How does economics impact marketing? And why should you care?
Marketing -An Introduction
An ancient art, an Omnipresent Entity, a vital function of business
Marketing is an ancient art and has been practiced in one form or the other. In the modern world Marketing is everywhere, most of the task we do and most of the things we handle are linked to marketing. Morning coffee, newspaper, the shirt we put on, the mobile phone, quick lunch at the fast-food junction, internet connection, email id almost everything we use and everything that is around us has been touched by marketing.
Marketing is the real entrepreneurial function of business. When an entrepreneur starts a business, he first thinks of marketing side of the business.
What is Marketing?
“Marketing consists of all the activities of individuals and organizations designed to identify, anticipate, and mutually satisfy the needs of all parties involved in the exchange.”
Marketing cannot take place unless some sort of exchange occurs. One party must exchange a product or service with another party for some form of payment. This is the exchange process and is the central focus of all marketing activities
Marketing is about identifying and meeting human and social needs. One of the shortest definitions of marketing is “meeting needs profitably”
Marketing can be described as:
An Art
A Science
A system
A Business Function
A Practice
A philosophy
A Process
A Relationship
Each of these descriptions is no doubt valid and does highlight some aspects of marketing. But, none of these give complete picture of marketing not the needed practical direction for an actionable understanding of marketing.
Marketing can be art and science of choosing target markets and getting, keeping and growing customers through creating, delivering and communicating superior customer value.
Understanding marketing by checking “What does it do”
If you want to get a concrete, comprehensive and practical understanding of marketing, one has to move away from all the description/definitions and ask the question. “what is marketing’s basic tasks?” Or what does it do?
What is Marketed?
And every one answer it could be product or a service that is marketed. Carefully analysis will reveal that in all marketing, what is ultimately marketed is the — VALUE.
Example: How Federal Express enhance value by providing extra services
FedEx, the global courier service provider is the first one to allow his customers to track packages through the company’s website. Customer can locate a package in transit by connecting online to the FedEx site and enter the bill number. They can also identify after delivering, who has received the package by seen the delivery receipt. By adding this FedEx enhanced the value of its offer and increased the customer loyalty.
An Overview of Marketing Management Concepts
Marketing management consists of four concepts that companies rely on to achieve marketing objectives. All are focused on achieving profit and success, but the means and focus vary. The four most common concepts they will follow are:
1. Product Concept: Management orientation states that if you build a quality product and price it fairly, little marketing effort is required. Building the product generates the demand for it: “Build it, and they will come.”
2. Selling Concept: This management perspective states that consumers will not normally buy enough of a product unless it is aggressively promoted.
3. Marketing Concept: Organizations should identify customer needs and then adapt themselves so that they are able to meet their needs more effectively and efficiently than their competitors, according to this management philosophy.
4. Societal Concept: As a result of this management orientation, it is critical to satisfy consumers’ needs and demonstrate long-term concern for societal welfare so that the company can achieve its objectives and fulfill its responsibilities toward society. Ideally, we want social welfare to be balanced with consumer needs and company profits.
What is Economics?
In its most simple and concise definition, economics is the study of how society uses its limited resources. Economics is a social science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses heavily on the four factors of production, which are land, labor, capital, and enterprise. These are the four ingredients that make up economic activity in our world today.
According to American Economic Association — “It’s the study of scarcity, the study of how people use resources and respond to incentives, or the study of decision-making.
Economic Influence on Marketing
In many ways, marketing can be thought of as a sub-discipline of economics. The economy has a direct impact on the way marketers push their products to consumers. Understanding the connection between marketing and economics can help business owners allocate their marketing resources and respond to changes in the economic climate
How Business and Economics Work
A business’s success depends in part on the economic systems of the countries where it is located and where its sells its products. A nation’s economic system is the combination of policies, laws, and choices made by its government to establish the systems that determine what goods and services are produced and how they are allocated. Economics is the study of how a society uses scarce resources to produce and distribute goods and services. The resources of a person, a firm, or a nation are limited. Hence, economics is the study of choices — what people, firms, or nations choose from among the available resources. Every economy is concerned with what types and amounts of goods and services should be produced, how they should be produced, and for whom. These decisions are made by the marketplace, the government, or both.
You probably know more about economics than you realize. Every day, many news stories deal with economic matters: a union wins wage increases at General Motors, the Federal Reserve Board lowers interest rates, Wall Street has a record day, the president proposes a cut in income taxes, consumer spending rises as the economy grows, or retail prices are on the rise, to mention just a few examples.
Businesses and other organizations operate according to the economic systems of their home countries.
Ø Making a decision about the price and quantity of a product.
Ø Choosing whether to manufacture a product or to buy it from another manufacturer.
Ø Selection of the production technique to be employed in the production of a product.
Ø Determining how much inventory a company will keep of a product or raw material.
Ø Adopting an advertising campaign strategy and deciding what media to use.
Ø Making decisions about employment and training.
Ø Making decisions about further business investment.
Economic Factors Your Company Must Consider When It Enters Into Market
All markets are not equally attractive or suited to all companies. In order to successfully enter a market, a company must be wise when selecting the markets.
Prior to starting a business, there are a number of internal and external factors that need to be taken into account.
Internal factors can be controlled by the owner/management of a business, such as the quality of products and services, the quality of labor, and business strategy.
