Let’s Do the MARKETing!

Marketing entails a lot of brainwork and creativity. It follows a domino process and every step needs an equally meticulous guidance and attention.
Before you bring your products to the open, you must first conduct a research. Research delves into market information. This may include surveys and handing out questionnaires to your prospective customers. This hopefully discovers the needs and desires of your market as well as their dissatisfactions. Another thing that you can discover here is the competitors marketing strategies. Later, you can use these strategies to compete and make your business boom and profit.
Speaking of strategies, even those entrepreneurs who have meager resources can have successful marketing. All it needs is a great percentage of creativity and resourcefulness.
There are four key components in marketing. First component is the products and services. A specialized product line is easier to handle than those offering a wide-range of options. The latter needs a huge staff to plan and materialize its goals on the other hand, the former, only needs a few. The second factor is the promotion. Promotion includes advertising and customer interaction through personal, mail and telephone conversations. One of the strategies in promotions is using promotional items or products. These may include t-shirts, caps, clocks, key tags, calendars, balloons, candies, CD’s and other promotional specialties. At their faces, you can find the company’s name, products and services. Some even include additional information about the company or business. This is the company’s way of reaching out their target market. This kind of strategy can even be availed of by middle-class entrepreneurs. Third factor to be considered is the price. Lower prices connote high volume orders. Nonetheless, personalized items and services can demand higher prices. The last factor is distribution. The manner of distributing the products is crucial. This may be easier on small manufacturers. However, the cost and traffic flow must also be taken into consideration.
After your products and services are made open to your market, the work does not stop there, you still has to evaluate its performance. It must pass the performance standards during actual tests made by the company. It should be evaluated on the following grounds: a) customer-orientation, b) customer satisfaction and, c) marketability and sales. These three grounds are correlated. Customer must be familiar with the product before he can purchase the same. If he has already bought it, he must be satisfied in order to be back for more. If he comes back therefore, he is finds the product affordable and fulfilling. That fulfillment, the company must treasure and protect.