Scope and Importance of

Marketing
In the last segment, Jaideep laid the foundation by defining the function of
marketing at its very core. Today, more than ever, it is crucial for traditional as
well as digital marketers to have a holistic knowledge about the different entities
that can be marketed so that they can take advantage of the same for their
respective brands. Let us look deeper into the scope of marketing.

So the biggest skill gap I see in the current breed of digital marketers is they completely lack business
understanding, what they should understand is digital as a way to achieve an objective. The
objective being business goals, it could be customer satisfaction, it could be increase in sales, it could
be gaining market share. I would strongly recommend upcoming digital marketers to understand the
industry context in which they are operating. They could be working in an insurance firm or a travel
firm or it firm. First step is actually understanding the business.

Let's try and understand the scope and importance of marketing. One of the most marketed
categories is that of goods and services. When you see a L’Oréal ad, it's typically marketing a
product, say a shampoo. And when you come across the brochure of a car rental firm, the company
is typically marketing its services, the convenience of renting a car. Another widely marketed
category is events and experiences. An event could be a global sporting meet, like the Olympics or a
cricket tournament. And experience, on the other hand, could be time spent at a theme park like
Disney World, or an adventure sports arena that offers skydiving activities. Increasingly, we also see
the marketing of people, organizations, and places. All these categories need to be marketed actively
to build a distinct image in the minds of the target market. An actor like Shahrukh Khan, an
organization like IBM, a place like Kerala, only to be consistently promoted and marketed, whether
to build and grow a fan base or create an attractive image as a place to work or to cultivate a steady
stream of visitors. It is also common now to see how ideas and behaviours are being marketed.
promoting awareness about AIDS. Encouraging family planning, and discouraging smoking are some
ideas that need to be promoted to improve health and social wellbeing.

So, to summarise,  you saw the entities that can be marketed:

1. Goods and services: This includes physical goods such as marketing of
shampoo or soap, or services such as that of a bank, airline, hotel, etc.
 2. Events and experiences: This includes the promotion of events such as
concerts, book fairs, automobile exhibitions. Some marketers also market
the experience offered by theme parks like WonderLa or Adlabs Imagica.     
3. People, organisations and places: This includes the promotion of persons
such as Narendra Modi, organisations such as Amity University and places
such as India, Australia that use the taglines ‘Incredible India’ and ‘There’s
nothing like Australia’ respectively to attract more visitors.

Australia

Incredible India
 1. Ideas and benefits: This includes the promotion of ideas and benefits such as ‘Don’t

drink and drive’ and anti-smoking ads.

 
Now that you have looked at the different entities that can be marketed, let us learn
more about the importance of marketing.

Let's now turn to why marketing is so important for a company, or indeed any organisation. Without
customers an organisation really has no purpose. Marketing starts with researching and
understanding consumers. Its role is to help the company understand the needs and wants of its
customers. Let's take the example of Apple to understand how marketing was vital to its success.
Steve Jobs understood deeply that what customers wanted was a great user experience. So he
focused on delivering this relentlessly with Apple products from the Mac to the iPod to the iPhone
and iPad. If a company is introducing a product into a market for the first time, then it needs to make
consumers in the market aware of that product.

Marketing helps create awareness for products and services. Each time Apple introduced a new
product, Steve Jobs would hold a high profile press conference to bring that product to the world.
These were eagerly awaited events, and they received huge publicity making the new product
instantly known to millions of people around the world. Once a company has created awareness for
its product, it needs to make this product available to consumers, ideally in a place near them.
Marketing ensures that products are distributed and conveniently available to consumers. Apple did
this by opening its own chain of stores. placed in attractive locations in major cities around the
world. It was able to attract large numbers of customers who then drove the sales and awareness of
Apple products. Marketing also helps establish the reputation and brand image of a company and its
products.

Many people wait for Apple to launch new products, because they know that these will not only
meet their expectations, but even exceed them. They remember how excited and delighted they
were when the previous Apple product came out. A major aim of marketing is to maintain a long
term and healthy relationship with its customers. Apple does this through its great products. It's
superb communication with customers. It's beautiful stores, excellent customer service and its
strong brand. The relationship between Apple and its customers keeps strengthening with every
new Apple product that it releases into the market. From the customer's perspective, marketing
helps them become aware of the products and services available in the marketplace. It helps them
to get detailed information about various aspects of the product or service such as its price, its
features, its availability, etc. And this in turn helps them to evaluate the various alternatives
available and make good decisions when purchasing products and services to meet their basic and
higher order needs.
So, finally, you now know why marketing is required. To summarise, we identified
the objectives of marketing as follows:
1. Marketing helps define the purpose of an organisation -  This can be done
by researching about the consumers so that you can identify their needs and
preferences.
2. Marketing helps creates awareness for its products and services -  This is
especially crucial for a brand that launches a product in the market and
wants to gain the attention of its consumers.
3. Marketing can help zero in on a convenient place for its customers to access
its products.
4. Marketing helps establish reputation and brand image - This is crucial for a
brand to gain trust amongst its customers as well as have a brand recall
whenever they think about the product/service category.
5. Marketing helps build a long-term relationship with customers -  This keeps
consumers in the loop about your latest product updates, prices, availability,
etc.