SEO. Pay-Per-Click. Social Media Marketing. We've all heard those terms at one point or another, and nearly every branded corporation in the US is pursuing at least one of those as a web marketing strategy. Why? Some companies pursue web marketing because they see great value in incorporating it into their business model. The remaining companies adopt web marketing strategies because they see their competitors engaging in it and follow suit out of fear.
Fear not!
Although web marketing can seem mystical on the surface, it can be broken down into 5 Core Principles as described in Principles of Marketing. Understanding the foundations of web marketing is essential if you wish to receive a significant return on your investment. The 5 principles of web marketing are:
Customer Needs, Wants, and Demands
Market Offerings
Customer Value and Satisfaction
Exchanges and Relationships
Markets
Let's discuss each principle in detail.
1) Customer Needs, Wants, and Demands
Web marketing could not exist without the concept of human need. Need is not something the marketing industry has coined: It's part of our DNA.
As described in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, human needs extend all the way from physical necessities to self esteem.
However, you should not market towards needs. Why? According to Business Know How, while a purchase can fill a need, need does not extend far enough to influence a consumer's brand choice. A consumer may need food, but may want a Chick-Fil-A sandwich. When a consumer's want is coupled with purchasing power, that want becomes demand. You must decide which specific consumer wants you will fulfill. This process is also known as choosing your target audience. If you have no target audience and attempt to fulfill everyone's wants, you will overstretch your brand identity and provide an inferior product/service.
2) Market Offerings
Market offerings are a combination of
products
services
experiences
information
Products and Services
Having a great product or service is the foundation of making a legitimate market offering. If a product or service does not satisfy customer wants, the market will reject it no matter how experienced your marketing team is.
Experiences
However, a great product or service alone will not convert into a sale. You must differentiate your product or service at the customer experience and information level. As a company, you must explicitly define your customer experience via the company value proposition. Ford can make cars. Lamborghini can make cars. The cars do the same thing: serve as a means of transportation. Is the customer experience the same? Not at all.
(A Lamborghini. Image credit Car-Catalog.com)
Information
By granting your customers useful, easy to digest information, you build trust with them. If the customer does not trust your product/service, they will not buy it. Plain and simple.
Online merchants such as Amazon and Newegg gain an advantage over local retailers by letting customers read and write objective reviews. These customer reviews become extremely valuable for purchases over a few hundred dollars. Consequently, customers feel much more secure knowing people in similar situations were satisfied with the same product they plan on investing in.
3) Customer Value and Satisfaction
When deciding between brands for the same product or service, customers will analyze the market offerings available and make expectations of value. Customers will then choose the brand that provides a value most inline with their wants. Hy-Top Foods adds value to customers by providing canned and packaged foods for extremely low prices. Del Monte adds value to customers by providing canned and packaged foods of a much higher quality. These companies satisfy their customers by providing accurate expectations.
Hy-Top does not market or price itself as a gourmet food line. Its canned food products are sufficient for feeding a family on a budget. If Hy-Top changed its brand image to elite and gourmet while keeping the same products on the line, new customers would be dissatisfied. Their expectations for gourmet and high quality would not be met. Similarly, if Del Monte changed their brand image to cheap and affordable while not changing their prices, new customers would also be dissatisfied. Their expectations for a budget-friendly meal would not be met due to the hefty price tag.
4) Exchanges and Relationships
Exchange occurs when you receive something and offer something else in return. Achieving an exchange is a major goal of marketing. The most common exchange is a monetary exchange. You offer a product or service in exchange for someone's money. However, marketing has many other exchange mediums as well. Politicians want votes, Soup kitchens want volunteers, Churches want memberships, and Activists want their ideas accepted. For any given product or idea, you must decide which medium of exchange will provide mutual benefit for your company and your customer.
