KwanG Venture Blog

Am i a zebra or a horse?

What is Marketing or Strategic Marketing and what is Branding? Are they the same? These are some of the questions that many are still not sure of the answer or have confused these two concept to be one. Therefore, we would have to begin from the very basics to answer these questions.

What is Marketing to me? Marketing is the management process that identifies, anticipates and satisfies customer requirements profitably.  Therefore, it forms a social and managerial process which individuals or businesses finds an unsatisfied need or want, creates a product or service and supplies it in the most efficient manner and price to provide value to the consumer or buyer and earn a premium or profit in the process. In short, the Marketing process places customer or consumer satisfaction in the focal point of all business activities.

Some of the important elements in the Marketing philosophy or concept are as follows:

• Marketing focuses on the satisfaction of customer needs, wants and requirements.
• The philosophy of marketing needs to be owned by everyone from within the organisation.
• Future needs of the market have to be identified and anticipated.

And what is Branding or what is a brand? A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, design or value, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services or businesses that differentiate one from another. Therefore, it is understandably that branding is about getting the potential customers to notice you as the most suitable solution provider to their needs and wants. Thus, the objectives of branding or a brand should be:

• To delivers the message clearly.
• To confirm your credibility.
• To capture the emotions of your target prospects.
• To encourage or motivates potential buyers to act to your benefit.
• To create and strengthen loyalty or emotional attachment.
• To generate value to the brand.

Therefore, to succeed in branding your business or products, one must first understand the needs and wants of your target audience or market and create something that can satisfy and give value to the target market.

To summarise, Marketing is the social and managerial process of satisfying customer needs and wants, and branding is the process of persuading your target audience to choose you from the others.

A business whether home base SOHOs that only provide services or full fledged companies that manufacture and sells their own products, may fail for many reasons. Thus, it is important for businesses owners to know what these reasons are so that they can be overcome and give themselves a fighting chance to stop loosing more money or even worst, from closing down.

These reasons which are simple in nature but have a great important role in determining the survival of your business:

Poor capital or fund structuring and management.

Learn to pay strict attention to your finances and keep careful records of all cash flowing in and out, do not over spend your seed money before cash has begun to flow in at a positive rate, be prepared for volatile times, Make sure that you protect your investment and keep enough reserve cash to carry you through sudden market downtrends and seasonal slowness.

Poor execution and internal controls.

Don’t let poor customer service, accounting controls, and overall employee incompetence to bring down your business and brand image. Premium customer service can generate repeat business, establish protocols and procedures that are easy to follow, and remain steadfast in the know on all things accounting.

Inadequate business pre-planing.

Your business plan is your blueprint in building your business and brand image successfully. A well-thought-out business plan forces you to think about the future and the challenges that you may face, to consider your overall financial state and needs, your marketing and management plans and your overall strategy for survival in the business jungle.

Underestimating the competition.

Consumer loyalty is not served to you on a platter, it has to be earned. If you don’t take care of your customers, your competition will. Be aware of your competitions movement and counter react with precision.

Ineffective marketing.

Many people think that marketing is only advertising or selling. In fact real marketing does not involve the art of selling what the consumers do not need. Marketing is the understanding of the consumer needs and providing a “solution” to satisfy their needs which give them value and gives your profits.

Bad Public Relation.

Learn how to target and cost-effectively publicise business through the most suitable medias for your business and budget range. If no one knows about you, you are as good as invisible.

These are just the few of the many reasons that may cause the down fall of your business. Therefore if your business is merely surviving or loosing loads of your precious reserved funds, it is our advice that you list down the areas where you needed to strengthen and improve, and source for the professional help that you would need to overcome the problems that you have listed down.