Marketing, In my Opinion ......

During my time in between high school and college, that time when you are really confused on what you want in life, I got an  opportunity to work for Coca-Cola as their temporary marketing researcher, that is when I placed my foot down and decided am going to study marketing.

True to my belief, 8+ years down the line am still in the marketing field, but much concentration on sales, I love commissions that come with sales compared to marketing, I call it "commission possible", back to the real issue, after consuming so much information about marketing, both from an external examiner (by external I mean international certifications) to internal (local) examiners, I thought I knew it all on marketing.

My first marketing gig I did was as a marketing manager, this was after staying in technical department for a longer period of time, thus I was not only confused but overwhelmed, this is when I realized that the first statements that were made by my lecturer, "marketing is all about passing information to clients, to make them know you, like you and trust you. These three things made me develop marketing in my opinion.

As marketing personnel, whether new in the system or an old school, looking for fresh and innovative ways, these three key ingredients should be your basis for success, in my opinion. I shall focus on each to make you the marketer, understand marketing in a simpler perspective;

Make customers know you.

These is a continuous process, it not only involves startups or new products, as marketers we all strive at outdoing competition, whenever, competitors develop new USP's you have to let your customers "know" about your new and improved USP's.

How do we ensure the market knows about us, simple now use what the lecturers taught you in school to do promotion, TV ads, newspaper ads, field activations, radio ads etc., that way the market shall know about you.

Make customers like you

After customers have known you, you do not wish again to incur costs making them to know about your improved USP's, this is where liking comes in, make the client like you in order to avoid their need for alternatives.

So how do you make the customers like you, simple, after sales service, quick warranty solutions, send simple thank you notes( now you can simply use sms ,check sematime.com to learn more) treat the client as the king, give them the chair, tea, parking space etc. imagine Facebook has a like button, twitter with follow, so why not create such pages and make customers like you? clients are like small babies, they love small things, in return you have a long term customer, more business more money.

Make the customer trust you.

A customer may know you or even like you but you are not always sure if they trust you, trust is always built after a longer period of time one spends in a relationship, "shup" I have already spilt the marketing activities, yes, customer relationship management, comes in here, do beyond the obvious, be the shoulder to lean on when the client cries, and most importantly be proactive, i.e. anticipate the likely problems that may face the customer and have solutions at hand, even a simple user guide can work the trick.

These guys this is real marketing not the one of 4P's, in my opinion, work out through this simple guides and you shall have a winning marketing campaign.