By Ian Ortega
I have been forced to do this piece on marketing. To answer the question: “What is Marketing?”
Put simply, I would say that marketing is a coherent and organized form of designing shared value, creating shared value, communicating shared value, delivering shared value and sustaining that shared value for a targeted audience in a targeted market.
But what is value? Value is that difference between benefits and the costs. Those benefits could be functional, psychological, social, name it all. Costs too could be economic, social name it all.
Let’s suppose, I am buying shoes from Okello. My benefits could be that they are comfortable, affordable, the girls will love seeing me in those shoes. The costs include the price, kifeesi could consider me a target if they see me in them, girls could hike transport money if they learn I bought shoes from him.
Okello too as a seller, will think of his benefits and the costs of delivering those shoes to me. The aim of marketing is to create shared value for all people in this arrangement. That’s why we always say the first customer is internal, the employee. Okello thus must also market these shoes to his employees.
That’s why I am saying, a coherent way. That everyone is on the same page. That’s really the objective of marketing, this shared value and understanding, and replicating it continuously.
Marketing involves many things. It is not one thing. Branding is one component of marketing. Promotion is another form. Distribution is another form.
That’s why Marketing starts with the simple question: Who are we? And to who? And why? And why do we think we are the ones best positioned to be this thing for this person or group of people? That’s why it goes back to vision, and mission and values. That’s where marketing starts.
So marketing really starts there? Who are we? Who is our consumer? What are their needs? What are their desires? What are their motivations? What are their aspirations? At the core of marketing is this deep rooted desire to understand the consumer, because then, one can craft a value proposition.
Assuming I identify an industry such as security. I could break it down to a sub-industry of personal security. Then I could segment the consumers of personal security. Again why segment, because then you get a closer understanding of who you are trying to serve. And there are many ways to segment. It could be the usual demographic, it could be based on psychographics.
I could end up with my consumer as single women in their late 20s or early 30s, living an independent life, committed to career growth, urbanites, probably staying in an apartment, drive their own car. So what kind of personal security product or service would you design for such people?
So our company mission could be; “a reliable comfort during uncertainty.” So maybe our proposition could be some pepper spray that activates with based on voice. This is now designing value.
So where does branding come in? It comes in here at this point of designing value. Branding is not just a logo, branding is not merchandise. Brand is this intangible thing that lives in the minds of the consumer. Brand is a promise you make to a consumer. Your brand is reliability. That’s going to detect even the logo you pick, the choice of colours, all these brand elements. Remember where we started? Coherence. Sameness. There should be this one message that speaks through everything you doing.
That’s why we say, marketing is orchestration and seamless integration. And that’s why we speak of the marketing mix. It used to be four things. Product, price, place, promotion. Now people talk of 7Ps. What matters is not whether they are Ps or Fs, it is the principle.
You have designed a product, you have branded. You want to think of pricing. If you are selling a reliable spray, to these independent ladies, you want to choose the kind of price that communicates that reliability. Then how will you promote it. Will there be discounts? How will you communicate the value? Sponsor feminist events? Will it be word of mouth? Will you go out and advertise? Is it on radio? Is it on billboards? And how will you distribute this product? Will people buy it on an online website? Will you have a retail shop? Will it be in supermarkets?
When you have done all these things, understood the market, identified these market segments and your target customers, created your value proposition and positioning, designed that value, that product, the packaging, the functionalities, the emotions in it, built a brand around it, gone full throttle on your 7Ps, then we can say you have done marketing.
So if you only for example design a logo and place a radio advert, you have just done some aspects of marketing.
Marketing is a holistic process. And you don’t want to think of it as a quickie, think of it as dating that leads to marriage.
That’s why I call it an orchestra, different instruments, different voices, yet you have this sweet beautiful sound that comes out of this cohesion.
We should all be marketers…