Marketing is a vital part of setting up any business. The way you present yourself will define the type of customers you get or whether you will get any customers at all.

Marketing is an instructive business domain that serves to inform and educate target markets about the value and competitive advantage of a company and its products. “Value” is worth derived by the customer from owning and using the product. “Competitive Advantage” is a depiction that the company or its products are each doing something better than their competition in a way that could benefit the customer.

Focusing on the task of conveying pertinent company and product related information to specific customers, and there are a multitude of decisions (strategies) to be made within the marketing domain regarding what information to deliver, how much information to deliver, to whom to deliver, how to deliver, when to deliver, and where to deliver. Once the decisions are made, there are numerous ways (tactics) and processes that could be employed in support of the selected strategies.

The goal of marketing is to build and maintain a preference for a company and its products within the target markets. The goal of any business is to build mutually profitable and sustainable relationships with its customers. While all business domains are responsible for accomplishing this goal, the marketing domain bears a significant share of the responsibility.

There are two sorts of marketing

• Strategic marketing: attempts to determine how an organization competes against its competitors in a market place. In particular, it aims at generating a competitive advantage relative to its competitors
• Operational marketing: executes marketing functions to attract and keep customers and to maximize the value derived for them, as well as to satisfy the customer with prompt services and meeting the customer expectations. Operational Marketing includes the determination of the porter's five forces

The way that you choose to market depends on the sort of business that you are and the type of audience that you are trying to reach. There is little point in advertising to the wrong audience and if you think you can probably recall bad adverts on TV such as children’s toys being advertised at ten o’clock at night.

Marketing methods

There are an unlimited ways to market your business, but always marketing should portray your company image and what you stand for. Ways to market include:

• Newspaper advertisements
• Radio broadcasts
• Word of mouth
• Websites
• Mail Shot
• Telesales
• Sponsorship
• Canvassing
• Business cards
• Networking

This is by no means an exhaustive list. Marketing is about spreading the word about your company and maintaining it’s reputation.

There are companies who can take on your marketing for you, this depends on the time you have available and the budget that you have. Larger companies often have an in house marketer as this is often cheaper than contracting out marketing duties. The important thing is that all of the marketing matches. You do not want a newspaper ad in black and blue but a leaflet to be in pink as the customers may not link the two together and your company’s brand awareness will not increase.

On all marketing there must be a corporate image or colour such as blue and white or red and black. With a particular style. This means that the customer can quickly identify with you. You must also have a logo of some description. This may be a particular type font or an elaborate image, but either way it is part of your corporate image and will appear on all your stationary and advertising. This brings a sense of continuity and reassurance to the customer.