The Marketing Process Explained (2024)

Kunvar Buddha Prakash

9 min read

Jul 24, 2020

Customer Needs, Wants and Demands

Needs. The most basic concept underlying marketing is that of human needs. Human needs are essential or very much required. It includes basic physical needs for Food, Clothing, Shelter, and safety.

Marketers did not create these needs; they are a basic part of the human makeup.

Wants. Want is something that we wish to have which is not available with us. It is the form of Human Needs, which are shaped by the surrounding culture and individual personality. Eg: An individual in one country Needs foods but want a Burger. An individual in another country Needs food too but want Noodles.

Demands. Demands are an extension of “want”, with a clear objective of filling the gap that wants have left with. When backed by an individual buying power, wants to become demands. Eg: I desire to have a villa, even though I have a house. This is desire is backed in my buying power.

Marketing Offerings

Once done with the market and consumer understanding, Companies focus on what products, services, information, or experiences they are offering to a market, to satisfy a need or want.
These market offerings also include services activities or benefits offered for sale that are intangible and do not result in the ownership of anything. Eg. Theme park or amusem*nt park experience.

Your company’s offering will affect a customer’s decision on whether to purchase from you or from a competitor. It is very important to look beyond the attribute of the product and offer the complete package, create a brand experience for consumers which drives them towards your offering over your competitor.

Customer Value and Satisfaction

Customers usually deal with various products and services which satisfy their needs and wants. Which product or brand to select? Customer forms expectations about the value and satisfaction that various market offerings will deliver and buy accordingly.
Marketers must be careful to set the right level of expectations. Neither too low nor high, It should be balanced.

Exchange Relationships

Customer relationship management is perhaps the most important concept of marketing. Marketing consists of actions taken to create, maintain, and grow a desirable exchange relationship with target audiences involving a product, service, idea, or the other object. Marketers try to bring about a response to some market offerings. It may be more than simply buying products or services.

The Markets

The concepts of exchange and relationships lead to the concept of the market. A market is the set of actual and potential buyers of a product or service. Marketing means managing markets to bring about profitable customer relationships. Consumers, when they go through the purchase phase interact with companies online site, and mobile apps, which empowered consumers and made marketing a two-way affair.

Once fully researched consumers and the marketplace, the next step is to design a winning marketing strategy.

Select Whom to Serve

It is practically not possible to serve all the customers in every way. Hence the company must first decide whom it will serve.

This is done by dividing the market into segments of customers and selecting which group of customers it will serve. This process is called Market Segmentation and selecting a specific group out of those segments is called target marketing.

This can help businesses make informed decisions not only on advertising, marketing, and pricing but also in new product development.

Choose a Value Proposition

It is essential to decide how a company will serve its targeted customers? How it’ll differentiate and position itself in the marketplace. A brand’s value proposition is the set of benefits or values it promises to deliver to consumers to satisfy their needs. A companies value proposition must differentiate one brand from another. They answer the customer’s question, why should your consumer buy your brand over the competitor?

Decide Marketing Philosophy

Companies want to design strategies that will engage in targeted customers and build profitable relationships with them. There are five alternative concepts under which organizations design and carry out their marketing strategies. Companies select one of the philosophies (given below)that will engage target consumers and build a profitable and long-lasting relationship.

When companies finalize it’s a marketing strategy that outlines which customers it will serve and how it will serve. The next step to create an integrated marketing plan. Using an integrated marketing plan companies execute their marketing strategy with a firm marketing mix.

Let’s understand The Marketing Mix in detail

The Marketing Mix

The four Ps of marketing is the key factors that are involved in the marketing of a good or service. They are the product, price, place, and promotion of a good or service.

These are the key elements that must be united to effectively foster and promote a brand’s unique value, and help it stand out from the competition.

To deliver the value proposition, the company first focus on creating a product that satisfies customer need (product). Then it should target on how much it will charge for that particular product (price). Pricing can be decided using one the pricing strategy (Cost-plus, competitive or Value-based pricing). Then the company should focus on the availability of the product, that how a product will be available to the targeted customer (place). Finally, it’s time to promote your product (promotion). Promotion includes elements like advertising, public relations, social media marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing, video marketing, and more.

