Hi, my name is Cheta Okorafor, and I am going to reveal to you all about selling online. So many people have taught you stuff about digital marketing but no one has done it this way. So sit tight and enjoy this free training course.

Digital Marketing.

1. What is Marketing?

Marketing is the process of interesting potential customers and clients in your products and/or services.

The key word in this marketing definition is "process"; marketing involves researching, promoting, selling, and distributing your products or services.

It's a huge topic, which is why there are tomes written on marketing, and why you can take a four-year marketing degree. But essentially marketing involves everything you do to get your potential customers and your product or service together.

When you're putting together a marketing program for your business, concentrate on the basics, the four key components of any marketing plan:

- products and services
- promotion
- distribution
- pricing.

The name of the game in marketing is attracting and retaining a growing base of satisfied customers. Creating and implementing a marketing plan will keep your marketing efforts focused and increase your sales.


2. What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium.

Digital marketing methods such as search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, influencer marketing, content automation, campaign marketing, data-driven marketing, e-commerce marketing, social media marketing, social media optimization, e-mail direct marketing, display advertising, e–books, and optical disks and games are becoming more common in our advancing technology. In fact, digital marketing now extends to non-Internet channels that provide digital media, such as mobile phones (SMS and MMS), callback, and on-hold mobile ring tones.

We will continue with Understanding the Marketing Process later, stay tuned please.

So we continue with the free training. Sorry I didn't make more posts yesterday.

3. Understanding the Marketing Process.

3. Understanding the Marketing Process.

Definition and Steps involved in the Marketing Process:-

The marketing process is a process of analyzing the opportunities in the market, selection of the target markets, and development of the Marketing Mix and management of the marketing efforts.

Below are the 4 marketing process steps that involved in targeting the right audience in the market.

The Marketing Process Steps

1.Analysis of the opportunities in the market.

2.Selection of the target market.

3.Development of marketing mix.

4.Management of marketing efforts.

The marketing process is just the way we do marketing or sell our products and services on a daily basis. Scholars in the study of marketing had to put it this way for you to understand it. We will discuss the steps in the process one by one later today. Stay tuned.

Following

1.Analysis of the Opportunities in the Market

The first component of the Marketing Process is to analyze the market in order to find the opportunities that should be availed. These opportunities are related to the needs and wants of the customers that are not properly satisfied by the competitors in the market. A company that is initiating the marketing process focuses the opportunities that would be beneficial in the long run success so that its performance would be effectively improved. For this purpose, the company gets help from the marketing information system(MIS), which plays a significant role in providing useful information about the market.

The company also conducts effective market research that would tell him the valueable information about the customers, competitors, general trends, and any extraordinary change occurred in the market that can be useful for the company. The company identifies the potential opportunities from the collected information and split the whole market into different segment. These segments are based on some factors like age group, geographical location etc. The company evaluates each segment separately to check the potential of the segment in the light of its strengths and weaknesses. Finally, it selects the target market segment to proceed further.

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2. Selection of the Target market

This is the most important step of the marketing process in which the target customers are selected. For this purpose, the company conducts a careful analysis of the target markets in order to choose the final customers. As it is obvious that the company do not satisfy the needs and wants of the whole market therefore it must divide the whole market into different segments and choose the segment that will best meet its strengths and opportunities. In this regards, there are certain step you need to follow.

The steps are as follows:

- Market Segmentation: The process in which the whole market is split into different units of consumers, each unit having similar wants, characteristics and behavior of consumers which need different marketing mixes and strategies.

- Market targeting: In this process the targeted segments of the total market are evaluated to ascertain the attractiveness of each segment so that the one or two most suitable and potential segments should be selected and entered. The simple rule of selecting the target unit or segment is that it must provide the opportunity to the company to create potential customer value in the long run. Another important rule is that a certain company has the option to satisfy the needs and wants of one or two segments. In this case the company focuses on that relevant segments and develops its products and strategies for them only. Such small segments are called “niches”. The company has also another option to split the whole market into different segments and offers different products and marketing mixes to each segment of the market. But the most effective method is to focus on one or two segments and after succeeding in those segments, further new segments should be targeted.

* Market Positioning: This concept relates to the positioning of the product of a company in the minds of the customers as compared to the products of competitors. In other words the company tries to maintain a clear and specific perception in customers about its products. When a company wants to position its product, it first specifies the competitive edge for which it offers competitive advantages to its target customers. The whole marketing program of the company should concentrate its identified positioning strategy. The positioning is effective when the company truly provides the efficient, competitive offering to its customers in order to give them maximum value as compared to the offering of competitors.

3. Development of Marketing Mix

After setting of a complete marketing strategy of a company, then it is ready to initiate the planning of its marketing mix.

- Marketing mix: Marketing Mix is composed of certain variables of markets that are mixed by the company in order to generate certain desired response in the targeted segments. In fact the demand of the product is influenced by the use of certain activities of the marketing mix.

The marketing mix is composed of the following four P’s.

01- Product: means any offering (goods or services) to the market by the company.

02- Price: means the money paid by the customers to obtain the product.

03- Place: means the efforts which ensure the availability of the product in the market to customers.

04- Promotion: means all the efforts by the company that ensure the sale of products to customers through better provision of information about the advantages of the product.

A company develops an effective marketing program in which a suitable combination of marketing mix is blended so that they are efficiently coordinated into a useful program to provide the greater customer value in order to accomplish the company’s objectives.

4P’s of marketing mix are from the seller perspective. In certain cases the 4C’s are replaced by the 4P’s which are

1.Product means Customer Solution

2.Price means Customer Cost

3.Place means Convenience

4.Promotion means Communication

4. Management of Marketing Efforts

This is actually the action phase of the development marketing program in which a suitable marketing mix is set for a target market. For the management of marketing efforts four functions are adopted which are as follow.

1-Analysis of the Market in which the company identifies the internal strengths and weaknesses along with the external opportunities and threats.

2-Marketing Planning in which certain marketing plans or strategies are developed so that the overall objective of the marketing should be accomplished.

3-Marketing Implementation in which the developed plans and strategies are practically implemented in order to achieve the marketing objectives.

4-Marketing Control in which the performance results of the marketing plans and strategies are evaluated and necessary steps are taken to ensure the accomplishment of overall marketing objectives of the company.

Now we know what the marketing process is all about, we will soon learn what the digital marketing process is. But first I need to make you understand how the marketing process works.

Let's say that I'm a digital marketer and I'm having problems doing my business. The main items I'd use for my business are a laptop, smartphone and internet service. As an entrepreneur, I don't like the products or services I see or use in the market. Now I decide to launch and internet service that allows people to use unlimited internet services, not these unlimited services that GSM and ISP (internet service providers) companies offer Nigerians where unlimited services are limited to a certain gigabyte. In the US unlimited services mean unlimited. You use the internet service as much as you like. Download anything want, watch any number of movies you wanna watch as long as you can pay.

But before I do that I need to conduct a marketing research to know exactly those who need it and also know what they can afford to pay for the services I want to offer. Its very important to conduct a marketing research because it would help you in the growth of your business. And will continue later today. Stay tuned.