Basics

Marketing Basics

No matter what advertising salespeople tell you, there is not any single method that can consistently bring in the customers your business needs to make up for a bad marketing process. Hence, our class on the basics.

There are a lot of theories and philosophies you can read in marketing textbooks. I spent six years in college and twenty-some-odd years taking seminars and classes while working in the marketing field every day of my life. (I’m one of very few people who still watch the commercials on TV.)

I will tell you that a great deal of what you learn in school is fine as far as it goes, but what’s usually missing is the “rubber meeting the road.” Most of the people who write marketing books count on their publishers to market their books for them! And most of the professors who teach marketing for universities don’t advertise their own classes, and certainly don’t pay their electric bill from marketing their own courses.

In an attempt to keep the basics “basic,” as well as fulfill our promise never to waste your time with material you can’t implement immediately, we’ve distilled from our experience and a whole wall full of books on marketing into the items that really work for ABCI and our clients. We also worked to keep this to an hour.

There will be theories and concepts that we don’t cover. We’ll be breaking the basics down into the three main phases over the next three months and going over each in more detail. If there’s a particular concept you think we should have covered, please let us know and perhaps it will warrant a class of its own or a supplement.

The Importance of the Basics 2

What is Marketing? 2

What Marketing Can Do. 4

What Marketing Can’t Do. 5

A Complete Marketing System. 7

Sample Marketing System in Depth. 9

Your turn – Complete this worksheet about YOUR current marketing system. 10

Market Research and Product Development 11

Competitive Matrix 12

Monitor the Media 12

Phase One – Getting Attention. 13

Your Ideal Customer 13