4 core basic skills that marketers must know!

Marketing insights: Marketing is a means of satisfying customer needs while bringing certain profits to the company.

Marketing core basic skills mind map

Marketing relationship map

One of the core basics of marketing: 4 stages of creating customer value

Marketing starts with business operations and ends with customer value. Everything marketing does is to satisfy customer needs and profit from it. For this reason, marketing divides customer value creation into four stages to deliver customer needs step by step.

Stage 1: Recognizing Customer Value

Recognizing customer value is the most important of the four stages. I really like what Harvard marketing guru Ted Levitt said: Customers don’t buy products, they buy solutions to problems.

For example, I bought a bottle of Nongfu Spring in a store on the street, not because of its nice packaging, nor because I was in a spur of the moment, but because I was thirsty, so at this moment I needed to buy a bottle of water to solve my thirst problem, and it just so happened that Nongfu Spring occupied my mind, allowing it to form a unique category positioning in my mind, so when I am thirsty, I will think of it!

If you want to sell products to customers, you must first figure out what customers need, what problems you can solve for them, and why customers need to buy your products instead of your competitors'? Etc., so the first step is to first figure out the customer’s needs, competing products in the market and other issues, sell corresponding products to the customer based on his needs, and help solve his needs. This is what Teacher Wang Sai calls the essence of marketing – altruism.

Phase 2: Creating Customer Value

This stage is easy to understand. It is to produce corresponding products or services based on customer needs to solve customer problems and create product positioning to occupy the minds of customers.

Phase 3: Communicate customer value

When a product that meets customer needs is produced by a company, it needs to be put on the market to meet the needs of target customers. This is the stage of product promotion , and we should use all marketing methods to influence our target customers.

Stage 4: Delivering Customer Value

The target users have recognized the product and formed a product positioning in their minds. The final stage is to satisfy the user's scenario so that they can purchase the product in a timely manner and use it happily to meet their needs.

Marketing Core Basics 2: Redefining the 4P Theory

The four stages gave rise to the classic marketing 4P theory. What is 4P? That is: product, price, channel and promotion.

Product

The "product" in the 4P theory is crucial to an enterprise. A product must first clearly position itself in the market and then understand who its target audience is. What selling points do I have for the target group? What benefits can I bring to consumers? Compared with competing products, why should consumers choose you instead of other products? For the market, am I going to launch a product to satisfy one type of consumer, or develop a product line to satisfy the different needs of one type of consumer? Or the different needs of multiple categories of consumers?

Price

Pricing has always been the most troublesome thing for enterprises. A product has been developed, but they don’t know how to price it. Here are six common pricing methods, each of which is suitable for different enterprises.

Market entry pricing method

This type of pricing method is mainly aimed at companies that do not have pricing power in the industry, and they mainly price their products based on the average price of competing products in the industry. The most typical products, such as mineral water, are generally priced at 1-2 yuan.

Cost-plus pricing

This type of pricing method is mainly aimed at monopoly and semi-monopoly industries. The pricing method is equal to cost plus profit. The most typical examples are bridge toll stations and rice prices.

Value Pricing

The quality and effectiveness of their own products are better than those of their competitors, but their prices are lower than those of their competitors. The most typical example is the price of Walmart supermarkets.

Perceived Value Pricing

It not only brings use value or demand value to customers, but also creates other added value such as psychological value for customers. For example, Evian mineral water is priced at 20 yuan.

Discriminatory Pricing

Different prices are set according to different segments of the group, such as consumption habits, consumption behaviors, regions, social status, etc. The most typical example is airfares.

Life Cycle Pricing

Pricing is based on different stages of the product life cycle , mainly attracting customers who like to try new things and loyal fans of the brand . The most typical example is the iPhone. The price of a new product is the highest when it comes out, but the price will drop after a while.

Place

Traditionally, channels are defined as dealers and agents at all levels below them. However, with the advent of the Internet era, today's channels have changed from the original singleness to the current diversity and integration.

What is diversity? If you want to buy a product, you can not only buy it in offline stores, but also online. Not only can you buy it from online dealers, but also in the head office. This is diversification.

What is integration? Online and offline are fully connected and integrated, ordering online and consuming or experiencing offline, this is integration.

Promotion

Not only have the channels changed, but the way products are promoted is also undergoing unprecedented changes, gradually transitioning from the previous integrated marketing communications to today's converged marketing communications. Regardless of time and place, product information can be felt anytime and anywhere, and everything has become a medium for information dissemination. Today's communication tools can no longer be used to judge their promotional effectiveness in a single way, because you have no idea from which channel customers learned about your product and made up their minds to buy it.

For example, because I just bought a new house and need to renovate it, I am currently quite sensitive to decoration companies. On the way on the bus, I saw a TV advertisement for a decoration company. It sounded very attractive. As long as I went to the company to pay the decoration deposit during the estimated time period, the overall price would be discounted by 15%. On the way to work, I turned on my mobile phone and browsed Toutiao . Suddenly, I saw the advertising information of this company again. I became interested and searched the company's online information and official website on Baidu. On the way home from work, I actually saw the advertisement of this decoration company on the large-screen advertisement of the light rail. So, on the weekend, I went to this company to find out more.

