Marketing is a powerful weapon to drive the interest of your prospective customers towards your products/services, including market research & advertising.
Marketing is an all-encompassing series of tactics & strategies to drive measurable results. It aims to educate the potential customers by showcasing the product value to increase sales and strengthen brand loyalty.
It is obvious that marketing takes a lot of market research and understanding of the buyer’s persona, otherwise, one might end up wasting the time & resources.
The history of modern marketing takes us back to the 1950s when brands were investing in various ways to endorse a product, more than print media Ads. The T.V. entered the scene and created a lot of buzz on the global front. Now, we have the power of the Internet to reach a target audience with precision to ensure high ROI.
Hence to discuss more on marketing and touch some basics of marketing. In this article, we have listed the seven functions of marketing and their examples:-
7 Functions of Marketing
The seven functions of marketing are as follows:-
- Pricing
- Product Management
- Marketing information management
- Selling
- Distribution
- Financing
- Promotion.
1) Pricing
First things first, you cannot draft a marketing strategy, if you don’t have an idea about the price of a product/service. Thereby, one of the most crucial functions of marketing is determining the right price of your product/service.
The pricing of any product is decided after extensive market research, understanding the target audience, and analyzing the competitors. It is important to ensure that pricing is not too high to draw away the attention of your potential buyers, and at the same not too low, to an extent, that you are unable to make any profits.
You are required to maintain a fine balance to survive & thrive in thickly competitive markets. Otherwise, you will witness your competitors selling products like crazy, while you are barely making any sales. So, whether you are launching a new brand (or) have already launched your product, the pricing should be decided first, and later you can focus on promoting & advertising.
As a rule of thumb, the pricing should be too high or too low in comparison to the top market players. But, you will say, how come brands like Apple are selling their smartphones at sky-rocketing prices, while its closest rival Samsung has an affordable range? The answer is the brand image and reputation of Apple, now question yourself do you have that?
If yes, then sell your product for any price, buyers will be still running after your products. However, brand image isn’t built overnight, it takes years of resistance, so till then keep the pricing competitive. Make sure to revise/re-examine the price of the product over time while depending on real-world data.
2) Product Management
Now, coming to the second function of marketing, which is product management. It is one of the key functions that help a company determine how to produce effectively and meet the market demands. Once the products are manufactured, the marketer would use the various sales channels to reach the end-users.
Selling the stuff to the buyers isn’t just the only thing that marketers are intended to do. They in fact have to encourage brand customers to give reviews for the product, regarding what they liked about it and what improvements they recommend? By doing so, they make their customers feel recognized and appreciated but also such reviews will guide the company to tweak the product to evolve with the ever-evolving market. If you do not update and improve your product with time, then your product will fall apart like the Yahoo search engine, which once had the opportunity to buy the world’s biggest search engine, Google.
So, welcome the suggestions of your customers with open arms, and discuss with the company’s senior administration to figure out the future tactics.
Just like determining the pricing, product management is damn important.
3) Marketing Information Management
Coming to the third function of marketing which is ‘Marketing Information Management. Now, this step involves extensive information gathering about the market before launching the product. If you don’t have good knowledge about your market, you will waste your time with your marketing and advertising strategies.
Even the top brands in the market conduct surveys to research before they launch a new product.
The information obtained from marketing information management includes gathering data about the prospective customers like what is the competition level, what should be the quality of the product sold, and what are the latest market trends?
A business failure has high odds of success if they don’t research all these crucial factors while launching a startup or product.
One can actually gather such information about the market even through different social media platforms. Hence it is advised to spend some time on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, to gather plenty of information and draft a powerful marketing strategy. In a nutshell, marketing information management holds a key spot in the overall success of a new product launch.
4) Selling
After Marketing Information Management, the next fundamental function of marketing, which is selling. Selling isn’t an ideal scenario where the buyer comes to the store or visits the store, and makes the purchase. Hence there lies the challenge for marketers. Selling it as an art that involves making up the mind of a buyer who is not sure whether they should buy or not. It depends a lot on a marketer’s skill and his/her strategy to put forth the benefits of the product and tell the audience what problem it will solve by giving a practical example.
And, most importantly, one is to assure the quality of the product since most people don’t compromise on that. In a nutshell, the marketers have to give every valid reason that goes with their brand rather than their competitors.
Each day brands might have to implement various techniques to improve sales, such as creating an urgency that the products will be sold out soon, and offers & discounts. So, selling isn’t as easy as one might perceive, the marketers have to sweat it out to make every purchase count. Therefore, as a brand, you must need to hire the best marketing team on board to open the flood gate of sales.
5) Distribution
The biggest problem of a supply chain is the distribution of the product. One can wonder what this has to do with marketing, right?
However, the way you distribute a product largely depends upon the brand value. An elite brand invests in elite distribution techniques to ensure the business’s bottom line keeps on growing but whereas a smaller brand might have some loose ends. Hence distribution is a factor that is more aligned with the company itself rather than the marketing.
However, distribution is what makes the product readily available for the customers and we have seen multiple B2B brands use their fast distribution systems as their USPs to market their product (Hope now it makes sense)
6) Financing
This list of 7 functions of marketing is incomplete without financing. Assume, that now your brand has manufactured a product, distributed it to the different channels, ran marketing campaigns & advertisements.
But, would you be able to do all this without adequate funds? Hence to manage and fuel all the money side of marketing, ‘Financing’ is important. Financing involves managing the budget in a manner all the steps involved as mentioned in the above statements are done seamlessly.
Here, both the marketing team and finance department have to sit down together to have a brainstorming session on financing.
A good marketing team with a panel of highly experienced marketers will put forth valuable recommendations on how to ensure the maximum value from the investment.
7) Promotion
Last, but not least, we have the promotion of the product. Promotion is the heart and soul of marketing, if you aren’t promoting, you aren’t selling as simple as that.
Promoting is a way to tell the customers how valuable your product is, by listing its features, USP, and what real problem it solves?
The product promotion involves a variety of activities, spanning from billboards, online Ads, and other techniques to boost sales.
Promotion is done to make the potential customers aware of your product, in case you have recently launched it or you are a new brand.
Conclusion
All the above seven functions of marketing work in tandem to deduce an effective marketing strategy and helps your brand amongst its market rivals. If any of these functions fall apart, your business will have a battle for survival, therefore everything has to be in sync.
