Introduction to the Marketing Process

Let us talk about the marketing process. So there are standards steps that marketing professionals follow when they are building this marketing process. So in this module, what we want to do is, first, understand the marketing process. How do people look at marketing? Let’s have a common understanding of that and then try to use data to make this process even better. So the marketing process actually starts with the objectives. What is it that we’re trying to accomplish here? And that kind of feeds in using the five Cs. It’s about the customer, the company, competitors, collaborators and content.

And now, once we’ve addressed this objective that we are trying to solve using the marketing process, the objective could be, I want to address a customer paying point using a new product. Then, you’ll look at the strategy. What is your strategy going to be? And strategy, basically, comprises of segmentation, targeting and positioning. And we’re going to get into the details of each of these as we go along this module. But it’s good for you to now know that the next step after objectives is strategy and that consists of segmentation, targeting and positioning. And after strategy comes tactics. And what is commonly known as the four Ps of marketing, product, price, place, and promotion.

Place is really about channels and distributions, but marketing, we like nice acronym so we wanted the fourth P, so we called it place instead of channel. And then, from tactics, we go to financials, which is really about, show me the money. What is the gross margin, return on investments, customer lifetime value? All those things to see whether this plan that we have put up, is it feasible or not. Now, by the end of this week, I hope you will be able to understand the marketing planning process. See how you can take an objective or a challenge and use the process to address the marketing challenge. Learn about the marketing planning process using a case study of Airbnb.

Understand how Airbnb may have used data to make this planning process better. And through that, learn the objectives of marketing analytics and how it is trying to make the marketing planning process better, and more efficient, and effective.