The term "Marketing" is widely misunderstood. Many people when asked; "What is Marketing?", will respond with answers such as; "Producing TV advertisements", "writing catch phrases", "producing brochures", "a conspiracy to make people buy more than they need", "improving brand awareness", "fancy packaging", or "sponsoring the Olympics". In fact these are all part of Marketing, but only a small part.
Marketers describe the above activities as promotions, which are designed to create awareness, interest, desire, and action among potential customers.

Strategic Marketing, in addition to the promotions described above, also addresses issues such as; What products or services should we be involved with? How much should we charge for them? How do we make it easy for people to purchase our products?
The simple question "What products or services should we be involved with?" is a massive issue. It encompasses; What do potential consumers want? What is the competition like? Will we make any money doing this? Do we have the capability to deliver what is required? Would we be better doing something else? Is the market long term or short term? How do we address the market we have identified? Does the market break down into market segments? etc.

The point of this is to emphasise that there is more to strategic marketing than is commonly understood. Strategic Marketing is defined in the "Marketing Concept", of which there are several different definitions, but all of them incorporate the broad definition of marketing alluded to above.

Marketing Concept

"Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating, and satisfying customers' requirements, profitably." Chartered Institute of Marketing.

The marketing guru Philip Kotler defines the Marketing Concept as:
"The marketing concept holds that the key to achieving organisational goals consists in determining the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors"
This Kotler breaks down into four components; Market Focus, Customer Orientation, Coordinated Marketing and, Profitability.

Some alternative definitions of the Marketing Concept include:
"Your business will perform better, if you know what people want in the first place." Anon.

"Marketing is not only much broader than selling, it is not a specialised activity at all. It encompasses the entire business. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer's point of view." Druker.

Strategic Marketing

Strategic Marketing is the management process of instilling the marketing concept, into the heart of an organisation.
It is this objective which drives MARKETING CONCEPT Strategic Marketing Consultancy.

At the core of Strategic Marketing are; Segmenting, Targeting, and Positioning.

Other Concepts

There are three* basic and contrasting concepts explaining how organisations function. Needless to say the Marketing concept is the one preferred by Marketers!
*(The number of concepts varies between three and five according to various authors, but to keep things nice and simple we stick to three)

1. Production Concept

2. Selling Concept

3. Marketing Concept

Production Concept

The production concept, follows the line of thinking that the most important element of a business is its production facility. This is a view especially prevalent amongst engineers, who focus on the means of production rather than the purpose of the production.

Common phrases to spot these include:

• This is the biggest offset widget maker with water cooling in the UK
• We got ISOnnnn in 1987, the first in the industry
• We always focus on quality
• We don't deliver on Saturdays

Selling Concept

The selling concept progresses from the production concept, in that it acknowledges that customers exist, and focuses on selling them as much stuff as possible.

The typical phrases include:

• Deliveries were up by 3.5% this quarter!
• I know we don't have the facilities, but Production must deliver by next week!
• We need some good "marketing" to move the product; brochures, TV ads, golf days, and sponsor the Olympics!

A Hierarchy of Concepts