"What is Marketing?" , My professor questioned us in the first session of Marketing Fundamentals course. As a gesture of class participation, everyone jumped into explaining that "Marketing is the act of producing goods and services and promoting it for generating sales."
Giving a silly smile, he quickly dismissed what we said and what we thought as correct. He explained to us that we have missed the two major factors of marketing while defining it - Target ( Customers) and Competitors.
Marketingeffort can't be based without understanding needs and desires of customers. Products and services should be designed to address those needs. So, does it mean that we should fulfill every need of customers? Not all, we need to find the relevant need with traceable size and which provides good ROI to us if we decided to invest in it. We should also target a relevant customer segment. Segmentation can be done on the basis of age, gender, lifestyle, income and a particular segment can be targeted to provide and promote our goods and services.
While focusing on the needs of customers, we should not forget about our competitors. What are our competitors doing? Are they producing similar products and services? How are they doing it differently? What is their market share? What is their potential growth strategy? How strong is the brand image? A good knowledge about competitors can help us to develop ways of maintaining the competitive advantage. It will also give us the opportunity to focus on the areas uncovered by them to strengthen our market share.
Therefore, a good marketer has a clear cut idea of its target(customers) and competitors and plan its marketing mix accordingly. Even though these two factors are the key to marketing success, one should never forget the power of conducting market research before planning any marketing mix. Marketing research may not guarantee success but it is always better than guessing. Research can be a solid foundation to develop clarity on Target(Customers) and Competitors.
Rupa Pokharel
