Non-marketers have a misconception that marketers just have to create slogans or commercials. However, the reality is a lot different, as marketers are so engrossed with digital marketing that people forget that marketing is a vast concept and goes beyond social media, SEO, and social advertisement.

Honestly, with so much competition in the digital marketing space growing every year, a lot of marketers in the industry have suddenly felt the need to be more creative and go beyond their comfort zones. Marketers are being asked to learn new tools, integrate AI, learn new concepts, and adopt advanced techniques to understand customer needs. It has made the process more complex and sort of chaotic. Thus, it is now time for the marketers to take a step back and reflect on the marketing fundamentals.

Understanding the Fundamentals of Marketing

Let us first revise what marketing means. In simple terms, it is just the process of promoting your services or products, including research. Now, let us stop right there and not imagine a person distributing brochures at a corner of the street. Marketing is not just about that. It is actually related to the later part of the definition: research. It is true that marketers work on promoting services or products. However, in order to become a successful marketer, you must spend some time understanding the product, the target audience, and where your target audience spends most of their time. Then, further working on that process, you need to research extensively, come up with fresh ideas, and most importantly, test these ideas.

The only successful way to resist the scourge of reducing returns is to ensure effective systems for creating and verifying new ideas. In other terms, creative brainstorming and experimental design are as significant in marketing as trying to understand customers’ needs and expectations.

Don’t understand it the wrong way. Understanding customers’ expectations and aligning your business with them is still very important. However, marketers often forget that marketing fundamentals are essentially built on the foundation of experiments.

What Are the 4Ps of Marketing?

The 4Ps of marketing is an age-old concept first developed back in the 1950s and has evolved since then. If you want to understand marketing in detail, you must understand the 4Ps of marketing. These 4Ps encompass all the factors that you can use to market a service or a product.

Product

Even if you have some idea of marketing, you must be informed that everything in marketing begins with the product. If your product does not have a USP or is not solving any customers’ problems, then no marketing concept in the world can help you. Thus, it is important to ascertain that there is close collaboration between people creating products and people promoting products. Marketing provides a way through which you can study the needs of the customers and comprehend their requirements. Product developers can then use the insights and add features to their product.

Of course, you will not always have a product team to collaborate with, but the fundamental concept cannot change. Having a deep understanding of the product is the primary step you must take to sell your product.

Price

One of the major mistakes that marketers make is to consider pricing as a process of identifying the price that customers can pay for a product. While it is true that this is the standard definition of pricing, getting the right amount involves a lot of factors. You need to consider the perceived value of the product, competitor prices, supply costs, and the cost of numerous inputs. For example, numerous luxury brands place their product at a higher price than price curve estimates.

Price is also a communication tool and communicates a lot of things such as the status of the person purchasing it. A luxury watch does not just communicates time; it communicates the status of the owner. Thus, discounts can help you increase your sales in the short term. However, consider removing them while reducing the perceived value of the product.

Place

Suppose you price your product accurately, but you fail to attract any customers. Is it useful? The answer is obviously no.

Therefore, Place is quite an important P for marketing, as significant as the previous two Ps. This is exceptionally vital today as there is a clear distinction between online shopping and purchasing products from in-store visits. To further understand why Place is so important, consider this example: imagine you need to buy a product which is on sale at a fancy-looking department store as well as at a shady website. Which one would attract you more?

Place is often overlooked, and truly an important area you need to consider while marketing your product.

Promotion

The last P that we need to talk about is “Promotion.” This is all about how you communicate the previous 3 Ps to the target customers. This includes PR, advertising, and other media. The tools, ideas, and techniques you use in promotion are deeply associated with other Ps. Promotion helps you tie in all the other P’s and helps you position your product better in the market.

For instance, if you are selling a luxury bags at a remote shop in Ethiopia with a 5% coupon discount, then it undermines the aspects discussed in Price, Place, and Product. A comprehensive approach that factors in all the elements is a right way to approach marketing.

More Ps That You Can Consider

When you consider that the above 4Ps were conceptualized back in the 1950s, it is natural to think new updates must have come in all these decades. People who are trying to understand the fundamentals of marketing must understand two more Ps: People and Process.

People

“People” deals with all the people that are contributing to the marketing process, ranging from influencers to sales representatives. In light of the recent “Astronomer” controversy, it is important to consider how scandals of individual stakeholders impact the company and profit margins. Thus, “People” is an additional “P” that you must consider.

Process

The final “P” is “Process” that you must take into consideration. It is also related to the realities of purchasing goods today. It comprises the logistical aspect of providing products to customers. While it is true that in certain cases such as software, you do not need to consider this. However, as far as ordering products online is concerned, this aspect is absolutely essential.

Top Marketing Types You Should Know

While discussing marketing fundamentals, it is essential to consider standard types of marketing.

B2C Marketing:

The most basic division in marketing concepts is between B2C marketing and B2B marketing. While most principles are true for both, the major differences in how consumers and business approach purchasing products can have major consequences. You will see B2C marketing targeting a large group of customers as compared to B2B marketing. Thus, scaling customer bases is more crucial than building relationships. Here, it is important to identify customers, demographics, where you can reach them, and how do they make purchasing decisions.