Another major goal of marketing is to retain established exchange relationships. Not only does a politician want more people to vote for him, he wants to retain the loyalty of current voters. As a real life example, McDonald's is trying desperately to retain customers after the release of Burger King's $1 double cheeseburger. Burger King gave value to its customers by providing a unique smokey flame-broiled taste. McDonald's gave value to its customers with the Dollar Menu. Now that Burger King has incorporated one of the McDonald's strongest marketing platforms, McDonald's is having to differentiate themselves once again.
(Image courtesy Ocregister.com)
5) Markets
A market is a set of actual and potential buyers of a product. The ultimate goal of marketing is to establish profitable relationships with the buyers in these markets. Activities involved in establishing profitable relationships include
Product Research and Development
Communication
Pricing
Product Research and Development
Selling a great product can make your brand. Selling a poor product can break your brand. If any company knows this, it's Microsoft. Microsoft came under fire for Windows Vista. Very few people were satisfied with the Operating System. Microsoft accepted their product was unsatisfactory by allocating $8.7 billion dollars to Research and Development over the past year. Windows 7 is out, and there are far fewer complaints, thanks to the extensive research conducted.
"An effective communication strategy must address all stages of the customer lifecycle, from acquisition to retention to end of life to marketing to past customers (re-marketing), and define the types of communication that are relevant at each level."
Pricing
It is extremely important to know how to price yourself in the market. However, you should never, ever attempt to compete on price alone. If you remember anything from this article, remember this quote from John Jantsch
"Price [...] is a terrible place to compete. There will always be someone willing to go out of business faster than you."
Determining your price is one major challenge. The other major challenge is having the discipline to not drop your price once it's set: Even if that means having to reject a client or market segment.
You are now equipped with knowledge of marketing basics. I encourage you to dive deeper into the world of marketing by reading the articles linked throughout this post.
August 02, 2010
About the Author:
Joseph is the lead developer of Vert Studios
Follow Joseph on Twitter:
@Joe_Query
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Visit Joseph's site: joequery.me
As described in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, human needs extend all the way from physical necessities to self esteem.
However, you should not market towards needs. Why? According to Business Know How, while a purchase can fill a need, need does not extend far enough to influence a consumer's brand choice. A consumer may need food, but may want a Chick-Fil-A sandwich. When a consumer's want is coupled with purchasing power, that want becomes demand. You must decide which specific consumer wants you will fulfill. This process is also known as choosing your target audience. If you have no target audience and attempt to fulfill everyone's wants, you will overstretch your brand identity and provide an inferior product/service.
(A Lamborghini. Image credit Car-Catalog.com)
When deciding between brands for the same product or service, customers will analyze the market offerings available and make expectations of value. Customers will then choose the brand that provides a value most inline with their wants. Hy-Top Foods adds value to customers by providing canned and packaged foods for extremely low prices. Del Monte adds value to customers by providing canned and packaged foods of a much higher quality. These companies satisfy their customers by providing accurate expectations.
Hy-Top does not market or price itself as a gourmet food line. Its canned food products are sufficient for feeding a family on a budget. If Hy-Top changed its brand image to elite and gourmet while keeping the same products on the line, new customers would be dissatisfied. Their expectations for gourmet and high quality would not be met. Similarly, if Del Monte changed their brand image to cheap and affordable while not changing their prices, new customers would also be dissatisfied. Their expectations for a budget-friendly meal would not be met due to the hefty price tag.
Another major goal of marketing is to retain established exchange relationships. Not only does a politician want more people to vote for him, he wants to retain the loyalty of current voters. As a real life example, McDonald's is trying desperately to retain customers after the release of Burger King's $1 double cheeseburger. Burger King gave value to its customers by providing a unique smokey flame-broiled taste. McDonald's gave value to its customers with the Dollar Menu. Now that Burger King has incorporated one of the McDonald's strongest marketing platforms, McDonald's is having to differentiate themselves once again.
(Image courtesy Ocregister.com)
Joseph is the lead developer of Vert Studios
Follow Joseph on Twitter: