How often have you heard the statement that ‘We need to sell ourselves to the customers’ and how often have you actually tried to find out what it means? One might find the statement bizarre and incongruous to its literal meaning. There is no profound meaning or rocket science involved in that statement for one to understand. It simply means that one has to create and communicate offerings to the clients and has to make them clued-up about what one does and what services one offers. In one word, it means that one has to‘market’ himself.
In business, marketing plays a key role quite literally. It opens the doors of the business and the services that are offered by them to the potential clients. One of the 4P’s of marketing is PROMOTION which acts as a communication link between the sellers and buyers for the purpose of informing and influencing people. All these people need not, or for that matter, will not be potential customers. However, if the services offered do make an impact on them, they can spread it through word of mouth to others who are potential buyers of the service. These days, even infants know about Apple and its products and there are minors who also know about Steve Jobs being the owner of Apple. They do not necessarily have or require an Apple product. But, if any of their relatives, friends or acquaintances come up with a sticky situation as to which cell phone to be bought or music device to be purchased then these kids’ answer would be instant. This isn’t something out of the clear blue sky. If someone were to ask the great man himself, the brains behind the iPods and iPhones and iPads, as to what is his big secret of kissing success, his obvious reply would be “iMarket”.
A US based marketing consultant Stuart Britt said ‘For an entrepreneur, not marketing is like winking a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing but no one else does’. As an entrepreneur, a person’s main objective apart from getting clients would be to make the world know about him and his company and what it does. A company should not market with the objective of converting everyone who comes to know about them into clients. Every person yearns for name, fame and money. Fame is a forerunner of money. If your company is famous, money will follow. And fame comes from effective marketing targeted not just towards those within the entrepreneur’s ken but also those who are beyond that. Consider yourself to own a hard disk manufacturing company. Few years ago, the domain for marketing the hard disks were the computer manufacturers and assemblers. But as the time progressed, the concept of external hard disks came up which were exactly the same hard disks that were contained in the computers but they came with a casing. Today, hard disk manufacturers have their domains not only in the form of computer manufacturers and assemblers but also the common man who directly goes for these products. Another example is the cell phone which used to be owned only by high class and aristocratic lot of people but if you consider the scenario as of today then you would find children having more advanced phones than people double their age.
You can have brilliant ideas but if you cannot get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere. At the same time, too many takers of your idea will lead to chaos. Everyone that a doctor knows is not his patient. Everyone who enters a Nike showroom does not come out with a Nike product in his hand. What is important is that they chose to enter that particular showroom and that is effective marketing.
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