Introduction to Marketing

The Marketing Mix is at the heart of all marketing activities. It is essential to understand how elements such as Product, Price, Place and Promotion all interact and work together to enable successful businesses achieve their goals

Product is the first element in the marketing mix. Here we examine the various characteristics of products and introduce the concept of the Product Life Cycle

Price is a value....the amount that a seller charges for a product and the amount that a buyer is willing to pay. Setting prices is like a balancing act....charge too low and it will affect your profits; charge too high and you may drive your customers away. In this lecture, we look at several methods used to set prices.

Another word for Place, is Distribution. This part of the marketing mix relates to making your product accessible and easy for consumers to buy.

This is the forth element in the marketing mix. Even if Product, Price & Place are all good, your must reach out to your potential customers, and give them reasons why they should buy your product rather than others. In this lecture, we look at the various methods available to companies to promote their brand and products.

There are three more "Ps" that are often included in the Marketing Mix these days...People, Physical and Process. Together with the foregoing elements, that makes a total of 7 Ps. We look briefly at these three additional Ps in the lecture.

Marketing Research is possibly the most important activity in Marketing. Successful businesses know exactly who their customers are, what they want, how to service their needs, who are the main competitors, what are they doing, etc, etc. Businesses that are not in tune with the market, are the first to fail.

Market Segmentation is about dividing consumers into groups (which we call segments). The purpose of this is to focus more easily and in a cost effective way, on those consumers most likely to be your potential customers. There are several ways to segment a market, and we examine them in this lecture.

One part of marketing planning is to look inwards to the business to identify strengths or weaknesses compared to competitive products. From these will come new marketing opportunities to make inroads and build market share. 

Looking outwards to identify any external forces that may have an impact on the business is also an extremely important activity. The acronym PEST stands for Political, Economic, Socio-cultural, and Technological. Here we look at how changes in any of these areas (eg, a downturn in the economy) may need to be factored in when planning ahead.

Every business needs objectives to aim for. Without them, a business can lose its way. Objectives are the specific aims of the business, eg, getting from A to B. Strategies tell you how to get there....the various actions that will help you achieve those objectives.

The Marketing Budget is a forecast of expected expenses to be incurred for the various marketing activities of he business. It forms part of the overall Marketing Plan, and is prepared for a year ahead and broken down monthly so that actual results can be compared with forecasts.

In this lecture, we bring together the different marketing activities, that together form the overall Marketing Plan.

In this day and age, IT comes into most areas of business, including Marketing. Digital Marketing has changed the way marketing is conducted, particularly in such areas as video-conferencing, instant email quotes, confirmation of orders, and many other ways.

The world is "one big market-place" thanks to advances in IT and ease of international travel, There are things to watch out for when dealing with multi-cultural markets, and here we look at some of the important ones.

As the title suggests, this is a recap of the main points covered in each lecture.