Introduction: Marketing

Welcome to the session on "Introduction to Marketing".

Like you, everyone seems to have a different understanding of marketing. Some

believe it is a process, some think of it more as a conversation or a means of
communication. Through a variety of experiences, everyone has built his/her own
picture of marketing. In the first module, you will look at the fundamentals of
marketing and branding in detail. This will help you increase your understanding
of marketing and lay the foundation for the rest of the program.  

To get an overall picture of this module, let’s listen to Prof. Siddharth to

understand the lesson plan of this module.

In this session

Before diving into the wide field of digital marketing, you need to understand what
marketing actually means and why is it so important. This session will expose you
to the various functions of marketing like market research, branding, market
planning, promotion and customer service. Along with theoretical understanding,
you will also learn how marketing managers can implement these functions.  

You will be covering the following elements in this session:

1. What is marketing?

2. Scope and importance of marketing

3. Various functions of marketing

4. Communication Framework

Guidelines for graded questions

Note that graded questions are given on a separate page labelled  'Graded Quizzes'
at the end of the last session. These graded questions will adhere to the following
guidelines:

First Attempt Marks Second Attempt Marks

Question with 2 attempts 100% 50%

Question with 1 attempt 100% 0

What is Marketing
The heart of any business's success lies in its marketing. Marketing is a process by
which a product or service is introduced and promoted to potential customers.
Your business may offer the best products or services in your industry, but without
marketing, none of your potential customers would know about it. People often get
confused between marketing, sales, advertising and promotions. But there are
certain differences between these terms. Let us learn about marketing in more
detail.
 In the above videos, you learnt a unified definition of marketing. Marketing is a
much broader term, with advertising and selling as its sub-functions.  According to
the American Marketing Association, there are three key activities involved in
marketing:

1. Create offerings: It is the process of working with other departments to develop

offerings that have value for customers
2. Communicate offerings: It is the process of describing the offerings to customers
3. Deliver offerings: It is the process of providing your offerings to customers in a
way that enhances their value

Previously, you saw that Apple’s success can be attributed to its focused marketing
strategies. Let’s look at one such strategy.  

Apple launched the Mac vs PC campaign in 2006 that showed two guys named
Mac and PC standing and interacting with each other. Across all ads, Apple
focused on the uniqueness of Mac by using taglines such as ‘One of a kind’. The
idea of this entire campaign that featured numerous ads was just one - how Macs
are better than PCs. You can see the ads here:

 Mac ads  (Collection of 15 Ads)

To understand this better, let’s take the example of Ola Bikes to understand the
different activities involved in marketing.

 
In various cities in India, autos and rickshaws dominated the market. Through
market research, Ola identified that a significant pain point that the customers
faced was traffic. Ola found out that a lot of customers preferred autos over cabs
because of their low cost as well as their ability to easily navigate through heavy
traffic. Based on this insight, they also realised that bikes were another automobile
that could easily navigate through traffic. 

Based on these insights, marketers at Ola started offering Ola Autos and Ola Bikes.
Through this, they were able to provide commuting services at an even lower rate
than Ola Micro. For Ola Bikes, the driver used to bring an additional helmet for the
customer to wear. 

Ola then communicated about its offerings by using taglines such as ‘Ab khulenge
naye raaste’ meaning, 'now new paths will open' and ‘Auto bole toh Ola auto’. Ola
dubbed the ‘Auto bole toh Ola auto’ ad campaign in 4 different languages and
delivered this offering through TV commercials showcasing the instant pick-up
service from Ola Autos. They also used different digital channels such as Youtube
and Facebook to spread their offerings.