Based on the above example, can you say that because of which type of advertising did I go to this company to get to know it? Was it the TV advertising? Or information flow advertising ? Or Baidu Information? Light rail advertising? There may not be an accurate answer, because it uses its combination of advertising information to lock target groups like me into my path, which is integrated marketing communication.

For the service industry, the 4P theory seemed too thin, so in 1981 Booms and Bitner added 3Ps to the 4Ps, making it 7Ps.

The 7P theory adds "people", "process" and "tangible display" to the 4P theory. For the service industry, the company's employees are the first window for conveying corporate values ​​to customers. The company's position in the minds of customers depends entirely on the company's service personnel. If the service personnel are to convey the company's values ​​to customers well, the tangible manifestation of processes and values ​​becomes very important. The most typical service industry is Haidilao .

The third core basic skill of marketing: 4C theory derived from 4P theory

After the 4P theory centered around the core of the enterprise, there is also the 4C theory based on user needs. It was proposed by Professor Lauterborn, an American marketing expert in 1990. It can be said to be a powerful embodiment of the shift from focusing on the enterprise to focusing on the customers.

Customer needs

The transition from the product-centered 4P to the user-demand-centered 4C indicates that the myth that "good products can be sold" has been shattered. Enterprises should focus on studying users' needs, desires, demands, consumption behaviors and the purchasing motivations behind them.

Overall cost

When purchasing a product, customers are no longer limited to the immediate price benefits, but will focus on the overall cost of purchasing the product, including but not limited to: time cost, economic cost, delivery cost, usage cost, psychological cost, etc.

For example: I want to buy a printer. Printer A costs 3,000 yuan, and printer B costs 5,000 yuan. Both printers include the same number of years of maintenance services. However, printer A is very troublesome to use and takes up a lot of the customer's time. However, printer B is fool-proof, very simple and convenient to use. Moreover, printer B can be purchased near home, but the purchase channel of printer A is very far from home. At this time, would you choose to buy A or B? Although the price of printer A is lower than that of printer B, the customer's usage cost, time and delivery cost are much higher than those of printer B, so the result is self-evident.

In order to get customers to choose your product, you can significantly reduce the purchase cost for other users by pricing it higher than your competitors. This is the core reason why foreign companies can defeat local companies today.

Convenience

In the Internet age, customers are no longer limited to time, place and payment methods when purchasing goods. The integration of online and offline has greatly reduced delivery costs, so companies are no longer limited to distributors and channel merchants. Catering to customer behavior and changes in the times is what traditional companies must do.

Communication

To build valuable customer relationships with consumers at the center, companies no longer need to focus solely on single promotions, but also need to pay attention to communicating with users at any time, understanding user psychology at the first moment, and taking user experience as the first standard. The most classic company is Xiaomi.

Marketing Core Basics 4: Internal Marketing and Relationship Marketing

Internal Marketing

Whether a person's martial arts skills are strong or not depends not only on whether his external palm techniques are swift, but also on whether his internal palm techniques are profound. The same is true for marketing. If the 4P and 4C theories are compared to the external skills of an enterprise in marketing, then internal marketing is the internal skills of an enterprise. What is internal marketing? Employees' identification with the company's values ​​and mission is its internal strength. Not only should you get your employees to identify with your values ​​and mission, but you should also lead your dealers. Only with internal unity and a unified front can you conquer the outside world. This is the case for large companies such as Alibaba , Tencent, and Haidilao.

How to make employees identify with the company's values ​​and mission?

It's very simple. Just treat your employees the same way you treat your customers, so that they have a strong sense of identity and happiness with the company. If the happiness index of a company's employees is 0, then the company is bound to fail. Reference company: Haidilao.

Relationship Marketing

Relationship marketing starts from user needs and builds valuable customer relationships, which is the core of relationship marketing. In addition, in today's transparent Internet age, customers can not only share and praise companies, but also discredit them, so the relationship between companies and customers is very important.

What are user needs? What can pay for user desires is demand, and desire is the focus of need.

For example: I want to drink water, why? Because I am thirsty, this is a need I have, but I want to drink Nongfu Spring, is it the only one that can quench my thirst? Of course not. I just focus on the need to drink water. This is the desire I generate. When I have the desire, I can satisfy it and it becomes a need of mine. If I cannot satisfy it, then it is just a desire.

After understanding customer needs, companies produce products that meet customer needs and find ways to build long-term relationships with customers after the first relationship. Just like boyfriends and girlfriends, they don’t just meet once and fall in love, the ultimate goal is to get married, and the same is true for companies to treat their customers.

Relationship marketing is not a CRM system, nor is it a customer data pool. On the contrary, these things are the culprits of your relationship with customers. Relationship marketing is a bridge for sincere communication with customers. When customers have their needs touched, the first person they think of is you, because you can not only bring them solutions to their problems, but also maintain long-term value communication with them.

The author of this article @ Hu Yiran was compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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