Week 1

Well this is my first ever blog and my first ever blog post!  Luck are you readers who are reading this and getting the benefit watching me take my baby steps here.  This blog is part of my very last class (an elective) in my Engineering Management degree that I started many, many years ago.  I have no doubt that at 49, I'm the oldest student in the class and I look forward to learning from my classmates.  I am also not ashamed to admit that not only have I never posted a blog... I have never even READ a blog before, so this is un-chartered territory to me.  I hope to make these posts more interesting as I get more experienced.

So, WHAT IS MARKETING?

the common misconception is just that marketing is just advertising and sales.  While it is true that marketing has aspects of advertising and sales as elements, these are just functions or tasks withing the bigger scope called marketing.  From my perspective, marketing is more of a philosophy by which a business works while advertising and sales are tasks that support it.  Marketing is a process by which you establish your business' offering and capabilities, as the solution to your clients' needs. There are three main objectives in marketing as follows: 

VALUE: 1st and most importantly, know your clients.  Identify the value that you have to offer your client base. Identify what their needs are. Identify how you can fill their needs within your product portfolio or business offerings.  This, many times, requires redesign and or new product development. 

COMPETITION: secondly and just as important, a marketing focused business must know it's competition, their offerings and how they are satisfying your potential client base.  A good strategy for creating value is differentiation.  You can only be "Different" by knowing what the competitor looks and acts like

STRATEGIC PLANNING: Once you have the ability to get to know your clients and competitors, a good marketing focused company can then create a strategic plan that applies its customer and competition knowledge towards enhancing real value in the marketplace.

The most marketing plans are  plans that are created with the help of cross-functional members of the organization.  Successful plans are also implemented cross-functionally to ensure that all levels of the organization are focused on creating value