Marketing - where does it start, where does it begin?

It is somewhat easy to get lost in today's world of advertising. There is many options and lots of things to consider before you are ready to advertise your product, such doing research, analysing data, choosing your strategy and deciding on which media to use and so forth.

Before doing this, you should spend a little time on understanding the basics of advertising. Where does it start and where does it begin?

Always start with research!

You should do marketing research, so you can find out what the potential market is for the products you want to sell and how to profit. There is number of things you want to find out and other things will be nice to know.

When you do surveys,you should ask specific questions and research the answers. Surveys will bring you much insight information, you may learn whether you need to change your packaging design or tweak your delivery methods -and even whether they should consider offering additional services - lots of stuff to learn.

Listen to experience

David Ogilvy is one of the most famous names in advertising - for plenty of reasons. Below is one of them:

"I had a friend who was the King's surgeon in England. One day I asked him what makes a great surgeon. He replied, "What distinguishes a great surgeon is his knowledge. He knows more than other surgeons. During an operation he finds something which he wasn't expecting, recognizes it and knows what to do about it." It's the same thing with advertising people. The good ones know more. How do you get to know more? By reading books about advertising. By picking the brains of people who know more than you do. From the Magic Lanterns. And from experience." Quote David Ogilvy

There are truly words of wisdom..... Mr. Ogilvy is considered one of the biggest marketing influencers, his story and achievements are impressive and many. I recommend you to get your hands on a copy of this book Ogilvy on Advertising, it holds a ton of basic information about marketing

How to do research

You want to find out a bunch of things, but start with the 1. level of information:

• Are your customers young or old
• Do they have kids
• How do they dress
• How are their marital situation
• Which do they do
• What are their interests
• Where do they live
• What is their income level

Now imagine what their priorities might be in relation to your product or service. Try to put this together to build a profile of your customer.

With the profiling done, will have have a very valuable asset to when you build your marketing plan and deciding on which media to use and how to do so.

With the valuable 1st level layer of information done, you can dig deeper and get to know more about your customers. This secondary layer is much harder and possibly expensive to do. But it will make your marketing efforts very efficient as it becomes more scientific, just like Mr. Ogilvy recommends.

There is a number of research companies out there, where you can buy this information from and the information you get in return is good, but expensive...

You can help you self if you can get your customers to answer these questions:

• Which media do they use / watch / listen to
• What is their political orientation
• What is their buying habits
• Which type of home do they live in
• Which type of car / make do they own
• What is their religion
• much more which you know better!!

Add all this information to your initial profile and discuss this over with your media partners. Your media partners will love this, they like the quality and they can place your advertising where your targets are most active.