Background
New York City Times Square bustling with many billboardsWhy should graphic designers care about marketing?
Think marketing is just about making spreadsheets or doing boring sales tracking? Think again!
Graphic design is a vital part of the marketing world. Designers are the people who make the logos and advertisements that help to build visual brand awareness. This means that as a graphic designer you could be part of the team that influences the customer's decision making process. In order to be a good team member and be able to contribute all that you can, it is essential that as a graphic designer you understand how marketing works. This discussion will give you some "insider tips" on the marketing world.
What is marketing?
Marketing is defined as the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising. Marketing is all around us. It includes organizational functions and processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers, as well as managing customer relationships. Creativity and organization are keys to effective marketing.
What is sales?
Sales is defined as the act of selling actual products produced by a company or organization. Sales is about building relationships with potential customers with the goal of connecting them with products or services.
Marketing and Sales combined together in a circle. One begins where the other starts.
The relationship between marketing and sales
Marketing and sales both depend on one another in order to succeed. Marketing understands the marketplace in which a product exists. Marketing concentrates on understanding people and their motivation for buying. Marketers gather information about how customers respond to different aspects of a product and its competitors. Sales enacts the concrete transaction between product and consumer. When both marketing and sales work together in harmony, profit results.
In addition to persuading us to purchase a vast array of products and services, marketers often focus on aligning their product to certain people, places, or ideas. For example, entertainers, politicians, and athletes are constantly promoting their images and aligning their image to certain products. This alignment and association help to promote both the product being promoted and the person doing the promotion.
Target Market
A target market is the particular group of consumers to which a product or service is aimed. Target markets are often divided into four unique sectors or sections. These segments are defined in the following ways: demographics, geographics, psychographics, and overall benefits sought.
Demographics are about finding out who your customer is. They refer to the overall biological and socioeconomic characteristics of a particular group that purchases a specific product or service. For example, age, sex, education level, income level, and occupation are all considered to be demographic data. It is helpful to think of demographics as being what might be collected via a census.
Geographics refers to the practice of separating an overall population into smaller zones based on their geographic locale. For example, you might break out different elements of your target market and market to them different based on whether they live in an urban, rural, or suburban geographic zone.
Psychographics refers to the classification of people according to their attitudes and aspirations. Psychographics seeks to look at the “why?” behind each purchase. Understanding consumer psychographics helps to ensure that your marketing is effectively tapping into larger consumer motivation and thus ensuring a greater likelihood of success.
People tend to purchase things because of a benefit, whether real or imaginary. Overall benefits then refers to overall benefits or good things that might come to a consumer by purchasing the product or service.
Prompt
Step 1: Discussion Questions to Answer
In this discussion, we will be discussing marketing and sales within the food industry.
First, imagine a friend has come to you asking for marketing help on getting their cupcake bakery off to a good start. They know they need to figure out who will be buying their cupcakes so they can best capture their attention, but beyond that they do not know what to do.
How might you explain demographics to your friend?
Why is it important to identify geographics in a business?
How might you explain psychographics to your friend?
What benefits might people seek coming to the cupcake business and how might the marketing support these benefits?