INTRODUCTION TO MARKETING

CONTENTS
• The 4 T’s of Marketing
• Marketing Business Function
• Skills to become Digital Marketing Professional
• Introduction to STP Model
• Pricing Strategy
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Important Marketing Concepts

The 4 T’s of Marketing

Targeting, Timing, Touches, and Temperature are the four T’s of Marketing.

Targeting- Targeting is all about saying the right things to the right people. You have to define and
determine who your ideal client is or would be. Figure out what your target market looks like in terms of size,
number of users, revenue, or new and booming regional opportunities. Then figure out the preferences of
your best clients.Then, tailor your marketing efforts to those specific people. That way you can ensure that
your marketing messaging is being heard by the right people, which will dramatically increase your rates of
success.

Timing- If you’re reaching out to people at a bad time, more often than not, you aren’t going to receive a
phone call and you’ll be lucky if they don’t choose to unsubscribe.Timing is not only about the time of year of
your marketing push but also the timing of your marketing touches, which we will dive into more in the next
section.

Touches- Touches are the engagement that you have with a client or prospect.Essentially it represents
every time you reach out or communicate with the people that you are marketing to. As the more touches
that you have spread out over the course of a year and the different types of touches you have, the better
chance you have to reach everyone on the track or campaign.

Temperature- Temperature of the lead is crucial as it gives you a gauge to measure how much interest a
particular prospect has in your business.

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Marketing Business Function

Source : ucps instructure

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and
exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. For most
businesses, the ultimate goal of marketing is to attract the target customer to the business. To achieve this
goal, businesses coordinate the seven marketing functions, which are interrelated activities that must work
together to get goods and services from producers to customers.

The seven marketing functions are market planning, product/service management, marketing-information
management, pricing, channel management, promotion, and selling.These marketing functions focus on
understanding customers and making the products they want available to them. All of the marketing
functions need to work together to make this happen. If one function is not doing its job, the other functions
are affected.

Market Planning- The marketing planning function aims to create strategies to attract the target
customer to a business. Marketing planning includes determining activities, goals, objectives, and procedures
necessary to carry out

Product/service management- This marketing function involves obtaining, developing, maintaining,

and improving a product or service mix in response to market opportunities. The product/service
management function plans, directs, and controls all phases of a product’s life cycle from beginning to end.
This includes generating ideas for new products, improving or updating existing products, and removing
products from the market.

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Marketing-information Management- This marketing function involves obtaining, developing,

maintaining, and improving a product or service mix in response to market opportunities. The product/
service management function plans, directs, and controls all phases of a product’s life cycle from beginning
to end. This includes generating ideas for new products, improving or updating existing products, and
removing products from the market.

Pricing- The pricing function involves determining and adjusting prices to maximize return and meet
customers’ perceptions of value. This often involves deciding how much to charge for products so customers
will want to buy and businesses will make a profit.

Channel Management- This marketing function is responsible for identifying, selecting, monitoring, and
evaluating sales channels, also known as channels of distribution. Each channel of distribution is a path or
route that takes goods and services from the producer to the ultimate consumer or industrial user. These
paths or routes aren’t physical, however. Instead, they refer to businesses or people who perform a variety
of activities to enable products to be in the right places at the right times. Effective channel management is
often a key to a business’s success because it puts products in the customers’ hands.

Promotion- The purpose of the promotion function is to communicate information about goods, services,
images, and/or ideas to achieve a desired outcome. Promotion informs, persuades, or reminds customers
about a business and/or its products.

Selling- The selling function involves determining client needs and wants and responding through planned,
personalized communication that influences purchase decisions and enhances future business opportunities.
It actually provides customers with the products they want. It includes selling to retail customers as well as to
businesses and governments.

Skills to become Digital Marketing Professional

Data Analysis- You need to know how to evaluate the results of your ongoing and finished campaigns
using the relevant software, and optimizing your strategy to improve your results in the future. This means
knowing how to use the right tools, and having the experience to interpret the data and draw the right
conclusions from it.

Content Creation- The aim should not only be to create high-quality content and SEO-friendly content,
but also to understand the process of how to effectively get audiences to engage.

SEO & SEM- Both SEO & SEM helps you not only to push your content to the target audience but also
helps you narrow down your customer database.

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CRM- Digital Marketers need to develop skills of Customer Relationship Management which involve
strategies you can use to monitor and maximize customer experience.

Communication skills- Good communication skills in a digital marketer includes variables such as
spreading impactful messages, establishing trust, and building relationships.

Social Media- The quality of the content, the relevancy of the content, and engagement with the
audience are 3 other factors that marketers need to understand while creating social media strategies.

Basic design skills- It is best practice for Digital Marketers to have basic knowledge about softwares such
as Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator, InDesign, etc), Canva, Inkscape that would help
them in creating visual content.

Introduction to STP Model

Segmentation, targeting, and positioning (STP) is a marketing model that redefines whom you market your
products to, and how. It makes your marketing communications more focused, relevant, and personalized for
your customers.

In short, STP is a marketing approach where you segment your audience, target the best-fit audience
segments for your product, and position your product to capture your target segment effectively.

The STP Formula

Segmentation + Targeting = Positioning

Segmentation
When you start creating a GTM(go-to-market) strategy for your product, you have an idea of who your
audience is. You can target the entire group that fits the broad definition of your audience, but chances are a
generic message may fail to resonate with a huge chunk of that group.

Segmenting the audience into smaller groups based on specific attributes gives you better clarity on who
benefits the most out of your product and how. With this clarity, you can make your messages more focused
and relevant to target groups.

