Over the past year I have been studying marketing at the School of Commerce. I have become a lot more interested in the subject. That is why this article gives you an introduction to marketing. First I will talk about the definition and my findings. After that, I will give tips for those who want to start in marketing. The tips also help if you think about studying commerce.
Introduction to marketing: the definition
Marketing is a very broad subject. The American Marketing Association has an official definition. The most simple one, however, is ‘responding to the wishes and needs from customers’. It means that you first need to know what kind of product or service a person wants. Then you develop it to sell it to that person.
In the past, companies did it the other way around. They first developed a product or service, and then sold those to customers. They did no research about the wishes and needs of their customers. Marketing is a more effective way of selling a product. Because if you already know what people want, you have basically already sold it. Of course there are a lot of things to keep in mind before you can sell your product effectively. I am going to talk about those in the next paragraph.
My findings about marketing
So before you start developing a product or service, you first need to have a target audience, or a ‘niche’. There are almost 8 billion people on the planet, and everybody has different interests and needs. Therefore, you need to specify which people you want to focus on. The more detailed your target audience is, the more effectively you can respond to their wishes and needs.
If you understand the audience you want to serve, you can identify their wishes and needs through different criteria. Think of their age, income, interests and behaviour. There are a lot of other criteria which you can use for this. The point is that you describe your target audience as specific as possible. Then you can start focusing on the product or service, pricing, distribution and promotion. That way you can reach your target audience. Some people say that marketing is some sort of manipulation, but I don’t agree with that. In my eyes, it is a form of serving or helping people with their problems or desires.
Tips and tricks
It is impossible to describe the entire subject in one article. So if you are interested in learning more about marketing, I suggest that you follow some form of education. In addition, you could start your own side project. Think of building your own business or helping others with promoting their products and services. I really enjoy the School of Commerce, because I think it is a very practical course. You can implement the information right away, and there are a lot of opportunities.
Are you not quite sure what target audience you want to serve? Then it could be useful to find out what you are interested in, and use that as your niche. That way, you already know a lot about the topic. It also makes it a lot easier to identify what people in that niche want. Besides that, you enjoy it more, which is the most important thing. I hope this introduction to marketing helped you on your way.
Thank you for reading this article, and have a wonderful day,
Mart Bergsma
