What Are The Fundamentals of Marketing You Need For Your Online Business
You have to be intentional about focusing on the customer needs and wants
The first principle of marketing goes back to the marketing concept itself (where the customer is at the centre of all business activities). Marketing recognises that business long-term objectives are best served by achieving a high degree of customer focus.
From that recognition flows the necessity for an intimate exploration of customer wants and needs. Lastly, the business must set out clear goals that serve those or genuinely want to fill those needs.
At the end of the day, the only judges of how well the organisation satisfies its customers are the customers themselves.
You have to develop products that meet the needs of the customer
The fundamentals of marketing require that you produce a quality product or service from the customer’s perspective.Your product must be ‘fit for purpose’ rather than one that provides superfluous features or luxuries. As an entrepreneur your main goal is to service your customers . A measure of your success as an entrepreneur is your ability attract and retain your dream audience over a long period of time.
Four basic questions to evaluate if you want to adopt the marketing concept
Suppose you consider adopting a market-led approach (customer is at the centre). You will need to consider the following fundamental questions (Levitt, 1986)[1] poses, some essential questions: –
- What business are we in?
- What business could we be in?
- What business do we want to be in?
- What must we do to get into or consolidate in that business?
Only hustle in markets where you can establish a competitive advantage
The fundamentals of marketing require that you select your core market segment.It is one of the vital responsibilities of any company. As a small business owner, you have to select your niche and commit your business resources. If you remember your Economics 101, resources are limited! The fact that resources are limited puts subtle pressure on you to be intentional about what and how you spend your money.
How do you choose the kind of business or the product you are going to sell? There are many dynamics to consider, including how appealing a particular line of business is for you. We all agree that the world we live in is dynamic and very competitive. Seriously it is becoming more difficult to tell the difference between an iPhone and a Samsung mobile phone, especially if there is a phone case cover added to the mix.
You must take time to ask yourself this basic but fundamental question, do I have the skills and competencies to compete here?
The small business necropolis (yes, it’s a thing) is littered with hustles that were seduced into niches that looked profitable, but when the competition got tough, they found they had no tangible basis on which to compete, and they went out of business. This failure was the fate of many of the dotcom hustles at the turn of the century. There was an opportunity, but dot.com’s failed to develop or acquire the skills and competencies to dominate other dot.com’s or brick-and-mortar companies. More importantly, in the eyes of the customer, these companies offered no value addition.
Your tribe does not buy products!
They buy what the product can do for them. To put it another way, customers purchase relief from the problem a product solves. Customers are generally less interested in the technical features of a Brand, but you can bet they will pay for the benefits they get from consuming your Brand.
Put yourself in your clients’ shoes; look at the benefits your brand offers from their perspective. Sell and communicate these product benefits. A new way of looking at your business and the products you sell is to view them as ‘bundles of benefits’ that give something of value to the customer.
A business owner like you should ensure that your products are designed to solve customer problems.
Everyone and everything in your organisation should do the Marketing … to varying degrees.
Yes! We cannot afford to pick and choose when it comes to marketing. The customer must feel the brand essence and brand equity from the first moment they interact with your company.
What does this mean for an online business? The Visitors to your website and the correspondence they get from you must reflect your company’s brand and ethos.
The interaction with all your online and offline content will impact the customer’s overall satisfaction—the speed of your website, the ease of purchase, the quality of the content, etc.
Diversity is The Norm – Your Customers All Have Similar Interests, But They Are Also Individuals
Customers may need a house (similar interests), but they will buy it for different reasons. One group may buy a home for rental purposes, others may buy for comfortable shelter, and still, others may buy for status reasons or project their self-image.
If, as a business owner, you are to offer a segmented market a standardised product, you make it easy for your competitors, who have taken the time to define their brand positioning statement better and target market to attract your ideal customers. We go back to what we discussed earlier, segment your tribe using benefits that your customers will get by using/ consuming your brand. This type of segmentation is often referred to as benefit segmentation.
It has proved to be one of the most valuable ways of segmenting for the simple reason that it relates the segmentation to the reasons for the existence of the segments in the first place. A life lesson right here, keep things simple. Life is already too complicated.
Your Tribe and The Market You Target Are Constantly Changing.
It is a truism that change is the only constant. We have mentioned before that we live in a dynamic world. All products have a limited life span that expires when the ensuing new or better product comes, a recurring theme in Disney Toy Story, where the new toy trumps the older ones even if just for a little while.
You have to have a long-term view of your business and constantly keep your finger on the pulse, ears on the ground. Your current breadwinner is not indomitable. Many companies that failed to respond to the changes of the consumers and the market became irrelevant. Think of Kodak, according to the HBR, ‘A generation ago, a “Kodak moment” meant something worth saving and savouring. Today, the term increasingly serves as a corporate bogeyman that warns executives of the need to stand up and respond when disruptive developments encroach on their market.’ (Scott, D.A,2016).
The customer expectations from your Brand(s) change, and usually, they demand more benefits. So, as a small business owner, you need to upgrade your brand offerings continuously. Continuous improvements of brands will help your business to remain relevant. Aaah! The joys of entrepreneurship.
Step-change Innovation Or Kaizen (Continuous Improvements)
There are two main approaches to brand improvement. The first is through innovation, where a giant, relatively large step is taken at one point in time. For a long time, Apple was known for developing Macintosh computers, but today Apple also make phone, tablets, watches, TV and Music.
Apple also carries out product improvements, where small changes are made consistently. The process of making consistent improvements was identified as a significant contributor to the success of Japanese businesses in world markets in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s the Japanese call continuous improvement Kaizen. Did you know that there have been 20 iPhones since 2007[2] ?
The Role of Marketing in your Small Business
It is to identify and communicate consumer wants and needs and determine the competitive position to best match these consumers’ needs to your company or with your company’s capabilities. You must then consolidate all the relevant resources to deliver customer satisfaction. As Johnson et al. (2008)[3] rightly put it, ‘strategy is the matching of the activities of an organisation to the environment in which it operates and to its own resources capabilities.,
Final Thoughts on the Fundamentals of Marketing for The Success of your Online Company
The fundamentals of marketing can be summed up in one sentence, put the ‘Consumer’ at the heart of your business strategy.
You are after all in the business of satisfying the consumer by providing solutions to problems , better than your competitors . It is therefore natural to focus your energy in ensuring that you understand your target customer better than anybody else in the industry .
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[1] Levitt, T. (1986), The marketing imagination, New York: The Free Press. Full disclosure this is an affiliate link for Amazon. I get a teeny tiny commission if you use this link to buy this book at no cost to you. You will only benefit by enlarging your knowledge by reading the great content.
[2] This is true as of 2021. We are sure this will be more by September 2021 because , Apple practices kaizen.
[3] Johnson, G., Scholes, K. and Whittington, R. (2008) Exploring Corporate Strategy: Text and Cases. 8th Edition, Prentice Hall, Harlow