Your message must reach its intended audience! It can contain fancy graphics or live on an animated website with a rainbow of features and options. The writing may be excellent and meticulously edited, and have all the ingredients for success, and yet, still never reach the target audience. Marketing and distribution of your "message" are vital to advertising success, and are critical feature in addition to editorial and production efforts.
Many business owners have trouble making the distinction between marketing a product and selling a product. Marketing is a much broader concept than selling. Whereas, selling involves the transfer of goods for money or something of "value", marketing centers on the needs, wants, and values of the consumer. Transforming the consumer into a customer is the key objective. A business must create and implement a sound marketing strategy in order to sell effectively, especially in today's competitive markets. Moreover, individual marketing plans should be written in accordance with a marketing strategy, and be updated on a routine basis with sales information and lessons learned. This activity enables marketing plans to become knowledge resources within the organization and useful tools for future planning and business development.
A successful marketing strategy will focus on satisfying customer needs and typically employ a range of techniques to attract and retain customers for future campaigns and cross-selling opportunities. Successful marketing programs are built on real trends. They are not the product of fad or hypothetical opinions. The fundamental activities of the strategy are: promotion and distribution. To work effectively, they must be executed simultaneously. You have to get your "product" positioned for sale (distribution) and you have to sell your "product" (promotion, advertising and publicity). Promotion efforts will not be effective until consumers can readily use your services, and distribution will be disappointing until your promotions help sell your products or services.
Under the marketing concept, the customer plays the leading role on the business stage. It is customer satisfaction that is viewed as the key to prosperity and growth. A marketing-oriented business produces goods and services that customers "want to buy" rather than what the business "wants to make."
Comments(0)