Marketing

The exciting world of marketing has always fascinated me with all its vivacity, colours, creativity and survival strategies to wade through tough times. I am not going to elucidate on the various aspects of marketing, (they are too hypothetical, for me anyways) instead we will focus on its human element. Marketing is so dynamic an approach that if handled well can make a person carve a niche for himself in whatever field one is into .I am a firm believer that we all are sellers and we have to be a seller for our survival. A singer makes a living by selling his voice, an author sells his ideas, a teacher by selling his knowledge, a carpenter sells his skill of making furniture so on and so forth.

To be a successful marketer the first criterion is to serve your customer a quality product or service. By quality only we can ensure maximization of sales. Your product bouquet should offer a variety of choices to the consumer. It is human psychology to avoid monotony .If there is a variation without compromising with the quality, people will flock to your door in thousands. For example a singer who can sing almost all varieties of songs will be much more popular amongst the audiences than a singer who specializes in only one or two singing styles.Lata Mangeshkar, Kishor Kumar are legends because of their versatility, they sang all kind of songs –romantic, comedy, patriotic, classical etc.Here I am not saying that specialization is wrong but if you expand your horizons then only will it reap rich dividends.

Next step is Brand Building. In today’s era a good brand image works magic .If you are successful in building a good brand name for yourself, success is almost guranteed.Brand building involves many things-an ethical business policy, right mix of all the ingredients to enable you to reach out to the masses, right pricing of the product so on and so forth. Choosing a right person to endorse your product is also essential. The brand ambassador of NIIT, a computer institute, is grandmaster Vishwanathan Anand.It is a great move to rope in a person such as Anand because you got to hit the target segment of your clientele in a most effective way. Another example is Kiran Bedi endorsing ‘No Marks cream’. No matter to what strata of the society a woman belongs to, she will be deeply influenced by the advertisement of the cream as Kiran Bedi stands for integrity ,honesty and justice in India and her word is like a gospel truth.

Another thing which contributes a lot towards Brand Building is the visibility factor. If you are out of sight you are out of mind as well. The company logo, colours, caption of the advertisements should be such that it should immediately capture the attention of your client. For example, seeing the colours mauve and golden the first thing which comes to our minds is Cadbury Dairy Milk. Similarly the Thumbs Up logo is also very eye catching and justifies the brand name of the cold drink. Another example is of an advertisement shown by LIC of India for its Jeevan Anand scheme where he caption is Zindagi ke Saath bhi, Zindagi ke baad bhi.Now a deep impact and curiosity will be generated in the mind of a person who wants to get himself insured by reading this line.

The last thing which a marketer needs to do is to constantly innovate his products and move ahead with the changing times and technology. For example Maggi noodles was previously available only in simple flavors but now with changing taste pattern of the people and to survive the competition many new versions of Maggi such as Cup Maggi,Atta and Rice Noodle Maggi,Chota Maggi etc is available to consumers. Similarly a doctor constantly needs to upgrade himself with the advancements in the field of medicines and surgical procedures to alleviate the sufferings of his patients which in turn will make fetch him a large number of patients through word of mouth publicity.
The various concepts of marketing are very much applicable in real life and is utmost necessary on our part to be creative and to reach out to other people. Marketing to me is the art of living the 21st century life to the fullest in your own way.