B2B Marketing:

In B2B marketing, you must be informed about the factors that drive businesses to make a buying decision. Essentially, you might target a smaller number of prospects, so building relationships is often crucial. This generally results in longer purchase process times with more involvement of customers as you focus on pushing them down the sales funnel.

Outbound Marketing:

Another key aspect you need to understand in marketing fundamentals is the difference between outbound vs inbound marketing. Here, the main difference is how you are connecting with the customers. Outbound marketing involves channels such as old-school billboards, TV, brochures, or radio advertising. Essentially, everything that you can use to actively connect with target customers comes under outbound marketing.

Inbound Marketing:

Instead of searching for individual customers actively, inbound marketing involves searching for ways to get target customers to directly reach out to you. This can be done via creating content such as articles or videos that involve CTA’s (Call to Action), encouraging them to connect with you. Now, at this point, a salesperson will take over, connect with prospective customers, and try to convert them into active customers.

Search Engine Marketing (SEO):

Considering how crucial SEO is for a wide range of business today, it is tough to imagine the term came into existence just a couple of decades ago. SEO involves streamlining a website to improve its possibilities of ranking on particular keywords in SERP results (especially Google). You can improve the SEO of your website by working on technical aspects like page load times or by creating quality content.

Email Marketing:

One of the key factors that establish lasting trust is time. However, there are not many ways you can find that can make sure that customers interact with you consistently. However, email marketing has emerged as a valuable tool to ensure precisely that.

By sending emails consistently and providing value to customers through quality newsletters or daily digest, brands can establish steady relationships with customers. Another important advantages of email marketing is the data-rich analytics that it offers, allowing marketers to perform tests and find the right approaches.

Social Media Marketing:

Social media optimization has become a core element of marketing a product. Considering that connecting with customers in channels where they spend a lot of time is key aspect of marketing fundamentals.

From regularly posting on social media to connecting with social media influencers, social media has emerged as a key tool to establish brand awareness and ensure visibility across all channels. Just like email marketing, social marketing also offers analytics that enables you to comprehensively understand your customers.

Affiliate Marketing:

The types of marketing mentioned above can take weeks, months, and even years to deliver the kind of presence you desire in the market. One of the driving factors that push most marketers toward affiliate marketing is that it provides a useful shortcut. Affiliate marketing is a marketing concept that involves paying another individual or company for a referral fee for driving traffic to their website. For instance, consider that you have a YouTube channel about cooking where you discuss quality skillets that come handy to you. You can connect with Amazon and add links to the skillet. Thus, if a user chooses to buy a skillet through your link, you can make a commission out of it.

The core advantage is that businesses only need to pay third parties if the sale is made. This means that the risk is quite low and the prospects of improving your sales are quite high.

Event Marketing:

Event marketing is quite a conventional method of marketing that is still in use across niches. This involves assembling people together in a place to promote something. A movie premiere is a great example of event marketing where the event captures a lot of media coverage and increases awareness about the film (product).

Over the years, event marketing has lost its appeal across the world. This is primarily because many brands have products or services that target users worldwide. Moreover, it requires decent investment, clear planning, and a lot of manpower. However, if you pull this off, the results will be quite fruitful.

Word-of-mouth Marketing:

One of the most natural forms of marketing is word-of-mouth marketing. Despite the emergence of advanced tools and new marketing channels, nothing can beat word-of-mouth marketing when it comes to naturally spreading awareness about your product quality and brand credibility. One of the crucial aspects of word-of-marketing is the fact that it does not need your involvement. Word-of-mouth is a foundational concept that makes something go viral on social media. If 50-100 people start discussing something on social media, it encourages more people to do so. This creates a multiplier effect that can ensure stunning outcomes.

Having said that, the most crucial part of this marketing is to do it right. There is no right formula for ensuring word-of-mouth. Thus, you have to do a lot of trial and error before you arrive at something that truly works.

Print Marketing:

While the rise of AI tools and digital channels is the talk of the town, it would be unwise to disregard print marketing completely. Print marketing is far from being completely obsolete. Whether there is advertisement in newspapers or distributing free brochures to subway commuters, there is a good chance that these audiences can catch something in your print that makes them connect with you. The declining popularity of print marketing can also mean that your competitors might not be considering it. Thus, print marketing is how you can set your business apart from the rest.

TV Marketing:

Just as it is true with print marketing, the rise of digital marketing and online streaming platforms has caused a downfall in TV marketing. However, you must not neglect it completely. Since, millions of people still watch live games like Superbowl or Champions Leage (soccer) on TV, TV marketing can be a unique investment you can make for your brand.

Conclusion

Marketing is a vast discipline that goes beyond standard SEO practices, digital marketing channels, and social media campaigns. Marketing success hinges on understanding its principles comprehensively. You must understand the 4Ps of marketing, i.e., Place, Product, Price, and Promotion while also taking into account modern additions like Process and People. Irrespective of whether you are executing B2B strategy, adopting SEO, or going the route of affiliate marketing, the core aspect has remained unchanged: effective marketing requires deep knowledge of the product, comprehensive audience research, and consistent experimentation. By basing your approach to such fundamentals while adopting diverse marketing channels, you can ensure long-term strategies that connect with your target audience and elicit meaningful responses from customers.