Marketing

Between my graduate coursework and my taking on more marketing responsibilities at work, I have come to realize how vitally important marketing is to an organization. Before learning more about it I did not fully grasp this importance and was ineffective in my ability to market the programs that I was in charge of. While I thought the programs themselves were good, they were not advertised properly where the potential customers would see and become excited about them, which led to lower sales.

This leads me the first thing I learned; marketing is customer focused. Advertising is sales focused with the result being to buy the product. But, marketing is placing the product in front of the desired customer and having them see at it and realize this is what they were looking for. It is geared toward the wants, needs and desires of the customer.

The typical marketing plan consists of understanding the P's, product, price, placement and promotion. While these are very important in helping to understand what the product is and what the value is to the organization, it is not necessarily meeting objective number one. The P's are indeed important, but need to revolve around the needs of the customer and therefor meet the needs of the organization.

Understanding your customer involves a lot of work. There are a lot of people available to see your product on any given day, but how many of them are potential customers? You need to know where they live, what the competition is and how you are different. It is important to engage with your customers to learn what they want, need or desire and then deliver it to them. Trying to dictate to them what they need is advertising, and not successful in the long term. Communicating with them about they actually want creates a deeper bond and establishes brand loyalty.

Be wary with how you utilize social media. Social media has made it easier than ever to engage in dialogue with your customers and learn more about them. It can also be very tempting to place a lot of advertising and promotions on social media for your customers to see. If your posts are routinely advertisements, your customers will start to tune you out. Instead, use social media to develop a greater overall picture of your organization. Incorporate educational material into your posts so that your customer can learn more information that is valuable to them. This leads them to see you as the expert. Incorporate some personal information and fun into your posts. Social media is personal and it allows your to showcase your personality. This helps your customers see the real people behind the organization. If some of the posts are fun, the customers feel that they are missing something if they are not engaging with you. Once they start to see that your posts are fun, education and personal they will respond better when you do place that product advertisement  or promotion in front of them. First, develop a relationship to learn about their problem, then place your product (or solution to their problem) in front of them.