While you can segment your audience using any criteria that best suits your business, the below criteria are
commonly used:

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Source: Salesforce

Targeting
The next step in the STP model is targeting. This is the stage where you decide which segments you created
during the segmentation process are worth pursuing.

Size- Your audience segments must have enough potential customers to be worth marketing to. If your
segments are too small, you may not get enough conversions to justify your marketing efforts.

Difference- There should be a measurable difference between any two segments. The lack of it leads to
unnecessary duplication of efforts.

Reachability- The segments should be accessible to the sales and marketing teams and not be impaired
by technical or legal complications.

Profitability- The segment should have a low-to-medium customer acquisition cost(CAC) while bringing in
high returns, i.e., the audience must be willing to spend money on your product.

Benefits- Different benefits attract different segments.

Knowing which audience segments to target comes from having all-round visibility of those segments in one
place. This makes comparing segments and weighing the pros and cons of targeting some segments over
others easier.

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Source: Salesforce

Positioning
Positioning is the last step of the STP model, where you use the insights gained from segmentation and
targeting to decide how you’re going to communicate your product to chosen audience segments.

While segmentation and targeting are about customers, positioning is about your product from the
customer’s perspective. You can consider positioning as the bridge that connects your product with the
audience. This is the stage where you perform competitor analysis, figure out your value proposition and
communicate that to your customers.

Pricing Strategy
A pricing strategy is a model or method used to establish the best price of a product or service. It helps you
choose prices to maximize profits and shareholder value while considering consumer and market demand.

Types of Pricing Strategy

Competition based pricing- This pricing strategy focuses on the existing market rate (or going rate) for a
company’s product or service; it doesn’t take into account the cost of their product or consumer demand.
Businesses who compete in a highly saturated space may choose this strategy since a slight price difference
may be the deciding factor for customers.

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Source: Hubspot

Cost plus Pricing Strategy- A cost-plus pricing strategy focuses solely on the cost of producing your product
or service, or your COGS. It’s also known as markup pricing since businesses who use this strategy “markup”
their products based on how much they’d like to profit.

Source: Hubspot

Dynamic pricing strategy- Dynamic pricing is also known as surge pricing, demand pricing, or time-based
pricing. It’s a flexible pricing strategy where prices fluctuate based on market and customer demand.

Source: Hubspot

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Freemium pricing strategy- A combination of the words “free” and “premium,” freemium pricing is when
companies offer a basic version of their product hoping that users will eventually pay to upgrade or access
more features. Unlike cost-plus, freemium is a pricing strategy commonly used by SaaS and other software
companies. They choose this strategy because free trials and limited memberships offer a peek into a
software’s full functionality — and also build trust with a potential customer before purchase.

Source: Hubspot

High-Low pricing strategy- A high-low pricing strategy is when a company initially sells a product at a high
price but lowers that price when the product drops in novelty or relevance. Discounts, clearance sections,
and year-end sales are examples of high-low pricing in action — hence the reason why this strategy may also
be called a discount pricing strategy.

Source: Hubspot

Hourly pricing strategy- Hourly pricing, also known as rate-based pricing, is commonly used by consultants,
freelancers, contractors, and other individuals or laborers who provide business services. Hourly pricing is
essentially trading time for money. Some clients are hesitant to honor this pricing strategy as it can reward
labor instead of efficiency.

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Source: Hubspot

Skimming pricing strategy- A skimming pricing strategy is when companies charge the highest possible price
for a new product and then lower the price over time as the product becomes less and less popular.
Skimming is different from high-low pricing in that prices are lowered gradually over time.

Source: Hubspot

Penetration pricing strategy-

A penetration pricing strategy is when companies enter the market with an extremely low price, effectively
drawing attention (and revenue) away from higher-priced competitors. Penetration pricing isn’t sustainable
in the long run, however, and is typically applied for a short time.

This pricing method works best for brand new businesses looking for customers or for businesses that are
breaking into an existing, competitive market. The strategy is all about disruption and temporary loss … and
hoping that your initial customers stick around as you eventually raise prices.

Premium pricing strategy-

Also known as prestige pricing and luxury pricing, a premium pricing strategy is when companies price their
products high to present the image that their products are high-value, luxury, or premium. Prestige pricing
focuses on the perceived value of a product rather than the actual value or production cost.

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Project based pricing strategy-A project-based pricing strategy is the opposite of hourly pricing — this
approach charges a flat fee per project instead of a direct exchange of money for time. It is also used by
consultants, freelancers, contractors, and other individuals or laborers who provide business services.

Source: Hubspot

Value based pricing strategy- A value-based pricing strategy is when companies price their products or
services based on what the customer is willing to pay. Even if it can charge more for a product, the company
decides to set its prices based on customer interest and data.

Source: Hubspot

Bundle pricing strategy- A bundle pricing strategy is when you offer (or "bundle") two or more
complementary products or services together and sell them for a single price. You may choose to sell your
bundled products or services only as part of a bundle, or sell them as both components of bundles and
individual products.

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Source: Hubspot

Psychological pricing strategy- Psychological pricing is what it sounds like — it targets human psychology to
boost your sales.

Source: Hubspot

Geographic pricing strategy- Geographic pricing is when products or services are priced differently
depending on geographical location or market.This strategy may be used if a customer from another country
is making a purchase or if there are disparities in factors like the economy or wages (from the location in
which you're selling a good to the location of the person it is being sold to).

Source: Hubspot

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