Takeaway Sheet 1

Module 1: What, Why & How of Marketing

Session 1 : What the hell is marketing?

 Marketing is all about its customers, focusing on customers, working for them and maximizing
returns also just by focusing on customers.
 So how do we begin? We begin by first analyzing the symptoms. What are they? What is our
objective? What do we wish to achieve?
 Then we analyze the problem and understand it. Together this and analyzing the symptoms form
the hypothesis. We should always sense and respond.
 The best practice is to understand customers’ problems and not benchmark.

Session 2 : Why do we end up most of the time competing on price?

 We end up most of the time competing on price because there is a lot of knowledge asymmetry.

Customer

Company competitor

 If we solve the problems of our customers’ they will respond well. We simply compete on prices
without considering customer’s point of view.
 ICI had a price competition war ongoing with its competitors. It emerged from the competition by
being creative.
 We should manage customers for profits by sensing and responding or by anticipating and being
creative. Both these strategies are customer oriented.

Session 3 : Managing customers as assets in a digital world

 We can manage our customers and our profits by measuring certain marketing metrics.
 We can manage our advertising costs. We should manage our customer profits, which is very
critical.
 We can track our acquisition rate, which is also called the hit rate.
 We should have a broad idea of our customer and should try to maintain above fair line value.

Session 4: Introduction to the marketing process

 The marketing process deals with how decisions are made at the corporate level
 Before starting, we should know what to do and how to do.
 It comprises of deriving insights, taking strategic decisions, using tactics to achieve them and
managing our financials. Managing financials include working towards achieving breakeven
point in the most efficient way possible.