How to Define Marketing Mix Sensibly?
Posted on : 20-04-2010 | By : Simona Rusnakova | In : Marketing Consultants
Tags: define marketing, define marketing mix, how to define marketing, marketing, marketing ireland, marketing mix, marketing plan, marketing planning, marketing strategy
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Would you like to find an easy way to explain marketing to people who haven’t heard about 4P’s? How to define marketing mix to students so that they not only understand it, but also are able to use it in future for their businesses?
Well, here’s my little story on how we did it.
Once I was giving a class on marketing - it was aimed at people thinking about starting their own businesses – I was saying our usual stuff about leads, sales and relationships with clients. Basically, that if you want to market your products, go to your potential customers first. No complicated science, just ask them, let them try the product and ask them for feedback. This will tell you an awfully lot about how to promote yourself. If you are interested in reading more about ‘what we preach‘ in marketing, read this article.
Students were giving examples of their own clients, saying about the vision for their businesses, they were taking notes – not of what I said, but they were scribbling their own thoughts that had been provoked by my questions.
The class was very interactive and people wrote parts of their future marketing plans on the spot.
Anyway, after my ‘lecture’ there was another one scheduled and it was given by a guy who seemed to be more teacher-like – skilled in how to educate people and how to explain marketing…
And he carried on defining marketing mix as 4 P’s – product, price, place and promotion. Giving a short description of every one of them and the students were vigorously recording every single word of the brilliant definitions.
The atmosphere became quite dull and harsh. With a sigh of release when the bell came, people left the class with books of marketing scribbled by their own hands.
I was just wondering – what did they get from the second part, what was in it? What is the use of knowing a definition of promotion by heart when they don’t have a clue how to apply it for their own business? People who were there don’t really need to understand marketing mix as a set of rigid definitions. What they are really looking for, is the know-how, so that they know what to do next.
This is the way we teach marketing when we run sales and marketing workshops for companies and business owners in Ireland. We give them a road map they can follow – a step-by-step action plan they can follow, starting the next day.