Scope and Importance of

Marketing
In the last segment, Jaideep laid the foundation by defining the function of
marketing at its very core. Today, more than ever, it is crucial for traditional as
well as digital marketers to have a holistic knowledge about the different entities
 that can be marketed so that they can take advantage of the same for their
respective brands. Let us look deeper into the scope of marketing

So, to summarise,  you saw the entities that can be marketed:

1. Goods and services: This includes physical goods such as marketing of shampoo

or soap, or services such as that of a bank, airline, hotel, etc.
2. Events and experiences: This includes the promotion of events such as concerts,
book fairs, automobile exhibitions. Some marketers also market the experience
offered by theme parks like WonderLa or Adlabs Imagica.     
3. People, organisations and places: This includes the promotion of persons such as
Narendra Modi, organisations such as Amity University and places such as India,
Australia that use the taglines ‘Incredible India’ and ‘There’s nothing like
Australia’ respectively to attract more visitors.
4. Ideas and benefits: This includes the promotion of ideas and benefits such as ‘Don’t

drink and drive’ and anti-smoking ads.

Now that you have looked at the different entities that can be marketed, let us
learn more about the importance of marketing.

So, finally, you now know why marketing is required. To summarise, we identified
the objectives of marketing as follows:

1. Marketing helps define the purpose of an organisation -  This can be done by

researching about the consumers so that you can identify their needs and
preferences.
2. Marketing helps creates awareness for its products and services -  This is
especially crucial for a brand that launches a product in the market and wants to
gain the attention of its consumers.
3. Marketing can help zero in on a convenient place for its customers to access its
products.
4. Marketing helps establish reputation and brand image - This is crucial for a brand
to gain trust amongst its customers as well as have a brand recall whenever they
think about the product/service category.
5. Marketing helps build a long-term relationship with customers -  This keeps
consumers in the loop about your latest product updates, prices, availability, etc.

Now consolidate your understanding by answering the following assessments.

Various Functions of
Marketing
Marketing refers to an exchange of goods and services between producers and
consumers in a way that maximises satisfaction to consumers. It involves multiple
functions and influences other areas within an organisation. The various functions
of marketing majorly depend on consumers, prevailing market trends and
competing products. Let’s understand this in more detail.

The various functions of marketing can be listed as follows:

1. Market research: This aspect of marketing focuses on gathering and analysing

information about your customers. It involves answering questions such as who is
 your primary target audience, what are their needs and preferences, what are their
shopping preferences and much more.  
2. Market planning: This aspect focuses on developing strategies based on market
research conducted by a brand.  
3. Branding: This aspect of marketing is about creating a unique name and image in
the minds of the consumer to make it more recognisable.  
4. Promotion: Here, marketing focuses on informing a customer about the brand’s
product and encouraging them to buy. This is often done to attract new customers
as well as retain existing customers.
5. Customer support service: This aspect of marketing focuses on giving
continuous support to consumers as well as gathering their feedback to continually
improve your products.

Let us look at the example of Domino’s to understand how the functions of market
research, market planning, branding and promotion helped it to meet its business
objectives.

Social media promotions done by Domino’s for its BurgerPizza:

1. Promotion of BurgerPizza on Facebook

2. Promotion of BurgerPizza on Twitter

Additional Examples
Vodafone (Promotion): 
During IPL 2009, Vodafone launched the classic Zoozoo advertisements to
promote its many Value Added Services (VAS). For example, one VAS was
backing up the phone book which was promoted through this Zoozoo ad. About 10
different Zoo Zoo ads were conceptualized to maintain the interest of the viewers
throughout the IPL.
 

HDFC Bank (Customer Service): 

Let’s take the example of HDFC Bank, which is the first bank in the country to
launch an Artificial Intelligence based customer support bot named Eva. As you
saw previously, customer support is another function of marketing wherein you
provide continuous support or receive feedback from your customers. The chatbot
Eva answers many customer queries such as the type of banking products and
services offered to customers or if any issue is faced by a customer.

Communication
Framework
Before progressing any further, let us understand the concept of a communication
framework. This will help you understand the concepts explained in the following
sessions and how you can integrate them.

