The Tribune

By D’Arcy Rahming

When I was a young engineer I thought the marketing guys had it easy. Imagine sitting around all day just to come up with a logo, or a name or a slogan. I did not understand that marketing was a systematic science that affected all parts of the business.

Business school changed all of that. Only then did I realise that marketing and engineering were both systems and art all at the same time.

It has been said that the main business of all companies should be marketing and innovation. I am sure someone in marketing said that. I do understand that point of view, if you define marketing as a process that adds value to a customer’s life, and for which you bring benefit to a company. That benefit could be profit, notoriety or whatever gain the company is seeking.

The father of Modern Marketing is an old Professor from the Kellogg School of Management by the name of Philip Kotler. I recommend any of his books. Most of what I know about marketing, I learned from him or people who studied him. In his book, ‘According to Kotler’, he talks about the evolution of marketing. And since this column is largely about the best marketing model, it is really important to understand the parts of marketing strategy and where they come from.

Interestingly enough, marketing was first of all considered a part of distribution, and it was widely confused with sales. Companies made products, and marketing’s job was to sell the product at the point they were distributed. Then marketing evolved to the idea of the four Ps: product, price, place and promotion. This, in turn, evolved into the four C’s: customer value, customer costs, customer convenience and customer communication.

Then marketers took a step back and began to think about components of the strategic plan that had to precede the four Ps: segmentation, targeting and positioning. Now a lot of talk is about targeting levels, whether it be mass markets, market segments, market niches or an individual customer. Then managing the level, timing and composition of demand. If this seems like a lot of definitions for a very simple problem, it isn’t.

It is really important for businesses to respect their marketing team. Because marketing is as much a science as the people who manufacture goods. It demands creative people who have to understand what makes their customers tick, and how to add value to their lives through the goods or services that the company produces. And that’s no easy thing. In fact, marketing has to be a component of every part and person of the organisation, because if they do not add value the business will lose customers.

NB: D’Arcy Rahming holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. A lecturer at the College of the Bahamas, Mr Rahming has clients in general insurance, retail, the health and medical fields, sports federations and financial services. To receive his marketing newsletter FREE go to http://darcyrahming.com