Marketing or finance? Sales or management? Finding the right marketing training or even finance course is really the second step, firstly you need to decide if you want to pursue sales or finance, or is marketing is the right job for you.

Marketing is the process of teaching consumers why they should choose a particularly businesses product or service over their competitors. It is about researching the best way to influence consumers with their choices between products and includes everything that they come across in regards to a product or service, from the advertising they see and hear, to what sort of customer service they receive and how a business follows up a sale. Marketing is vital for any business as they must do some sort of marketing if they want to succeed and stay in business. Marketing is often confused with advertising and sales, but advertising is only a small part of the marketing process. Advertising is the part that involves spreading the word about the business, whether it be through television, radio, print or some other method.

What does Marketing Involve?

Marketing is broken down into four basic aspects, which within the industry are known as the four ‘P’s’.
Product – what it is you are trying to sell Price – the amount being charged for the product Promote – the ways in which the consumers are told about the product Provide – the ways in which the product is brought to the consumer

Marketing involves so much more than just advertising and trying to sell a product, and a career in marketing could lead you in many different directions. It includes researching your target consumers and understanding exactly what it is they want, what they can afford and what is the best way to inform them of a product. As well as market research you could be involved with media planning, product pricing, public relations, customer support, distribution or working on sales strategies. For marketing to be effective all these areas must be addressed and is usually undertaken by a whole marketing team. A job in marketing would most likely see you become proficient in one of these areas for the particular marketing company that you worked for. Depending on your personality and what your preferences are, your job could be more creative, involve research or if you prefer, have you working with statistics.

Is it Right for You?

Marketing is a field that offers you many different career opportunities and under the broad definition you can choose an area to suit you, one that reflects your style and personality. You may be the creative type or prefer to work with numbers. Perhaps you are better at research. Overall to consider a job in marketing you need to be able to communicate your ideas clearly, solve problems, plan adequate responses, have good organisational skills, be able to generate new ideas and have good writing skills. You also need to be aware that you will be required to work long hours, so be prepared to work evenings and weekends. You need to be able to meet deadlines and work under pressure.

The purpose of a marketing plan is to ensure that your resources are properly targeted to achieve the required objective. If you read my earlier articles, it’s about identifying where you are now, establishing where you want to be and the road you need to take to get there.

The format of any marketing plan will follow roughly the same structure which should be logical, starting with an in depth look at the current position, the setting of the overall goal and the strategies which will be employed to achieve that goal. It will go on to look at the specific tactics that will be used and this will be at a micro level. By this I mean that consideration will have to be given to the individual elements of the marketing mix which will involve a minute examination of the product itself, the packaging, methods of distribution etc.

All this will come about as a result of the careful planning process. What is the target market, how will it be reached, what “angle” could be used.

Objectives

I covered mission statements in an earlier article but simply put, this is a statement of what the company is trying to achieve, its raison d’être and should provide the organisation with a sense of purpose and direction. Before these can be properly established, certain agreements will have to be made following on from the marketing audit and SWOT analysis, they will involve collating all the information and coming up with a set of criteria. In larger companies many people may have input into the plan and they could have conflicting views about what it is that competitors may do, they may be more bullish about the trading position and all these views need to be formulated into a consensus.

The plan does need to challenge people but it also needs to be realistic and achievable; there is no point planning your entire business on the basis of a 10% market share if you are only likely to get 1%. Critical analysis at this point is vital; assumptions should be challenged to ensure that everyone in the process is comfortable that what is being suggested is “doable” even if it will take some effort to get there. Objectives should focus on the market or markets in which the organisation trades and the products that are available to service that market.

You will, I am sure, have heard many times that objectives should be SMART; they must be specific, measureable, achievable, realistic and timely. So “we want to be the best supplier of product X” is not a proper objective. Sales of product X to increase by 10% on last year over the course of the next trading year however, is all of those things; it’s very specific, there is a measure, it’s not unreasonable on the face of it so it is a realistic goal and it has a time span.

Summary

Using the quadrant example so loved by marketers again, we are looking here at spelling out what is required for;

Existing products in existing markets New products in existing markets Existing products in new markets New products in new markets

Conveniently they probably rank from 1 to 4 in the degree of difficulty and effort that will be needed to achieve the objective.

Planning is an integral part of all things that people do. It serves as a guide for the goal to be achieved. With that being said, it is no different from marketing. Marketing plan should be existent in order for a company to be successful. It serves as an instruction manual on what to do so that things would not deviate. A good marketing plan is structured in a way that it is very clear on its goal. It must also be realistic on its target. Therefore, the goal should be attainable at the current standards.

A business with a great promotion plan is a business that is destined for greatness. Fortune 500 companies have a great marketing diagram that it is best for small or medium scale business to emulate. Most people would frown on this idea because it is very difficult to copy fortune 500 companies because they have a big budget compared to small scale businesses. That is a very wrong notion because there are some ways to level the competition. One avenue of doing it is maximizing the power of the internet. On the World Wide Web, everything is equal. With that being pointed out, the plan must be centered on the use of the internet. A lot of people would say that the internet is the greatest equalizer when it comes to doing business. The reason for that is because it is easy to set up and plus it is relatively cheap. Small scale business would love to take that equalizer so that they would be at par with the big companies.

A plan centered in maximizing the use of the internet, is a perfect idea for marketing. In this way it would give importance on the millions of users who are ready to be tapped and be turned into customers. You probably most remember that almost all people of the world have already access to the internet. It would be safe to say that there are billions of people that have gained access to the internet. For a small or medium scale business, capturing even a small fraction of that market would make them very happy people.

In contrast, the plan without integrating the use of internet would surely have a hard time positioning in the global market. It would also be safe to say that if this plan is followed, this would end up failing. This kind of plan for marketing is not structured well and it is bound to fail.

The marketing setting of today is much different from the marketing setting of 5 years ago because there are a lot of changes in terms of doing business. You must not forget that in making a sound marketing strategy, you must be sensitive of the change that is happening around.