Addressing any marketing challenge can be daunting because the challenge can be
addressed in multiple ways. You must assess the challenge from all perspectives to
identify an ideal solution. In this segment, we have created an outline of some of
the critical steps involved in putting together a campaign plan. We will go through
a planning architecture framework that will help you formulate the correct digital
marketing plan that can drive brand and business outcomes.

 
The framework presented here is only one way of integrating all the marketing
steps you will learn in the upcoming sessions. Different campaigns can have
different communication frameworks because there is no one-shoe-fits-all solution
for creating it.

Here is an example of a communication framework.

Broadly, there are two sections in a communication plan. The first is the problem
definition, and the second is the solution architecture. Investing a good amount of
time and energy in analysis is critical to understand the key set of problems before
getting into the second section, which involves devising solutions to the identified
problems.

Let us look at both these sections in detail.

  

Identifying the problem statement

This section has three parts:

 Category/Company

 Competition

 Brand task

Category/Company

In order to identify the problem, it is critical to start with the category of your
brand and understand its various nuances. This part throws light on the business
potential of your brand in the category in which it operates. Some of the questions
that we must try to answer in this step are as follows:

-          How much has the category grown over the years?

-          How much is your brand growth within the category?

-          How many players operate in this category?

-          What is your market share?

-          How is the category expected to change in the short and long term?

There are multiple ways to find answers to these questions, but you will need to tap
into multiple data points across multiple sources such as primary and secondary
research, social media research tools (such as Facebook Audience Insights) or tools
such as Google Trends. When you get these answers, you start gaining a better
understanding of the problem at hand.

Let us take the example of a manufacturer of digestive biscuits. As the name of the
brand cannot be disclosed, let us call this ‘Biscuit X’. In 2017, ‘Biscuit X’ or ‘BX’
wanted to break through the clutter in the healthy biscuits category and start
building a unique identity for itself and gain market share.

To achieve this, the company understood the category in which it operated. In the
health and wellness industry, valued at INR 736 billion, biscuits and snacks/bars
stood at 5% of the total market. Of this, health biscuits’ share was 0.3%.

On performing further research in the healthy snacks category in India, it was

found that Google search queries related to healthy snacking had increased over
178% in the last 3 years, with 9.37 lakh Google searches. Along with this growing
interest in healthy snacks, there was a parallel conversation on taste. The taste of
healthy snacks was gaining more focus, as seen from the search trends of other
healthy snacks such as green tea, oats and energy bars.

From all of this research, the takeaway for this section could be ‘Health Biscuits
have the headroom to grow to match with the growth in consumer intent and
interest’.

Competition

Another area that you need to consider is your competition. The key question to
ask here would be where you stand vis-a-vis your competitors. Some questions to
ask yourself in this step are:

-          Who are your key competitors?

-          Which channels are they present on?

-          How have they positioned themselves?

-          How are consumers perceiving them?

BX analysed its competitors such as McVitie’s, NutriChoice and Quaker. As seen

from the brand analysis, all the brands including BX were only focusing on healthy
food. However, the consumer need gap identified through the category analysis
indicated that consumers want not only healthy but also tasty snacks. Hence, the
key takeaway from this competitive analysis was that although every brand was
speaking about healthy food, there was hardly a conversation around taste.
 Therefore, to create a new value proposition in the consumers’ minds, BX had to
associate its product with health and taste.

Brand Task

The next part is the exact brand problem and task. To arrive at the brand task, it is
critical to ask yourself a few questions about your brand. This is where you will
analyse at which stage of the consumer funnel your consumers currently are and
what objectives you need to achieve through your marketing efforts.

Here are some of the key questions that you can ask about your brand:

 How many people are aware of your brand? What are their awareness levels?

 If the awareness levels are high, are people willing to consider your brand? If not, what is the reason

for that?

 If the awareness and consideration levels are high, is it translating into adoption or trials or sales?

 If it is not delivering sales, what could be the reasons for that?

 If the sales are good, do you have repeat purchases? If not, how can you create loyalists?

