Marketing is much more than simply a department, or a body of techniques: it is central to the whole reason for an organization's being and to its relationship with its market and its customers. While, of course, many activities of a company are important, it is a truism that any kind of organization can create profits only out in the market. So, unless marketing activity, in the fullest sense of the term, creates a situation whereby customers buy in sufficient quantity, producing the right revenue and doing so at the right time, no business operation will be commercially viable. Marketing has to produce in customers a reason to buy, and make it a more powerful one than that which any competitor produces. Whatever the many elements involved, the key is to focus on customer needs and set out to satisfy them at a profit.

This chapter presents factors of which marketers should be aware. They must keep an eye on them, even attempt to predict changes coming, and work actively to ensure their approach to marketing recognizes the actual realities of the world in which they operate. The marketing job is not just to accept and take on board external factors that will affect the business. Rather it is to monitor a changing canvas and predict and react in a way that will help marketing to succeed. The chapter reviews issues such as research, pricing and compiling a marketing plan.

Marketing approaches are many and varied. The marketing job is, as much as any thing, concerned with deciding which of many possible things that might be done will be done and how various things will be fitted together (the promotional mix). What is likely to suit, and work best, is primarily influenced by two things: the product or service, the market and customers towards whom it is directed. All marketing activity must reflect the nature of the world in which it operates. What is right to do in marketing toothpaste may be very different from what is needed to market ball bearings. The difference here is simply interesting, but what is crucial in marketing is; (a) that what is to be marketed should be well chosen - a poor product will rarely, if ever, sell more than once; and (b) that marketing activity should match the product in every possible way.

Unless a product is to be given away, it must have a price. Setting a price is more than picking a 'suitable' figure out of the air: it is an important element of marketing and needs serious and systematic consideration not least of customer attitudes to price. The tactical use of price is also very much a part of ongoing marketing activity. This chapter reviews the way things work with regard to price.

Marketing is concerned with meeting customer needs and responding to a variety of circumstances in every aspect of the environment that is the stage for its operations. Some things about all this are known clearly. Others are less obvious and there is indeed a danger of making assumptions about them without establishing the facts. This chapter examines how sound information can provide a firm basis for marketing activity, and how the various techniques of market research can provide an objective method of obtaining the pertinent information needed to operate without undue risk.

Marketing links the organization and the world outside it. There is a huge gulf between a production process and a factory, and customers actually buying, using and finding a product satisfactory. Distribution is the umbrella term for everything that links an organization with the outside world. In this chapter we review the processes and tech niques that set up a route (or routes) to market; making the right decisions in this area and making the chosen methodology work well are integral to effective marketing.

This chapter looks at what is necessary ahead of compiling a marketing plan. This includes marketing objectives and strategies.

This chapter presents the process involved in drawing up a marketing plan. Realistically, the scale of things varies here a great deal. A small business might put its plan on one sheet of paper, or not have one (though the latter is not recommended); a large business may need plans that set out matters in relationship to a range of different products and their intended performance in many different, perhaps global markets. What is set out here goes down the middle, as it were, in terms of scale, but it is intended to touch on the key issues. The key issues in creating a marketing plan are: to approach systematically; it should be based on sound information; it should be practical and able to assist positively the decision making and action that drive the business.

In order for an organization to achieve its objectives, some form of planning system is needed. This, in turn, demands an organization structure both to create marketing plans and to implement them. For a marketing-oriented organization (that is, focused on consumer needs), the structure should be built from the bottom up by looking first at customers and their needs. Whatever the form of marketing organization adopted, care must be given to its integration with other functions of the company. Then marketing activity can proceed and the next consideration is the monitoring and control of what occurs.

Marketing is, however unfortunately, associated with inappropriate pressure indeed, even unsavoury or actually criminal tactics to make people buy. While some people trade on the fact that 'there is one born every minute', this is a small, exceptional area and not what mainstream marketing is about. Not least because most organizations want to do regular business with their customers, they recognize that sales made and found inappropriate by customers tend not to repeat. To build business with customers - satisfied customers who may well return for more - demands respect for the customer. More than that is involved: the whole mechanism of promotional and sales communication must relate to and use the psychology of how customers assess what is offered to them and make a decision to buy or not, and to buy from one supplier rather than another.

The following topics are included in this chapter: promotional strategy; the buying process; press and public relations; advertising; direct-mail promotion; sales promotion; merchandising and display; electronic promotion; and promotional budget.

In many industries (including many kinds of engineering), promotional activity rarely produces actual business. That is not to say that it is useless; its job is to create interest. Turning that interest into an actual order is the job of sales; the work of salespeople is the only part of the marketing process that involves direct, individual, personal contact. So selling, and how it and the customer base are managed, deserve some attention here, bearing in mind too that the people doing the selling may vary: in an engineering consultancy, for instance, it may include members of the professional or management team. Also deserving a mention here is another personal element directly affecting marketing success: the style and effectiveness of customer service.