What are the elements of marketing? The complexity of business in the 21st century

Purpose of marketing

Sales – this is the first association. And that’s absolutely right. However, to properly understand the complex principles of marketing, you must properly understand the word “sales”. In any self-respecting business, no one thinks in terms of a one-time successful transaction.

The point is not to push the goods out, check them out, rub your hands with joy, and use the money you earn to go out for a beer, not worrying about what will happen tomorrow. Because in fact, a successful transaction is just the beginning.

The goal of marketing is customer satisfaction because we want them to buy our product or use our services again. We want a satisfied customer to come back to us, preferably not alone, but with other people to whom he or she will recommend us.

Elements of marketing

Marketing are the processes that support sales, understood as a long-term process consisting of several elements. In this article, we will list the most important ones, derived from the classic definition of the marketing mix, i.e. the 4 P’s:

• Product – what we have to offer our customers. As you can see, professional marketing begins with careful planning of products or services. It is definitely better to guess the needs of our recipients than to artificially create them.
• Placement (Distribution) – i.e. how we will distribute our product, which stores it will go to and on which shelves.
• Promotion – i.e. all activities aimed at publicizing the product/service and reaching the customer. This is where we can talk about advertising as one of the elements of promotion. And it is in this element of marketing that we should focus on proper content writing, thanks to which we will present ourselves as a professional company with an attractive offer.
• Price – and this is where the stairs begin. A good price does not necessarily mean the lowest one. The price should be determined after adding up all costs (including marketing costs, see the first three points) and finding out what the competition is offering. We cannot sell below cost, but it will also be difficult for us to find customers if we are much more expensive than others in the industry. Paradoxically, there are products for which customers prefer to pay multiple times their value (they feel better when they buy something expensive). For this reason, the demand and supply curve itself does not reflect an ideal solution – it is good to take into account the type of good we offer.