Marketing: A rocket science??

Marketing is considered proprietary to Pepsi colas and HULs. It is considered as something done inside the glass ceilings. But have even experienced marketing tactics (if not strategy) adopted by smart businessmen running small showrooms.

Marketing and Small showrooms may sound like a oxymoron but believe me effective marketing strategies are adopted at these place at virtually no cost. Let’s dwell it into a bit more.

Making connection with customer is what every marketer strives for. Look at Airtel ads, they are really able to make that connection, but at a stupendous cost. Recently I visited a small apparel showroom. The way the shop keeper was able to connect with my family was overwhelming. The moment we entered we got acknowledgment of familiarity from his side. Then he started to connect with me by talking about his relatives doing MBA and working with blue chips companies. At the same time he talked about apparel choices of young people. With my family he connected by talking about my marriage.

I think me must have read some book on physiology. Something likes “Iceberg”. Nonetheless that worked wonders for him and he was successfully able to convert our visit into sales. He did a great job in marketing plus sales. Marketing by conveying functional benefits the product offers, building authenticity by sharing that he himself uses the brand, boasting about reputation of his showroom etc. At the same time he successfully performed the sales by felicitating customer to make an intelligent choice.

Without ATL, above the line (phew!!!) advertisement he conveyed information about product once customer arrives. He just relies on word of mouth which further depends on how well he markets/serves to his existing customers. So he just has those 30 minutes to market as well as perform sales. The real moment of truth…So even without iota of knowledge about marketing /sales fundamentals shopkeepers often do wonders in their businesses.

This was just one side of the coin. Now look at the other side.

Do you really think big empires like P&G, Coke, Adidas can do the same thing? Because of their sheer size their distance from customers is huge. So they need to have number of channels to get sensitized about customer needs and to connect with customer. At the same time they sell their products through resellers and not directly (mostly). This makes it even more difficult for them to reach customers. So they need marketing plans, advertisement plans, and what not to sell the products.

All this makes me wonder if marketing is just about common sense or hi-fi strategy docs. Do I really need to study marketing courses or I will learn through experience. I am still figuring it out…