Top 4 Types of Marketing You Should Know

If you go around and ask 100 different people what they thought "marketing" was you would probably get 100 different answers. To give you a general understanding, it is a set of controllable, tactical tools that a business would use to produce the desired response from their target demographic. Anything that a company can do to influence the demand for their product is a form of marketing. This includes, but is not limited to, advertising, selling and the delivery of the product to the customer.

We are going to break it down the four types of marketing into general groups: Product/Service, Cost, Distribution, and Promotion.

1. Product/Service: The goods or services offered by the business to its customers. The customer views the product or service as an item of value or solution to their problems.
2. Cost: The amount of money your customer will pay to purchase the product. Customers want to know the total cost of product. How much it is to acquire, to use and to dispose of.
3. Distribution: The location where your customers can purchase the product. Making the location of the goods or services sold as convenient to the customer as possible.
4. Promotion: The strategies in which the business chooses to communicate their product's features and benefits in order to persuade customers to buy. Customers want to have complete transparency with the companies they choose to purchase from.

Each of these groups is compiled with it's own set of tools:

1. Product/Service: Variety, quality, design, features, brand name, packaging, and services
2. Cost: List price, discounts, allowances, payment period, terms of credit
3. Distribution: Locations, inventory, transport, logistics
4. Promotion: Advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations.

A combination of these tactics will give your business it’s desired result, an effective marketing strategy. When a proper marketing strategy is in place customers will view the product or service as an item of value. Establishing the product’s position within its target demographic.

This is not to under emphasize the importance of the many different marketing tools, but to be aware that there are a collection of moving parts. Even though, the manner these in which these four types of marketing (product/service, cost, distribution, and promotion) are presented they are strongly focused on identifying the seller’s view of the target demographic. The main concern for marketing is to influence the customer to purchase. In order to do that they must appeal to the buyer’s view of the product.