Three jobs, and they only work in order

Your specification gives marketing three purposes. Identify and understand customers. Inform customers. Increase sales. Learned as three bullet points they look like three things a marketing department does on any given Tuesday, in no particular order. ⚠️ THEY ARE NOT. THEY ARE ONE CHAIN, AND EACH LINK ONLY WORKS BECAUSE THE ONE BEFORE IT DID. Start at the end and work backwards, because that is where the money is. A business wants to sell more. Selling more means people choosing its product, which means those people knowing the product exists and why it might suit them. ⚠️ AND YOU CANNOT TELL SOMEBODY WHY A PRODUCT SUITS THEM UNTIL YOU KNOW WHO THEY ARE AND WHAT THEY WANT. ⭐ SO THE ORDER IS NOT A STYLISTIC CHOICE. IDENTIFY, THEN INFORM, THEN SELL. Reverse any two and the chain stops working. Here is what that buys you in the exam, and it is more than it looks. ⭐ EVERY LATER DECISION YOU WILL STUDY ABOUT MARKETING IS AN ANSWER TO ONE OF THESE THREE STAGES. When you come to decide what the product should be like and what to charge for it, you are answering "who is this for and what will they pay". When you decide how to promote it, you are answering "informing". When you decide where it should be sold, you are answering "where will these particular people actually find it". ⚠️ WHICH MEANS A MARKETING DECISION IS NEVER JUST A PREFERENCE. It is an attempt to do one of three specific jobs, and an answer that says which job is doing something an answer that describes the decision is not. And one consequence worth holding on to now. ⭐ MARKETING IS THE ONLY PART OF A BUSINESS WHOSE JOB IS TO FIND OUT SOMETHING THE BUSINESS DOES NOT ALREADY KNOW, which is why it comes before decisions about what to make rather than after them.

The chain, one stage at a time

The three purposes in order. Read the last row of each column to see what happens when a business tries to skip that stage.

Tap what the chain actually says

Tap the TWO statements that follow from treating the three purposes as a chain.

A business cannot inform customers effectively until it knows who they are
Increasing sales is a result of the first two stages rather than a separate activity
The three purposes are independent and can be tackled in any order
The safest approach is to inform as many people as possible, whoever they are

Money spent telling nobody

A new sandwich shop spends its whole opening budget on leaflets delivered to every house in the town. Sales barely move. What does the chain say went wrong?

It informed before identifying, so most of the leaflets reached people who were never going to be customers, and that spending is entirely wasted rather than partly
Leaflets are an ineffective way of informing customers
The budget was too small to make a difference
The sandwiches must not have been good enough

Five words for this topic

Five terms, each defined by what it is. Which purpose each one serves comes next, and is not given here.

Match each action to what it achieves

A cafe owner asks regular customers what they would like added to the menu
A shop puts a clear sign in the window listing what it sells
A tutoring business advertises in a parenting magazine rather than in a free town paper
A bakery changes its opening hours after finding most buyers pass by early
A business compares this month's takings with last month's

It produces information the business did not have before, which every later decision rests on
It tells people passing who might buy that the product is available at all
It reaches a smaller number of people who are far more likely to be interested
It changes the offer itself to fit what was learned about the customer
It shows whether the earlier stages worked, without doing anything new in itself

Two that follow from the chain

Select the TWO statements that follow from marketing having these three purposes.

Later decisions about a product, its price, its promotion and where it is sold are each answering one of the three purposes
Marketing has work to do before a business decides what to produce, not only after
A business can increase sales directly by working on the third purpose alone
The wider the audience a business informs, the better its marketing is working

Turning a description into a justification

Questions on this topic rarely ask what marketing is. They give you a business and ask you to justify something, or to judge whether a decision was sensible. There is a move that does that and a move that only looks as though it does. ⚠️ SAY WHICH PURPOSE THE DECISION SERVES. Not "the business should advertise in a local magazine", which states a preference. "Advertising in a local parenting magazine informs precisely the people identified as the target market, so less of the budget is spent reaching people who will not buy" names the purpose, the reasoning and the consequence. ⭐ AND ALWAYS TIE IT TO THE BUSINESS YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN. A justification that would fit any business in the country is not a justification, it is a generalisation. ⚠️ USE WHAT THE QUESTION TELLS YOU: THE SIZE OF THE FIRM, ITS BUDGET, WHO ITS CUSTOMERS ARE, WHERE IT IS. Those details are in the question because the marks are in using them. Two habits that protect the marks. ⚠️ DO NOT ANSWER WITH "IT WOULD INCREASE SALES" AND STOP. Almost every marketing decision is intended to increase sales, so saying so distinguishes nothing. The useful sentence says HOW: by reaching the right people, or by matching the product to what those people wanted. ⚠️ AND BE CAREFUL WITH "EVERYONE". Businesses that describe their target market as everybody have usually not done the identifying stage at all, and an answer that recommends appealing to everybody is recommending the mistake this topic exists to prevent. One last thing, because it is where evaluation marks live. ⭐ A MARKETING DECISION CAN SERVE ITS PURPOSE WELL AND STILL BE THE WRONG CHOICE FOR THAT BUSINESS, usually on cost. Saying so is weighing rather than describing.

