As important as marketing is for the success of every business, it’s key that you know the nature and scope of marketing. That’ll help you in determining the right strategy to adopt for your products and services.
Since marketing helps you reach a wide number of potential customers and boost your business ROI, knowing what it means and how you can leverage it can be very helpful.
With the right marketing structure in place, you can skyrocket your business in several ways. You make your brand well-known, get substantial leads, attract potential customers or clients and, most importantly, make more money.
Before we go on to talk about the main topic, let’s have a look at what marketing is.
What is Marketing?
When a company or an organization creates a process through which it sends information about the value of its products or services to a potential buyer or user by forming a meaningful relationship in a way that it benefits both of them, marketing has taken place.
To break it down properly, marketing involves…
- A meaningful relationship
- Formed through a healthy exchange of information
- For transfer of value
What this means is that, through marketing, you get to offer value to your potential customers or clients through a process of information dissemination. It’s this that’d lead to trust, which in turn makes you money.
If done the right way, marketing could transform your small business into a large one overnight. However, get it wrong and you could have a grave result on your business growth.
This is why you see different organizations making sure their marketing structure is giving needed attention.
You shouldn’t be an exception.
When you implement a formidable marketing strategy, what you get would be far more than your expectations.
This is where understanding the nature and scope of marketing comes in.
Nature and Scope of Marketing
As the word suggests, the nature of a thing is its structure. In other words, what constitutes marketing? What are the ingredients of marketing? What does it really take to market a product or service?
The scope of marketing, on the other hand, could be discussed based on the functions of the marketing process. In this case, questions like, “how are marketing goals achieved?” are often considered. In other words, the scope of marketing has to do with customer satisfaction.
Since we cannot achieve our marketing goals without the involvement of the customers, the marketing scope revolves around customer satisfaction.
Now, let’s take it one by one, starting with the nature of marketing.
Nature of Marketing
To achieve a successful marketing campaign, you should know the nuts and bolts of marketing, the nature of marketing. This includes…
- Social activity
- Exchange process
- Legal process
- Managerial system
- Consumer-focused
- Scientific and artistic in approach
- Utility creation
- Dynamic system
- Goal-oriented
- Economic control
Now let’s explain each of these ones after the other.
1. Social Activity
When you engage in buying and selling of goods, you’re dealing in social interaction. Since to sell a product or service means that you have the person who needs it, communication becomes necessary. As a social activity, marketing ensures that you engage people and form a meaningful relationship with them to be able to offer them value. This value you’re offering becomes acceptable to them when they’ve gained your trust.
Let’s face it. Nobody is ready to buy from a seller whom they don’t trust. So the process of engaging your potential buyer or customer with valuable information validates the social interaction in marketing.
Even the medium of engagement, traditional methods such as newspapers, billboards, TV and radio or modern means such as social media, blogging etc., is a social gathering of potential customers.
2. Exchange Process
In marketing, what primarily takes place is the exchange of one thing for another. When you buy or sell a product, you are given a value for money. Whether you’re exchanging information, ideas or skills, you get value for it.
Whenever a company or an organization tries to market their products or services to you the customer, they’re convinced you’re getting value. Alternatively, you too won’t try to buy any product or enjoy a service if you don’t believe it has value. This is the nature of marketing.
3. Legal Process
Since buying and selling isn’t a forbidden social activity, engaging in the process is legitimate. You can form a relationship with potential customers, engage them with useful information or through other means so that in the end you can achieve the dual aim of marketing: customer satisfaction and profit-making.
The transfer of goods or services from your organization and the eventual transfer of your customers’ money or other forms of exchange, shows an agreement. Whether you’ve agreed that money be used as payment or you have a specified payment method, it’s all a legal process, agreed to by the both of you.
4. Managerial System
The nature of marketing management cuts across several methods and strategies deployed for customer satisfaction and profit maximization. Managing a marketing outreach involves certain activities that involve proper planning and study of customer behaviour so that you can deliver them value.
In ensuring successful marketing management, relevant criteria like product planning, branding, packaging, channels of distribution, sales management, advertising, finance and after-sales services are considered.
5. Consumer-focused
Since marketing is usually aimed at meeting the needs of the customers, it’s therefore not complete if it’s not planned with the customers in mind. By saying that marketing is consumer-focused, it means proper consideration of customer’s needs and wants.
When you’re able to identify what your customers truly want, you’d tailor your product creation as well as advertising strategies accordingly. Adjusting to customers’ wants and needs, their behaviours through production planning and development, pricing policies, promotion, distribution, market research and control is very helpful.
This is really the nature and scope of marketing research.
6. Marketing as Art and Science
The art and science of marketing involve the technicalities involved in formulating marketing policies that drive results. The process of planning and studying market trends through data analysis is to achieve customer satisfaction.
7. Utility Creation
Here, the question you’d ask is, in what way is marketing related to form utility? It’s simple when you consider the products or services you as an organization or seller offer your customers.
To successfully target your customers with the products or services they’d want, you can’t ignore the other utility components. The place (location of goods and services), time (when customers need them) and possession (transfer of ownership of the products to the customers) utilities are also considered.
8. Dynamic System
This is straightforward. As new trends emerge may be due to technological advancement or other relevant factors, marketing strategies are adjusted accordingly. The last thing you want to do is pay no heed to new trends and changes in the markets.
9. Goal-oriented
Every marketing strategy is goal-driven. And most of the times, it is to satisfy your customers. By offering your customers value, you make profits. It’s as straightforward as that.
10. Economic Function
Since marketing is often aimed at meeting human demands, it’s regarded as an economic process that helps in solving a problem. When you help your customer solve a problem, you’re getting value back depending on your agreement.
At this juncture, we’ll examine the scope of marketing.
Scope of Marketing
The scope of marketing is such that gives you a direction of what you want to achieve with your marketing strategies.
The scope of marketing includes…
1. Customer Behavior
To achieve your marketing goals, you must try to satisfy your customers. It’s after your customer’s needs have been met that you make a profit. But how do you meet their needs if you don’t know what drives their needs and wants? That’s why you must prioritize a study of their behaviour.
2. Customer Needs and Wants
To put it simply, to satisfy your customers and drive sales, you must understand what their wants and needs are.
3. Planning and Development
Having understood the needs and wants of your customers, you then plan and develop products or services for their satisfaction.
4. Price Determination
To achieve a successful marketing outreach, it’s important to review your pricing policies to make sure they’re suitable for your customers’ demands.
5. Advertising Strategies
To make huge profits, it’s essential that you prioritize the promotion of your products and services. Otherwise, you risk being overtaken by your competitions who are investing in working advertising strategies.
6. Distribution
Knowing the right distribution channel to use to get your goods and services to your customers is key.
7. Marketing Research
When considering marketing research, you can’t ignore product research, data analysis and customer behaviour analysis. This will help in determining how best to satisfy your customers.
8. Marketing Control
To know which of your marketing strategies works best, you need to deploy marketing control tactics that’ll drive sales.
9. Customer Satisfaction
If you’ve implemented necessary marketing tactics but your customer isn’t satisfied, you’re not going to make any sales. This is the real essence of your marketing campaigns without which you’d record no profit.
10. After-Sales Service
Want to retain your existing customers? You’ve to keep offering them value, even after selling to them. This is key for successful marketing outreach.
Wrapping Up
The scope and nature of marketing is the fuel of a successful business. When you get it right, it could make your business boom beyond your imagination. However, do it wrong and your business is heading for the rocks.
