Marketing is omnipresent in our daily life. It doesn’t matter if you are a prospect or a professional working in marketing. Marketing is ever-present. But what is marketing actually?
Some historians go as far back as 3000 BC. back to the ancient societies of Mesopotamia to find some of the roots of marketing. There, the goods were presented in a certain way at the goods transhipment points in order to attract attention. Here we find the first definition of marketing. Marketing is a mean to draw a potential customer’s attention to a product or service.
Drawing attention to a product is not necessary iwhen the demand greatly exceeds the supply on the market. Because of this, marketing flourished with the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century. Before the Industrial Revolution, goods were mainly made on order and customized to suit the needs of each customer. For example, a shoemaker made a shoe to the needs of a specific customer. He didn’t make standard size or design shoes and wait to sell them. However, this changed with the Industrial Revolution when machines were able to produce much more, faster and cheaper. The problem is that goods are no longer adapted to everyone’s needs, but have been standardized for entire sections of the society. Initially, this was not a problem as the manufactured goods were cheaper than the handmade ones, which was enough to draw attention to them.
But with the increase in competing products, companies could no longer just rely on the products. They now began to draw customers’ attention to their products. The belief that a product made is a product sold was no longer as obvious as manufacturers of the time believed.
The era of sales (1920-1940):
First, companies started to find the right customer for their products. The sales force became an important part of the company. Sales pitches and doorstep selling were developed in this era. This brought results, but was very time-consuming and laborious. The question then was: Is there a better and faster way to reach customers?
The era of marketing departments (1940-1960):
In this era, marketing departments were created within corporate structures. Companies could now reach more customers with advertising than with direct sales. This marketing era was a kind of large-scale sales era. The companies addressed a larger audience with their sales pitches. The companies tried to convince the customers that their product is the right solution for them and that they have to buy it.
Era of Marketing Companies(1960-1990):
What if companies no longer tried to convince the customer of their products, but adapted their products to the customer’s needs? Well, that is exactly what has happened in this marketing era. Marketing departments became the driving force in companies. The departments tried to understand the customer and tailor their products to their needs and desires. It was also during this era that Jerome McCarthy developed the famous 4 Ps of marketing . Maccarthy developed four points to customize the product to the customer: product, price, place (place) and advertising (promotion).
In order to sell a product to a customer, one only has to create a product that the customer needs or wants. Then design the price so that it corresponds to the value that the customer gets from it. The company must sell the product in the sector where the customer is located. And all this at the time when the customer wants to buy it. Et voilà, the product is sold!
This sounds simple, but there is a tremendous amount of work that must be do to research your customers and their needs. In order to then adapt your product to these needs. If you overlook any of these points, it can do great damage to your company or product. Imagine you design and produce summer clothes and start selling them at the end of summer in a very cold country. You then have to carry not only the cost of the product but also the cost of the warehouse until next summer. You missed the P for “promotion” here!
Relationship Marketing Era (1990 – 2010):
Imagine that the majority of customers who buy your product keep coming back to buy your product again. This leads to less investment to attract new customers and ensures you a stable customer base for your products. This required building closer relationships with customers, leading to new marketing concepts such as customer loyalty and brand identity. The saying “the customer is king” became well known.
To ensure customer loyalty, companies began to look at their customers not just as statistics (age, gender, etc.). But as profiles (Jack, 56 years old, male, father, etc.). The messages became more and more individual and no longer adapted to a whole section of society. This became much easier with the development of computing during the new millennium and the invention of CRMs and emails.
Permission marketing also took off during this era, as customers opted to receive advertising from companies. E-mails are became individualized and each customer is called by name and addressed according to their profile.
Social Web Marketing Era (2010-present):
It is getting harder and harder to get customers’ attention as customers are constantly distracted by their mobile gadgets. Customers now have the freedom of choosing their distraction. They are no longer “forced” to watch the long commercials between parts of a movie on TV. Brands need to go where they are: web and social media. Brands started paying for advertising on social media to get clicks that lead customers to their products. Social media companies generated huge ads revenue and new professions like influencers became the new trend.
The arrival of artificial intelligence on the internet has already started and will have a major impact on the new era of marketing. Machines are capable of interacting with an “unlimited” number of potential customers in real-time.
Customer behavior has also changed in this era. Because customers are less interested in brands and more interested in the value a brand brings them. This is the era when a mark between a day and its night can go as high as the moon and the next day to the depths of the oceans!
What is marketing and does sales belong to it?:
If we look at the history and development of marketing, we can always see that sales were an individual part of it. Sales are a part of marketing. Marketing focuses on the market to tailor a product to the needs of the customer. Sales focuses on aligning the customer’s opinion of an existing product. The sales team is focused on achieving a goal that marketing has defined. It’s like a goal in soccer when a player (or team) takes the ball to the last player to score.
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