Functions Of Marketing An Entrepreneur Must Know

 by: Janice Jenkins



 
After you wake up in the morning, you go to the kitchen for breakfast. You look in the cupboard at the many varieties of cereal, all with different ingredients and packaging. That is when you realize that all products you will use this morning- shampoo, soap, toothpaste, and toiletries- are created to meet your needs. Product planning and packaging are part of marketing.

You wonder what happened last night with your favorite sports team. You check the newspaper; it is filled with national and local retail advertising, and with inserts of some newsletter printing and some discount coupons. One ad in particular catches your attention like some idea on the cheap newsletters you have read. So, you ask a few friends to go to the mall with you after school.

Advertising is part of marketing. At the mall, scores of enticing store window displays encourage you to enter. Some of the stores are having sales featuring price reductions of 20-50 percent. Displays and promotional techniques are part of marketing.
In the mall store you entered, you are greeted by a sales associate who is ready to assist you with your purchase decisions and handed out some newsletters to you. Personal selling is part of marketing, too, as are all the retail stores that help to distribute manufacturer’s products.

All the marketing activities you see daily can be classified into different functions of marketing. These functions are the categories that make up the wheel’s outer rim. Those functions help us appreciate the wide scope of activities involved in marketing.

Marketing is purchasing. Purchasing is buying goods and services for a business operation. For example, shirt manufacturers buy cloth and thread to make their products. Apparel retailers buy the finished shirts for resale in their stores.

Marketing is selling. Selling is providing customers with goods and services that they want to buy. This includes selling in the retail market to the final consumer of the product. It also includes selling in the industrial market where products are purchased for use in the business operations.

Marketing is pricing. Pricing means deciding how much to charge for goods and services produced. Most pricing decisions take competition into consideration, as well as how much a customer is willing to pay for the product or service rendered.

Marketing is product planning. Product planning involves all the decisions a business makes in the production and sale of its goods and services. Which products to carry is a major decision. Other decisions involve product packaging, labeling, and branding.

Marketing is marketing information. Marketing information management is the process of getting the marketing information needed to make sound business decisions. The basis for this process is marketing research. Did you ever complete a restaurant questionnaire that asked you to rate the service you received? If so, you have participated in a marketing research. Companies conduct marketing research to learn more about their customers, products and promotions.

Marketing is promotion. Promotion is any form of communication used to inform, persuade, or remind people about a business’s products. Promotion is also used to improve a firm’s public image. The TV and radio commercials you see and hear are forms of promotions called advertising.

Marketing is financing. Financing is getting the money needed to finance the operation of a business. Business owners may request a bank loan in order to start a new business. Financing also includes decisions regarding offering credit to customers.

These are just some of the many functions of marketing you need to know as an entrepreneur.

Online Marketing Articles - Keys to Writing Good Headlines

 Daiv Russell

Nearly all Internet marketing consultants concur – One of the critical elements to effective Internet marketing is with the use of articles. You realize you need to capitalize on the potential of Internet marketing using articles, but how important is the headline? What's the most effective way to write headlines to stand above the rest?

All the Internet marketing gurus concur on this – One of the critical elements to successful Internet marketing is via article marketing.

Now that you realize you have to harness the potential of Internet marketing using articles, you have to try your hand at writing articles to please three, exceptionally unique targets with one article.
Three audiences of article marketing Here are the three audiences of article marketing and how to write great headlines for each:

Readers - Ultimately, these are the folks who will decide that they are attracted to what you do sufficiently to come to your site. You should write a headline that will attract your audience to actually read your article in the first place. You have to attract the reader to read further into your article and actually pay attention to your message. 80% of readers will read your headline, but only 20% will dig in to your article. How effectively your headline is written will determine the reader’s next step. Readers can see your article headline on social networking hangouts like Del.icio.us and Digg, as links in an instant message from a school chum, and in their Google results. If your headline does not make them want to read your article, you simply won’t get readership, even if you have the best message or product in the world. You could offer the cure to AIDS, but with a bad headline no one will learn about it.

Search Engines - Yahoo and the like believe that the page title is the key on-page indicator of the content of the page. Coming in second place is the use of the heading tag. When your article is published, publishers have a tendency to make either or both the title and H1 tag the same as your article title. So, having words in your article title which are important to those searching for information increase your chances of showing up in search engine results. You want your keywords in the headline and as near the start as reasonable to still satisfy the other two audiences.

Publishers - One of the keys to article marketing is the viral mass-publication process. This is why article marketing is so powerful. One well-written article can get published on 5,000 pages around the planet in just a few weeks. These folks choose whether your article is featured on their site, newsletter, blog, etc.They are a pesky combination of both readers and the likes the Google. They want to believe your article will attract search engine clicks but also make their readers happy. But, if they can’t find your article since the the misworded headline doesn’t come back in their Google results, or the headline doesn’t attract them in to take a look at your article – you miss the boat. One could say that publishers can make or break an article’s success and by pleasing the other two audiences you can make them happy as well.

Writing Great Headlines for All Three

This article's title was written particularly to provide an example of how to meet the needs these three audiences. As you can see, the first three words of the article headline are search engine fodder - they are a combination of two highly sought phrases, and those words are the very first in the headline. The first words also tell you what you will learn when you read the article.  The last part entrances you and draws you further in. It introduces something of interest that will provide what you’re hoping to gain or learn about. It makes you ask yourself, "I wonder what lesson I can take away from this article…" and so you keep reading, just as you did. Armed with this information, you can now write good article headlines that get noticed, get published, and get people coming to your web site. Get out there, get writing, and cash in.

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