Friday, February 11, 2011

What is Marketing?

Marketing is quite simply two things.

1. Creating and delivering value to the world.
2. Communicating the value that you add to sustain maximum long-term profits.

Well then, the next question is: what is value? To your customer, value is what the customer gets in the purchase, use, and ownership of a product relative to the costs and sacrifices incurred. To you, value is whatever it is to your customer!

Great, so all we have to do is make something that is more valuable to customers than it costs to purchase it (including time spent traveling, shopping, etc. for it), right? I wish. Now you need to communicate that value, and you have to do it in a way that makes the customer perceive your product to be more valuable than your competitors’.

Let’s face it, the truth is that many of the big brands are made in the same factories, by the same employees, with the same materials as many of their competitors. In these cases, the brands that people buy are the ones whose companies do a better job communicating with customers the benefits of their product and brand. They cause customers to perceive greater value relative to competitors.

Here’s a great example of a brilliant marketer. An entrepreneur in England offered a 2 week, deluxe 61-step car wash. He was able to line up a solid 9 months worth of customers. What’s so special about this you might be asking? .. well, he charged $10,000 per car. He was able to convince around 19 people that he could add more than $10,000 worth of value with a car wash. That’s roughly $190,000 in revenues.




Stay tuned and as we progress I’ll teach you how you can create this sort of perceived value.

3 comments:

  1. marketing is so much important nowadays no matter if its positive or negative but marketing can be very dangerouse too.

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  2. I have been considering a major or minor in marketing lately.

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  3. Honestly, I don't think it's worth it (unless you want to work in a marketing department maybe). Of course I'm rather biased.

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