7 functions of marketing

Marketing is a process that involves activities and processes for creating, communicating, and delivering services to clients from the manufacturers. The main goal of marketing is to attract customers. But is it the only purpose of marketing? It is not the mere selling of products. It involves a chain of actions, all co-ordinate together and contribute to the success of the marketing process. There are seven marketing strategies and we need to take a closer look at these strategies to do successful marketing of the products.

These are

1. Pricing
2. Product management
3. Marketing information management
4. Selling
5. Distribution
6. Financing
7. Promotion.

Pricing

Pricing is the process in which marketers define how much they need to charge for a particular good for making a profit. Pricing is defined based on competitors’ pricing, the value of the product delivered and the cost of production. Marketers see how much customers pay for a particular item. Pricing must not be very high or very low as compared to the competitor.

Pricing is also highly dependent on brand image and brand reputation. Sometimes, some brands sell a product at very high costs as compared to their competitors, and still, customers purchase the product from them. This is due to the brand image and the reliability of the customer on the brand.

Marketing research helps you recognize your brand value and set a price accordingly. Following are the factors

• Competitor’s price
• Value of product
• Cost of production
• Ability of customers
• Brand value

Product management

Product management involves the production of products according to customer demand. Once you have manufactured your product and through all the funnels you have marketed it and it has reached the end-user. Do you think your job is done? Actually no. keeping yourself updated with the changing trends of that product in the market and to provide your customer with the best version is the real job. Engage with your customers and get reviews from them related to your product and welcome their suggestions as a means of improvement.

Ask your customers what they like about the product and what they dislike about the product and refresh or update your product accordingly. This is done to ensure that your products are getting the market share. Product management must be your priority. This is where you compete with your competitor. When you stop improving and refreshing your products, your competitor will surpass you.

This phase collects the information on the following points.

• Improve the product
• Compete in the market
• Deliver what customer want
• Remove any issue

Marketing information management

Marketing information management involves marketing research related to gathering information before launching the product. The information in these steps involves the knowledge about the potential customers, the competition level, the quality being sold in the market, and the relevant industry trends. If one starts a business directly without researching these factors, it can lead the business to failure.

If you want to do marketing information research, you can get a lot of information from social media platforms.

Marketing research management is done to get the knowledge about the following.

• Information about customers
• Competition level
• Industry trends.

Selling

Selling is the process which involves persuading the customer to buy a product. Selling a product is not a mere simple step where a buyer comes, picks up the product, pays for it, and takes the product away. It involves the whole process in which a salesperson tells the customers about the potential benefits of buying the product.

Have you seen any car in the showroom just with the cashier?

There is always a salesperson who tells the customer about the quality of the product and tells the customers all the reasons why he should make a purchase. Whenever you go to buy any dress for you, you must have seen a sales person who persuades you to make a purchase. You go for buying one dress and end up having three. All this is the selling technique.

The selling involves points like

• Telling the peculiarities of the product.
• How the product stands out in the market.
• How the customer benefits from making this purchase.

Distribution

The distribution of the product seems to be the problem of the supply chain management team. You might be thinking about what it has to do with marketing. So, actually how you distribute your product largely defines the value of your brand. You are an elite brand? Use elite distribution techniques.

The importance of distribution management is more important to consider in the case of online marketing. How your product from your store gets into the hands of your customer is a great deal. Due to scams in online purchasing, people fear to trust. You need to build trust by ensuring the quality to be the same no matter it is an online purchase or not. It is the responsibility of the brand to ensure that original and quality products have been delivered.

• Credible distribution means
• Ensure no scam while distributing.
• Ensure the original products.

Financing

You are making a product, distributing it, running marketing campaigns, and advertisements. This all needs capital. You can do nothing without money. Financing involves managing the budget for meeting the needs of all the processes involved. This apparently seems like the problem of the owners and not the marketing team to think about the financing. But, a good marketing team tells how to generate value from the money and get the maximum possible benefit from it.

Promotion

Promotion is a very important step of marketing. This is the crucial step where you tell the customers about your product, its benefits, it features. Through promotion, you mark your existence and an effective promotion strategy decides the success of a marketing campaign. Running advertisements, use of billboards, and other such techniques, all are part of a promotion. This is done to make the customer aware of the existence of your product.

Final words

Above mentioned 7 steps are the key to effective marketing strategy and help your brand to stand out and compete.