Marketing

What Ralf refers to as "tra la la" is actually quite interesting. Co-taught by Martin Koschat (Austrian) and DominiqueTurpin (French), this course is a case-driven exploration of the entire marketing function, from understanding a market to taking products and services to that market. So far we've studied DVD production machine manufacturers, discount airlines, sport watches, and Espresso machines. The watch maker came to our discussion and offered us goods in kind if we could help him re-position one of his brands.

Interesting take-aways so far:

• Marketing is the art of differentiation.
• 2/3 of all transactions are business-to-business, so most marketing is business-oriented.
• Marketing permeates all aspects of a business and essentially gives the customer a "voice."
• "Excitement," performance, and basic factors influence customer satisfaction and fulfillment in radically different ways.
• Different customers value different factors; good marketers understand this differentiation and react to it.
• The difference between "product" and "brand" is essentially emotion.
• A brand reflects a company's values, its product's benefits, and its target's commonalities.
• Buyers can only process a few issues simultaneously so sometimes branding requires sacrifice of some positive qualities in order to focus on the few that are most important.
• Mass media advertising isn't cheap. In the US it costs about $.02 per customer reached and each customer must be reached at least three times before your message sinks in. It costs a lot more to reach more homogeneous, targeted audiences.

At R7 we always knew in the back of our minds that we "should do more marketing" but it's impressive now to see just how much we neglected. Marketing should drive your business, not be an afterthought.