ reminds people in marketing jobs of the value in connecting the customer with real people as part of their product experience, as the human contact is valuable and if well managed, positively memorable.
‘Process’ is the way a service is provided to a customer, and is aligned to behaviour, meaning that ways are devised of helping the customer interact with both the product and the people involved in selling it in a valuable way.
The seventh ‘P’ – ‘Physical evidence’ – is essential in services marketing (as opposed to ‘product’ marketing), because unlike a product, a service can’t be experienced before it is delivered. Physical evidence is about giving people the chance to try a product or service before they commit to buying it. With services, case studies and testimonials, clean and tidy office premises, and presentation generally appropriate to the service, which could be anything from a financial report to a children’s entertainer all permit the customer a virtual experience which reduces the risk of choosing the service they are trying to buy.
Nowadays, these seven basic principles form the bedrock of a huge global industry – the latest and fastest growing sector of which is online marketing. Since the birth of the World Wide Web, the realisation that marketing tools need to be developed to persuade people that a product is of value to them when that product can only be represented two-dimensionally, and in a virtual environment, has taken the concept of marketing to new heights.
We can investigate those in the next article: a concentrated look at web marketing. In the meantime, take a look at Wikipedia’s entry on marketing for more background to the history of this vital and constantly challenging industry.
