Breaking down Marketing

While there are numerous definitions of the term “marketing”, I personally prefer the one provided by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM UK), as it highlights some of the most important distinctions between marketing and hawking.

According to the Institute, marketing is the management process for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.

Essentially, this implies that marketing is informed by market research, driven by innovation, and sustained by relationship building. ?

All of these processes require strategic planning and execution.

For instance, the process of identifying the needs of customers often requires an organization to conduct both primary (such as interviews, focus groups, surveys) and secondary research (such as academic journals, news articles, research reports), and it’s aimed at understanding current market conditions and/or predicting future market needs.

?Although market research may come at a high cost, jumping into product development without this vital process is a recipe for failure.

Likewise, based on an organization’s understanding of important metrics like the Customer Lifetime Value /CLV (a prediction of the total revenue that can earn from a customer or how much a customer is worth to the business over a period of time), relationship building cannot be a “good-to-do” or “once-in-a-while” activity for those who intend to stay in business.

Consequently, building long-term relationships with customers is a must-do for organizations, and it requires keeping in touch with customers long after their first purchase.??

Talking about Hawking

According to Oxford Languages, hawking involves going about and shouting “come and buy my product”.

Invariably, a hawker’s primary goal is to make a sale and move on. As such, hawkers aren’t particular about understanding their ideal customers, anticipating their needs, or creating a personalized product to meet these needs.

Given this lack of vital information about their ideal customer, hawking often relies on luck, not data. Therefore, the amount of sales that would be made daily, monthly or yearly is usually unpredictable.

Similarly, hawkers usually have no in-depth knowledge of the products/services they carry about, and they tend to focus their communication on a product’s features instead of its unique benefits to the customer.

Where do you belong?

While it seems obvious that the best way to consistently meet the needs of customers is through marketing, it’s not uncommon to find individuals who hawk their products/services about and wonder why their sales figures aren’t rising.

The truth is that marketing will always “force” you to think about your customers because, in the end, they are the main reason why your organization exists.

So, please yourself, “Have I been marketing or hawking my products and service?”

written by: @Anuoluwapo Ademuyiwa