Introduction

Marketing is a managerial function that attempts to create, expand and maintain a collection of customers. It attempts to deliver demand satisfying output through profitable exchanges.

Two major factors are:

• The recruitment of new customers (acquisition)
• The retention and expansion of relationships with existing customers (base management).

The 3 Levels of Marketing Strategy

Corporate Level

Marketing at the corporate levels asks this question as 'What business should we be in and what opportunities should we pursue?' This is before we even have a business, idea or product. This is what is known as entrepreneurship.

Business Level

Marketing at the business level asks this question as 'How are we going to compete against the competition?'

Functional Level

Marketing at the functional level (also known as the operating level) ask this question as 'How do we create and keep customers?' This level deals with marketing tactics and the '4ps' of the marketing mix. This level defines and develops products, prices them, promotes them and then distributes them in a way that helps a company create and sustain demand for their products.

Introduction to Marketing Mix

For a marketing plan to be successful, the mix of the four “Ps” must reflect the wants and desires of the consumers in the target market. Trying to convince a market segment to buy something they don't want is extremely expensive and seldom successful. In popular usage, "marketing" is the promotion of products, especially advertising and branding. However, in professional usage the term has a wider meaning which recognizes that is customer centered. Products are often developed to meet the desires of groups of customers or even, in some cases, for specific customers.

The Four Ps

Product

The Product management and product marketing aspects of the deal with the specifications of the actual good or service, and how it relates to the end-user’s needs and wants. 

Pricing

The process of setting a price for a product, including discounts. 

Promotion

This includes advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and personal selling, and the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company. 

Placement (distribution) or Place 

Refers to how the product gets to the customer, or the channel by which a product or service is sold (e.g. online vs. retail), which geographic region or industry, to which segment (young adults, families, business people), etc.

Purpose of the Marketing Mix

These four elements are often referred to as the marketing mix. A marketer uses these variables to craft a better plan. The 4 Ps offer a memorable and workable guide to the major categories of main activity, as well as a framework within which these can be used.

The Seven Ps

Service calls upon an extra three, totaling seven and known together as the extended marketing mix.

These are:

• People
• Process
• Physical Evidence

People

People in contact with customers can affect satisfaction. Whether as part of a supporting service to a product or involved in a total service, people are particularly important because, in the customer's eyes, they are generally inseparable from the total service.

Process

This is the process involved in providing a service and the behavior of the employee may be crucial to customer satisfaction.

Physical Evidence

Service is intangible.  It is difficult for the customer to know how the service is going to benefit them without  experiencing it. Providing the potential customers the chance to see what a service would be like through physical evidence, such as case studies or testimonials would help.

Customer Focus

Most companies today have a customer focus. The company focuses on its activities and products based on evolving consumer demands. The customer-driven approach, the sense of identifying market changes and the product innovation approach. In that case, consumer wants are the drivers of all strategic marketing decisions. No strategy is pursued until it passes the test of customer research. Every aspect of a market offering, including the nature of the product itself, is driven by the needs of potential customer. The starting point is always the consumer. The rationale for this approach is that there is no point spending R&D funds developing products that people will not buy. History attests to many products that were commercial failures in spite of being technological breakthroughs.