External Factors, are largely beyond the control of company. Economic and political forces tend to influence these factors
The sheer quantity and complexity of these factors makes it challenging to evaluate them. However, there are some factors that are extremely important. Taking these factors into consideration can ensure your business’s success
Traditional Marketing Vs Digital Marketing
Marketing channels: digital and traditional: what are the differences and which would be best for your business? A perennial marketing dilemma is choosing the right marketing type. All details can be found here to help you choose
The medium through which a marketing message is communicated is the major difference between digital and traditional marketing. Traditional marketing uses traditional media, such as magazines and newspapers, while digital marketing relies on digital media, such as social media or websites
Tradition doesn’t mean old-fashioned, of course. Even though people are increasingly adopting digital marketing practices, traditional marketing still plays a valuable role in their lives
Because of their lasting effects on your memory, an impactful TV commercial and a magazine are as relevant today as they were 20 years ago. You are emotionally attached to these brands, which means they are always in your mind.
As far as marketing is concerned, digital is equally as important as traditional. Using digital marketing, businesses can reach you at every touch point of your online experience
Integrated Digital Marketing
In today’s world, there is far too much advertising and marketing. There is constant competition between brands for customers’ attention.
Digital Marketing is no different: wherever you are, you’ll see ads and content.
So, in order to deliver better results and implement the best marketing strategy quickly, to generate leads and sales, you have to cut through the marketing noise and resolve issues quickly.
But how do we do that? It’s integrated digital marketing that solves the problem.
Digital marketing, or integrated marketing, is the art of creating a unique expression that’s easily distinguishable across every channel your customers use.
The same language is being used to communicate in different contexts.
Basically, it’s a marketing strategy that combines all your tactics. Thus, each campaign and approach complement each other, thus building a consistent image in the minds of the users and mapping out a journey for them to take.
Your audience will remember you if you are consistent.
A well-structured and well-defined marketing strategy is also an integral part of integrated digital marketing.
By managing multiple digital channels, you are able to manage the online presence.
Getting your organization on the web is vital, as your customers already are.
All the efforts should be directed toward establishing a single collective image in the mind of the users
Personal Branding
You must build trust and reputation with your audience by creating a personal brand. Communication from an individual to an individual is more popular than from a business to an individual. In order for your business to grow, branding must be your primary strategy
Wondered why certain individuals in the field became national figures out of nowhere? They are covered by all the media, deliver keynotes at top conferences, and have the best clients. Are these people just smarter than us? Are they aware of some magical personal branding tactic that we don’t know about?
It’s an effort to bring both your reputation and career out of relative obscurity into the spotlight. It describes where you are at the moment and where you expect to be at some point in the future. In addition to your daily content schedule, it also provides tactics, tools, and expertise you will need to reach your goal. A carefully planned strategy removes the uncertainty of your mission for creating personal brand.
Personal branding strategies are strongly rooted in content marketing. In fact, most of the skills and tools described in this roadmap are components of content marketing — but as they relate to building your personal brand
Tools for Personal Branding
Personal Website
Email Marketing
Blogs
Articles
SEO
Regular Column Published
Public Speaking
Books
You should devote time and effort to learning a new skill. Master this skill. Bring it to life in the real world and put it into action. You can enhance your knowledge by sharing your experience and learning through blogs. With experience and knowledge, you now have a personal brand, which you can use to provide consultation to other businesses. Now, you can be a mentor and help those who want to become like you. Altogether, this will increase your level of understanding. You’re all set to launch your new business offering unique products and services
CATT Marketing Funnel
If you have read this far in my article, then you are probably familiar with the basics of marketing, digital marketing and economics for business growth. However, you won’t get any benefit unless you actually use it. CATT thus makes great sense for promoting a business or your personal brand.
To attain our objectives, we can use the CATT marketing funnel method/approach.
Your niche is the most important aspect of the CATT marketing funnel. The topic of choosing your niche is itself a broad area that I will be covering in my next article.
Using a CATT marketing funnel, we can obtain wealth by boosting and marketing within our niche.
Wealth= n^ CATT
Where ^ denotes power. Your niche (n) will succeed and be powerful with the CATT that you will use
[n] — — stand for Niche. The category/expertise/interest you are going to offer to your audiences. You will achieve greater success and wealth if you choose a niche that you enjoy. It’s best to choose a niche with a hungry market. These people have some problems and you are going to solve their problems with your product and services.
[C] — — stand for Content. The king of the web is the content. Make sure your posts, videos, podcasts, live webinars, and lead magnets are generating leads for your tribe by creating useful content. Share content that provides value to your targeted customer.
[A] — –stand for Attention. It means driving attention (traffic) to your content using SEO, social media, Paid Ads and Referrals.
[T] — –stand for Trust. Building trust with your audiences by using tripwires, marketing automation, and retargeting. Deep marketing is one of the methods of building trust where the communication is much more customized based on the target audience so that each and every person feels like you are communicating directly with them.
[T] — –stand for Transaction. It means converting your leads into customers with natural sales methods.
CATT funnel is how your audience will go through with you in the entire journey.
C.A.T.T. — Content, Attention, Trust & Transaction.
The more quality content you deliver to users that helps them solve their problems, the more attention you receive from them and the greater trust you gain from them. Trust will persuade you to make a transaction. When I sell something, you will pay attention to me because you trust me.
Summary
This article explains how Marketing and Economics conjointly works and help the company’s growth. And why every entrepreneur/start-up should be concerned about it.
Also describes how CATT marketing funnels help convert leads into customers. Choosing the right niche is always key to a successful marketing strategy.
Thank you for staying with me until the end of the article
I hope you enjoyed reading this article. If you have any questions, please comment below and I will be happy to answer them
This article is part of Digital Deepak Internship Program
