Marketing is nothing but Meeting Needs Profitably

What is marketing or digital marketing? 

If you are a marketing executive or a digital marketer you must have faced this question either in an interview round or answering to any other aspiring marketing student. According to American marketing author, consultant, and professor Philip Kotlar, Marketing is nothing but Meeting Needs Profitably. Let me explain in a simpler way.

Marketing for a service or product is only done if it meets somebody's needs. If it is not met then it is not the right marketing. Again if you are not meeting the needs profitably then also it is not the right marketing. A company will not be able to make money by meeting such needs. For example, you have designed a product with some new features that add value to the customers but the customers are not willing to pay the amount of money quoted in the price tag. Then the amount of effort and money spent in the making of such a the product is definitely not giving you the profits. So in the whole process, one has to look carefully whether the business is going to be profitable or not as also meeting the needs of the customer.

Assuming that a business has a good product/service and meets the needs of the customer, what can you do to increase the profitability.

Consider this simple equation:-

Revenue - What you are charging
- Optimum Cost
- Promotion Cost (Marketing Cost)
- Other Cost
= Profit (Sustainability)

Look at the industry rate, competitors
The Optimum Cost
Then look at value addition

As a marketing professional, your job is to increase revenue or profits. But how are you going to do this? You can do this in the following four ways:-

1. Charge premium - Brand:- You can charge the customer more, that is the premium. And if you are producing better than what others are producing then you can charge more.
2. Sell more - LTV (Life Time Value of a Customer):- You can sell more things to the same customer and make more money out of them. Here comes the notion of FTV (First-time Value of a customer)
3. Reduce operation & other costs:- Look at everything to do it. look for cheaper channels to go so that eventually you can reduce costs and get a cost advantage over your competitors. 
4. Reduce marketing costs:- For example, in the case of digital marketing, you can opt for organic marketing or influential marketing or earned media attention instead of paid media attention.