These questions are universal and can be asked for any brand in any category. By
asking these questions, you can ascertain where the problem lies and what needs to
be done to address it. The brand task will stem from the problem statement. So, if
the problem is that people are unaware of your product, then you need to identify
ways of enhancing product visibility. If the problem is about consideration, assess
what you should use in your communication that can help change perceptions and
increase consideration levels.
  

Qualitative analysis conducted by BX revealed that the awareness levels for the
brand are lower than those of its competitors. The brand also had low awareness-
to-trial ratios (i.e., even the consumers who were aware of the brand were less
willing to try it). Hence, the brand task for BX was to increase its awareness levels
through two key prongs of action, the first being visibility, that is, making the
brand more visible to the target audience, and the second being education, that is,
educating the target audience about the merits of BX over its competitors.

Once you have clearly identified the brand task, you can get into the solution
architecture. 

The solution architecture

The solution architecture consists of three main sections:

 Consumer understanding

 Identifying a media mix

 Measuring brand/business outcomes

Let us look at each of these sections in detail:

 
 Consumer Understanding

The solution architecture should ideally start with the audience you are trying to
connect with. You should look at

 Audience and market sizing

 Profiling and segmenting your audiences

 Targeting your audiences with the right message in the right context, at the right time

Understanding your audience stems from findings of extensive research, both

qualitative and quantitative. You can start with

 Understanding your overall universe or the total number of people who are potential consumers of

your product

 Segmenting the universe by looking at various factors, either geographical, demographic,

psychographic or behavioural.

 Understanding key insights about the consumer

 Some consumer media habits

BX analysed the digital audience active in the health and wellness segment and
identified 6 million potential consumers in this space based on their interests. BX
further divided these into 4 sub-segments:

   Calorie counters

Consumers who were interested in weight watching and carefully consumed their
food

     Planners
 Consumers who were always planning their next healthy venture, be it yoga or
zumba.

  Oversized Bellies

Consumers who had medical reasons to restrict their diet and consume healthy
food.

  Starvers

Consumers who were actively dieting as a part of a healthy lifestyle.

Identifying a Media Mix

Based on the insights gathered, you should come up with an idea or

communication strategy which you think might appeal to your audience the most.
You will retest this with a group of consumers to assess their responses.
 

Once you have clear indicators that your communication is going to work, you can
move forward to the next step, which entails identifying the right channels through
which you would want to distribute the content and using the right kind of creative
and content formats to establish communication. You will understand how to
choose the right channels and how to create the right kind of content that will
resonate best with your audiences in the modules on ‘Designing a Robust Digital
Marketing Strategy’ and ‘Content Marketing’, respectively.

Measuring Brand/Business Outcomes

Once you deploy the right communication through the right channels to the right
audience, we need to measure the brand/business outcomes, for which you will
have to track and optimise your campaigns on various metrics, from ad exposure to
sales. The details on measurement and metrics will be covered in detail in the
module on ‘Web Analytics’.

This is an example of a communication framework. As mentioned previously,

there are multiple ways to create a communication framework. For example, you
learnt how a health biscuit like ‘Biscuit X’ created its communication framework. 

You will learn about each of these aspects in detail as you progress through this
program.
 Additional readings

To understand marketing better, here are some additional reading material for
reference:

1. Introduction to marketing

1. Understanding marketing: Learn how to take advantage of the new age of

marketing.

2. The complete overview of marketing: Learn what is marketing and why is it

important.

2. Role of marketing

1. Birth of marketing, its evolution, and role of ma rketing: Significance of marketing

3. Scope of marketing

1. The great branding campaign that made PM Modi the winner : Learn how to craft a marketing

campaign for a brand.

4. Marketing technology

1. What is Marketing technology: Understand how marketing technology is changing what marketers

do.

2. Digital Marketing trends and beyond: 22 Practical recommendations you can implement.

Disclaimer: upGrad does not endorse or advocate the use of any product/service

covered in the session and the examples are solely meant for illustration purposes.