The duty of marketing is to make sure that something gets marketed in such a way that it will be wanted and delivered. To accomplish that, one needs to know his marketing basics.
Marketing is supposed to create want and demand, but it is fatal to create want and demand where no delivery is going to occur.
Marketing is also supposed to engage in and result in some sort of exchange. Another way of saying “we deliver what we promise” would be, for marketing purposes, “we promise and promote what we can deliver.”
A created demand which then cannot be fulfilled results in ARC breaks with, further, the time, effort and money put into that marketing action down the drain. Also, in such a case, as far as the public goes, the credibility of any future marketing done is apt to suffer.
Thus, one markets WHAT IS THERE RIGHT NOW IN EXISTENCE THAT CAN BE DELIVERED. And the marketing of a NEW item must be dovetailed with the actual release and availability of the new item for delivery.
In this way we reap a whirlwind of business, the public gets delivered to and the created demand gets fulfilled.
There are two important data which must be used in marketing. When these are not applied, the result is a marketing piece which does not communicate to the public it was intended for, and therefore the promotion is worthless and a waste of money.
These data are
1. TO GIVE ANY READER REALITY ON AN ITEM, THE COPYWRITER HIMSELF HAS TO HAVE REALITY ON THE ITEM.
2. TO COMMUNICATE TO AN AUDIENCE, YOU HAVE TO HAVE A REALITY ON THE AUDIENCE AS TO WHERE THEY ARE AT AND WHAT THEY ALREADY KNOW OR DON’T KNOW.
Applied, these two data are the basics on which any successful marketing campaign, small or large, is built. If one knows the product and knows his audience, the remainder of the actions necessary to bring the two together become relatively easy.
Probably some marketing failures result from a false datum that to market is synonymous with directly selling to the customer. That is a wrong concept and woefully incomplete.
Marketing includes all actions from before the beginning of the production right on through to its use by the customer and its word-of-mouth promotion by the public. Your first step is you’ve got to have a product to market that will market. And you have to groom that product up so you can market it.
From the first moment a product is conceived, much less produced, marketing has to be in there with surveys to establish the design and use of the product, and it carries on through at every stage to make sure that it will eventually sell and get good word-of-mouth promotion.
Advertising enters into it. The basis of advertising is: you have to attract, you have to interest, and you can then get your message across. It’s in that sequence.
Another part of marketing is distribution planning. Without a plan to get the promotion and the product distributed to those points where the promo will be used and the product sold and consumed, you can’t market.
And there is one more step in marketing that you have to take, which is the standard step of PR. You have to review your marketing program and your issues and your promo and find out if they were put to use. Did the issues and promo ever arrive? Did the promo ever get printed? Was it actually used? And what was the response to it?
A completed marketing cycle would always include such a follow-up. The success of an existing marketing campaign or the success of the next marketing campaign would depend upon it.
“Shotgun marketing” is marketing without any concentration on the actual marketing of any one individual product. Pushing everything all at once scatters the audience attention and weakens the impact of the individual items.
Cure yourself of sending all your materials out in a wad as it is a fatal failure. It is only the amateur in PR and marketing who sends out everything he has or has ever heard of in a single shot and thus winds up selling nothing.
On the professional side, one sends materials out piece by piece to arouse and stimulate interest. When interest is stimulated one gets response.
So just don’t indulge in shotgun marketing. And don’t allow yourself to be talked into it for whatever reason.
Release your materials strategically.
That’s part of effective marketing and it’s what brings about sales.As a stable datum, the most attacked and suppressed line in any org or management unit is promo and marketing and one has to know his business to spot it and halt it before it does him in. Were we able to clean out just this one factor in management in every org, we’d have a boom, just like that!
A large part of handling this factor lies simply in both marketing and management terminals understanding marketing and its basics. From there it’s a fairly short step to getting the marketing basics applied.
That’s really all it takes to produce a boom.