A lot have been said about marketing and why marketing is important, so in this post I will be talking about the methods of marketing. Before I continue, let me say a little about marketing in business.
Marketing is the process by which a company and its teams makes their goods or products attractive to their customers. A business without marketing will remain the same and have no improvement. A business cannot survive by sitting and waiting for customers to show up, no marketing means no business.
Different marketers and business persons have preferred means of marketing and different approaches that work for them. Most people believe in reaching a large crowd first before reaching a smaller and specific number of people while some will advise to reach the immediate consumers before reaching a larger number of people.
ADVERTISING
Advertising is a marketing strategy which aims at selling products to a target audience by influencing people to buy through persuading. Advertising helps to stimulate higher sales, reaching a large number of people/audience at a low cost. Advertising makes the customers aware that certain products exist and the importance of such products. A lot of marketer will advise companies to go with advertising as a first option reaching a large number of people. There are detrimental parts to advertising one of which is lack of feedback, advertising is one-way and mistakes in advertising can be an entire waste of money.
PERSONAL SELLING
Personal selling refers to the process of meeting with a potential buyer face to face with the aim of selling a product thereby getting first hand feedback from the customers as well as a success means gaining the trust and loyalty of the customers. Unlike advertising that covers a large number of consumers, personal selling limits the reach to a few numbers of people. It also requires hiring a large number of staffs which requires high cost.
SALES PROMOTION
Sales promotion is a marketing strategy used to create awareness about a certain product. Sales promotion include using coupons, contests, price reduction, offers, 2 for 1 deals and so on. It is a form of communication process between the buyer and seller. Sales promotion are usually not for a very long time, if this is done for a very long time, the business might close up.
PUBLIC RELATIONS
Public relations is a method adopted by companies and businesses to establish beneficial or positive relationships with the public. However, each of these components has some positive and negative impacts compared to sales promotion, public relations requires lower cost.
Marketing is a complex process and should not be confused with advertising, advertising is a method of marketing. Marketing is the overall process in which a company gets customers to buy their product and service.