Getting started in marketing
The answer to the question “What is marketing?” is simple, but as you spend time on marketing and dig deeper, it is a very detailed subject. In the simplest sense, marketing is the action taken to sell a product or service or to create an impact. Of course, this is my interpretation. According to Kotler and Armstrong, famous names in marketing, marketing means creating value for customers and building strong customer relationships. When we are talking about the marketing concept, it can be said that there is a concept of “exchange.” In fact, it would not be wrong to say that marketing is an exchange of value. It is important to know that the value that a company has given to customers through its services and marketing campaigns will most probably be returned to the company. A company offers a product or service, and a certain number of customers buy that value or service. However, marketing should not be confused with sales. I do not agree with the statement that “the main purpose of marketing is only to increase sales.” The main purpose of marketing is to maintain and attract customers by building strong customer relationships and to increase brand value in the eyes of customers. Eventually, there is a high probability that these customers will want to buy the products of that brand.
Especially in economics and other areas of business, “goods and services” is used a lot. In its simplest sense, this refers to a physical product or service that will give individuals an experience. Especially when we look at the 21st century, it would be wrong to say that most brands choose one of the product or service duos and only sell or market one of them. It’s significant to combine goods and services to serve your customers better. At its simplest, we can think in terms of coffee shops. If you go to any coffee shop today and buy a coffee, are you really paying for just one coffee? If your answer is “Yes”, I suggest you think again. Let’s brainstorm and list the services you can get if you go to any coffee store today and have a coffee. Drinking coffee, sitting in a comfortable chair with no time limit, having the possibility to study, going to the restroom… But the most important thing is to be able to sit there comfortably and for as long as you want, without employees who might disturb you.
I think it is important to talk about the historical progress of marketing, so it is important to see how companies sell and the logic behind these sales strategies. The important moves in production, especially with Fordism and Taylorism, were aimed at enabling companies to produce a larger number of products more quickly. Then companies realized that they could not sell more by producing high volumes of products. Because there is no correlation between producing more products and selling more. If there is excess demand and you, as a company, are producing more products, that’s good news. By the 1950s, the world realized the importance of selling. The first steps were taken to understand the large audience. By the end of the 1990s, the term marketing had become widespread. With this, it started to be talked about how a product could be sold effectively, how the features of the product could be emphasized, and how the masses could be surprised. After 1990, it became more consumer-oriented. It is now very popular to understand people individually and analyze their decision-making mechanisms in scientific ways. It is very important to understand the thoughts in people’s minds, to understand what triggers them to buy, and to make company decisions with consumers in mind.
With the emergence and effective use of big data, getting to know consumers and making them happy will lead to more loyal customers. At the end of the day, you need to sell the product or service that the customer needs and will use. Or you need to be confident and dominate the market with a very good product. There are two examples of this: Ford and Apple. Henry Ford once said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, I would have produced a faster horse.” In the same way, if Apple hadn’t come up with a very innovative product, maybe consumers would want a phone with more buttons. But both of these examples are a bit extreme. In general, customers’ opinions and feedback about your products and services are very important. Listen well to your customers and prioritize their wishes. However, if a company really has strict plans for the future and is brave, it can try to dominate the market without listening to what the customers say. The chance of failure is high, but the reward can contribute so much to the world.
I wanted to start with the simplest and most understandable article on a broad topic such as marketing. In this article, I briefly talked about what marketing is, what products and services mean, and the historical process of marketing. In the following articles in this series, I will talk about the sub-headings of marketing in more detail.
