Marketing is the act of stimulating economical demand, usually by increasing perceived value of an offering to a potential customer. Related to sales, marketing channels and marketing velocity.

Marketing...
1. is operational; someone has to take action
2. focuses on the demand; fulfill customer needs
3. highlights cost-to-value ratio; justifies the reason for the exchange

There is infinite amount of ways to do marketing. Here are some examples.

• Advertising: Usually focuses on impulses and snap judgment.
• Content Marketing: Usually focuses on publishing informative content. The content helps to build long term relationship with customers, to gain professional status and to gain visibility in search results.
• Email Marketing: Usually focuses on announcements with close to none customer interaction. What you can do with emails is a subset what you can do with social media marketing.
• Social Marketing: Usually focuses on announcements while supporting customer engagement. For example, used to promote content or to gather direct feedback but must also offer something for the customers e.g. that the promoted content is valuable or that some of the social updates are entertaining.
• Video Marketing: Usually focuses on invoking emotion.
• Word-of-Mouth Marketing: Situations where you are promoting a product an individual, not as a salesperson or employee of the company.

Your appearance and imago are the most important factors. This applies to companies and individuals alike. First impressions are the single most important factor in a market with competition; and you probably will always have some form of competition.

Marketing Sectors: Understand which is your main marketing sector and learn the most important points of how to deal with your customer archetype.

• B2C (Business-to-Consumer): Marketing to consumers. Focus on reputation, quality and promotion.
• B2B (Business-to-Business): Marketing to businesses. Focus on lowering the price, sustainable business and networking.
• B2G (Business-to-Government): Marketing to governments, town councils and other public sector entities. Business is usually tender based where the buyers sends out a public request for proposals and companies offer their services. Focus on track record and public relations.

Marketing a new product to the majority is risky. Modern people are really good at ignoring new products and just buy the familiar stuff. Focus on marketing to innovators and early adopters by making your product remarkable in some way.

Innovators (less than 5% of the total final user base)
    -> Early Adopters
        -> Early Majority
            -> Late Majority
                -> Laggers

A lack of early adopters in a particular market is a big problem. For example, mustard is really hard to get known because there are no geeks that are deeply into mustard. But there are a lot of hot sauce fanatics and new hot sauces are introduced each year.

-> Hot sauce innovators will listen because they are passionate about it.
    -> They will spread the word if the hot sauce is good.
        -> For a good product, you need to know what innovators want.
            -> To know what innovators want, you need to know people.
                -> To know people, you need to go out and talk with them.

Start from a small market. You'll waste time and money if you start by marketing your product for everyone right away. Identify a smaller target audience that might be listening and focus on them.

Estimate:
- Number of potential customers in the target audience.
- Wealth of the target audience.
- Competition in the target market.

General Electric turn-around against Ford in 1926:
  Ford: automobiles for everyone
  GE:   automobiles with comfort and safety, but for a price

Market System: Marketing happens in a marketing system; the context around it. When the context changes, your marketing has to adapt. Keep track of the changes in your marketing system.

For example:
  Main elements:
    Culture, Politics, Economics, Technology
  Minor elements:
    Competition, Influencers, Suppliers, Retailers

Marketing Planning:

1. Analyze opportunities.

2. Choose alternatives.

3. Define strategies.

4. Formulate plans.

5. Carry out implementation.

6. Control the outcome.

   Resources -> Opportunities -> Resources -> Opportunities -> ...

Marketing Research:. There are multiple scenarios where you should take a deeper look into your current marketing strategy.

• The firm has grown which has created distance between the customers.
• Market scale has increased from local to national or from national to global.
• Foresee the future needs of customers.
• To better understand the current customer needs.

People make snap judgements by first impressions. Consumers decide first and rationalize later more frequently than you think. Make your product more visually appealing to get new customers and keep the quality of your product high to keep the existing customers.

People make judgements by comparison. When promoting a product, consider using comparisons but beware of insulting your competition. Related to price anchoring.

Nothing can beat free. When people see a free product or service, they calculate only the benefits of the product, not the time they spend using the product to gain those benefits. This makes cost-to-value comparisons more favorable to you. If possible, offer a free plan, trial period or freebie versions of your product.

People aren't against you, they are just for themselves. People are foremost interested in the things that affect themselves. To make yourself more interesting, make your solutions relate to the audience.

Breaking marketing patterns gets you attention. But breaking the patterns frequently may make you seem chaotic, unreliable or even insecure. Break them only if you know what you are doing.

People make judgements collectively. People frequently check what others have brought and related product reviews. If you target mass markets, you need a big launch to get the critical mass of customers. See what people are saying about your product and try to affect those opinions. Openly address all incorrect claims but never behave like a jerk.

Never go to the dark side of marketing.

Path-mobile app scanned phone contacts and used them for marketing
without asking. They got a lot of users, but the approach backfired
when the users noticed.

Marketing is more efficient if the ideas fit to the pre-existent mind set. This is also related to human collectivism. You might want to fine tune your message to fit in to the mind set of your target audience.

It is easier to sell crosses as charms to protect against bad spirits to
Christians than atheists.

Remarket to the open minded. Market to people who have already visited your site or have been in touch with your company.

Find a way to track each marketing approach you use. If you do not track them, you cannot know which ones are working. And more importantly, you cannot improve them. Different marketing approaches require totally different metrics according to what is the marketing channel and the marketing velocity.

Needs are the reasons that products exist. Without a need, there is no market. Without a market, there is no product. Know which needs you satisfy and the alternative means to satisfy those needs.

Drive: Drive is the internal pressure to satisfy a need. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is the most used categorization of needs:

# From needs with the most drive to the needs with the least drive.
Survival:           air, water, food, sleep, sex.
Safety:             personal safety, financial security, well-being.
Social:             friendship, family, love, tribe.
Self-esteem:        self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect.
Self-actualization: creativity, personal growth, reaching full potential.

Need creates demand. Supplying products to the market extinguishes the demand, but doesn't affect the need. The needs are only satisfied but they still exist. Demand is only the current market situation, which is subject to change.

There is direct demand or derived demand. Figure out if the person you are selling to is the end-user or just a middle. Follow trends around the source demand, not derived demand.

You sell cookers for retailers.
Cookers seals are made from asbestos.
Customers get scared after they learn about the health hazards.
Seals must be made from silicone.
    -> Demand of your customer changed because it was
       a derived need, originally from the consumer.

Institutional Demand:

• Material supplier, usually private sector.
• Service provider, usually private sector.
• Fulfill obligations, usually public sector e.g. government.

Buying operation. Buying Coalition. Hill R W & Hillier T J, Organization Buying Behavior

An atom
Understand people's positions and relationships.

Most important:
    Banking         = Top Management
    Raw Materials   = Product Management
    Tools           = Engineering
    Advertising     = Marketing

Not important:
    Competitors
    Consultants
    Suppliers
    Customers
    Distributors
    Government

Price is important in industry markets.

Sources

• The Ultimate Guide to Startup Marketing
• Basic Marketing - Principles and Practice, Tom Cannon
• Diffusion of Innovations, Everett M. Rogers