Hello! Welcome to the Top Shelf Media blog. We’ll be posting weekly to bring you fun, helpful, and inspiring entries about the ever versatile world of promoting your business. Maybe you own a business, and thus far your marketing efforts have been fruitless. Maybe you feel overwhelmed by the idea of creating a marketing plan and budget, and sticking to it! Or maybe, you just want to get some new ideas, tips & tricks, strategies, and see some beautiful designs. In any case, you’ve found the right place. We draw inspiration from many sources, and are aiming to bring you relevant content and stunning visuals.
So, first things, first. What is marketing? How does it differ from advertising? I find that not many people know there is difference. There are hundreds of books dedicated to defining marketing. Dare I try to define it in a single sentence? It is certain to be a very long run on sentence, so I’ll write a few instead. Marketing encompasses all business activities involved in bringing value to the customer in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders. It involves managing customer relationships and business stakeholders. Marketing is a science! A science about people. It involves demography, psychology, sociology, anthropology...and it goes on and on. The good news(for me at least), is that there is plenty of creativity involved in the marketing world.
The Marketing mix revolves around “The 4 P’s” Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.
Product: How do we deliver value to our customers with our products? We meet a need or want. We offer a solution to their problem.
Price: Our product needs to be placed at the right price point. Besides needing to make a profit, we need to know what our customer is willing to pay for the product.
Place: This refers to distribution. How are we going to get the product to market? We need to offer easy access of our product to our customer.
Promotion: This is the good stuff! This is getting information to our customers. We do this through advertising, social media, public relations, and special events.
Whew. From here on out, I’ll be focusing on promotion. I want to answer these questions: How can we boost your business, increase awareness, and create a buzz?