A bakery that asked first

Somebody opens a small bakery on a residential street. Follow the chain and watch each stage produce the next. STAGE ONE: WHO IS THIS FOR? ⚠️ THE TEMPTING ANSWER IS "ANYONE WHO LIKES BREAD", AND IT IS USELESS, because it rules nothing out and therefore decides nothing. The owner watches who actually walks past and when. Early morning it is people heading to work. Mid-morning it is parents after the school run. Late afternoon almost nobody. ⭐ NOTICE THAT THIS STAGE PRODUCED INFORMATION THE BUSINESS DID NOT HAVE BEFORE, and that everything after it now has something to work with. STAGE TWO: TELL THOSE PEOPLE. The owner puts a small board at the end of the street before seven, because the commuters pass then and a shop set back from the corner is easy to miss. ⚠️ THAT SIGN IS NOT AIMED AT EVERYBODY. IT IS AIMED AT THE PEOPLE STAGE ONE IDENTIFIED, and it says what they would care about: that it is open, and that it is quick. Contrast that with the alternative. The same money spent on leaflets through every door in the district would reach far more people, ⚠️ AND MOST OF THEM WOULD BE PEOPLE WHO NEVER PASS THE SHOP AT ALL. Bigger reach, less effect, more cost. STAGE THREE: SALES RISE, OR THEY DO NOT. ⭐ NOTHING NEW IS DONE AT THIS STAGE. IT IS WHERE THE BUSINESS FINDS OUT WHETHER THE FIRST TWO WORKED, and if takings do not move, the honest question is which of the earlier stages was wrong rather than how to sell harder. ⚠️ AND HERE IS THE PART THAT MATTERS FOR THE REST OF THIS TOPIC. The decisions that follow - what the bakery sells, what it charges, how it tells people, where it trades from - are not separate problems. ⭐ EACH ONE IS AN ANSWER TO A STAGE OF THE CHAIN YOU HAVE JUST WATCHED.

Assemble a justification that scores

A small gardening business wants to reach more customers on a limited budget. Build the answer an examiner is looking for.

Order the chain from question to result

Put the stages in order, from a business knowing nothing to knowing whether its marketing worked.

The business works out which particular group of people might buy from it
It finds out what those people actually want from a product like this
It shapes what it offers so that it fits what they wanted
It tells those people the product exists, in a place where they will see it
Some of them choose the product, and sales rise
The business compares the result with before, and judges which stage to revisit

The purpose of marketing run

Five questions on what marketing is for and how to justify a decision. Three lives.

Complete the marketing purpose facts

The particular group of people a business intends to sell to is its _____. What a customer actually wants a product to do for them are their _____. Any activity a business uses to communicate with potential customers is _____. The set of decisions a business makes about a product, its price, how it is promoted and where it is sold is _____.

target market customer needs promotion the marketing mix marketing sales a brand a segment

Three decisions to judge

Three small businesses, three marketing decisions. In each case the mark is in the reasoning, not the verdict.

A shop selling walking equipment is deciding where to advertise. The owner suggests the town's free newspaper, which goes to every household. What would you say?
A takeaway's sales have not risen despite months of advertising. The owner wants to double the advertising budget. What does the chain suggest instead?
An answer justifies a new shop sign by writing only "it will increase sales". The sign probably will. Why does the answer score poorly?

Explain what marketing is actually for

A friend starting a small business says marketing just means advertising. Write them an explanation of what it is for and why the order matters.

State the three purposes marketing serves, and explain why they form a chain rather than a list
Explain what the first stage produces that a business did not have before
Explain why money spent informing people is wasted if the first stage was skipped, using an example of your own
Explain why increasing sales is better understood as a result than as an activity
Explain how later decisions about a product, its price, its promotion and where it is sold each answer one of the three purposes
Finish by explaining how to justify a marketing decision properly, and why "it will increase sales" is not a justification

The Role of Marketing

Use it, the way the marks are given

What you'll cover