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Guest post by: Francis Kamau Become an Author

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On my first day in a marketing class the lecturer asked me what is the relationship between sales and marketing. Those days I was newbie in marketing and all I knew about marketing was the word sales. To me marketing was synonymous to sales. Back then I did not know what I know today that sales is one part of any business marketing activities. Therefore I had no clue what marketing was. To me, marketing was sales.
The lecturer went on to tell the class that the role of marketing in an organization is to chart the way forward on:
1. What products to produce.
2. Whom to distribute the products to.
3. What channels to use and
4. How to communicate about the product.
The lecturer concluded that the above is what marketers refer to as the marketing mix and is the core of any marketing activity for any on-line or off-line business. Marketing mix is made of what the marketers call the marketing Ps. There are 4 key marketing Ps in the marketing mix, these Ps are Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Describing the Ps is something for another day.

This lecturer was the first person in my life who talked about marketing without mentioning the words sales and advertisement. From this lecture, I understood the role of marketing in any business. Marketing is an enabler in any business. Marketing helps your business in attracting and keeping customers. These customers must be willing and able to pay for your products.

Your fist role as a marketer is to locate and identify your customers in terms of where they live, work, pray and play. After locating them, you need to understand and know their needs, wants, desires, values, lifestyles and demographics. Once that is accomplished; you need to create products that will satisfy their needs and wants. That is marketing.

After this is done, you will need to take your products to where the customers can access them. You also need to communicate that information to your target market through advertisement and promotions.

Marketing plays a critical role in meeting your customers' needs. Marketing start by creating products that have utility. Utility is the ability of your product to satisfy both functional and emotional needs to your customers.Always remember satisfaction of your customers is the goal of your business.

For a product to offer satisfaction to its consumers, it must have benefits that are inherent to it's offer to the customers and this must be done consistently. This means that your product will always satisfy that customer every time he/she uses that product. That is commonly referred to as a product performance.

A satisfied customer will tell others leading to more customers, this is the power of word of mouth. For the word of mouth to work for you, your product is supposed to meet your customers needs first and foremost. This leads to owning that customer for life thus leaping maximum benefits from the entire life of this customer.When you have a customer for life, buying x units every day, continuously for 30 years, this is called customer value.

The number of life customers multiplied by each customer value, then multiplied by the average lifespan of the customers; is referred in marketing as the brand equity. High brand equity is a dream of every marketer. Brandy equity is the fuel that makes us wake up early go to work everyday. You cannot be a marketer if your overall objective is not to create a brand with a high equity.

Always remember that marketing is a process. Your online business makes money by satisfying your target customers’ needs forever. This customer satisfaction leaps more if based on their lifestyles, values, needs, demographics and any other underlying attributes of your target customer segments.

To succeed in your online business you need to understand that marketing is not sales and sales is not marketing. Differentiate the two to leap market growth.

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