The most important step of the modern-marketing is to engage your targeted customer and build a profitable relationship. Let’s find out what are the points to be considered when it comes to customer engagement in this modern era.

Customer Value and Satisfaction

Companies can only build lasting customer relationships by creating superior customer value and satisfaction by their market offering. If customers are satisfied, it likely that they will be loyal to the brand/company offering.

Customers buy from the company that offers the highest customer-perceived-values (while making a purchase, a customer values a product’s benefit higher than its function).

Customer satisfaction depends on the product’s perceived performance relative to customer expectations. if the market offering falls short of the customer’s expectations, the customer is dissatisfied. If it matches the expectations, the customer is satisfied, if exceeds expectations, the customer is highly satisfied or delighted.

A satisfied or delighted customer shows loyalty to the brand/company.

If a company targets to delight its customers, its market offering must create a high level of values and satisfaction to the customers.

Customer Relationship levels

Companies build customer relations at many levels based on the target market and also based on their market offerings.
For example, a company with a low-margin product may only build basic customer relationships, on the other hand, consider an FMCG (Fast-moving consumer goods) firm trying to build a relationship with its customer, Big Bazar (an Indian retail chain of hypermarkets). In this case, the FMCG company representative will closely work with Big Bazar to sell its product at Big Bazar stores. They often use marketing tools (CRMs) to develop stronger bonds with customers.

Customer Engagement

Customer engagement is all about encouraging your targeted customers to interact and share the experiences you created for them.

Companies use a mix of the online and offline channel to create customer engagement here are some(but not limited to)

Use of social media platform to engage with customers, sharing creating content, engaging polls, and also promptly replying to customer queries over the social media platform.
Dedicated customer supports for the brand.
Organize events when new product launches or a customer-engagement summit.
Asking customer opening on a new product launch or featuring customers reviews/ post-purchase experience in their commercial is also a trend now.

The final step of the marketing process is to capturing value from customers, which is in the form of sales, market share, and profits.

By creating superior customer values, the companies create satisfied customers. A satisfied customer stays loyal and buys more in the future. That creates and long term profitable business for companies.

Creating Customer Loyalty & Retention

Nowadays, almost every company has a loyalty program. Satisfied customers remain loyal and talk favorably to others about the company and its products. It is observed that loyal customers spend more and stay around longer. It is also financially cheaper to keep an old customer than acquire a new one.
Here are some points which can help to achieve customer loyalty and retentions

Give customers a reason to be loyal.
Design a creative and engaging loyalty program. Add levels to your program to motivate your customers which drives them towards making a purchase decision. Add some fun part in your loyalty program. It should not be boring and difficult.
Provide great customer service.
Post-Purchase (after-sales) experience.

Growing Share of Customer

Good customer relationship management can help marketers increase their share of customers — the share they get of the customer’s purchasing in their product categories. Ex: airlines want a greater ‘share of travel’. To increase the share of customers.

Building customer equity

When it comes to the marketing process, it is not only about acquiring customers but also keeping the growing them. The value of a company comes from the value of the customer. Companies want to not only get profitable customers but also creating a profitable relationship with customers for a lifetime to earn a greater share of their purchases.

Hence, the ultimate aim of customer relationship management is to produce high customer equity. Customer equity is the total combined customer lifetime values of all the company’s current and potential customers. As such, it’s a measure of the future value of the company’s customer base. The more loyal the firm’s profitable customers, the higher its customer equity.

Building the Right Relationships with the Right Customers

It is also important for companies to understand which customer should the company acquires & retain? This is because not all the customers are good investments.

Companies should manage their relationships according to their potential profitability.

We’ve examined the five-steps of The Marketing Process for creating and capturing customer value.

In the first step, we talked about customer's needs and the marketplace in which they operate. Then we understand whom to serve and how to serve as a part fo customer value-driven marketing strategy and plan. And lastly, we’ve talked about how to create profitable relationships and to capture customer value.

Good luck, and feel free to share and invite your friends to read.