“What is Marketing?”

In order to receive my PR certificate, Marketing was a required class. There is no way to sum up a full semester of marketing in a one page e-lesson, so I thought it would be most useful to you if I taught you the basic concepts in marketing by using a real-world example from one of my recent clients, Maurice Kitchen.
Maurice Kitchen is an NAACP award winning producer of the stage play “Dark Legends in Blood”. I was hired to help in securing a steady flow of people who were interested in seeing Maurice’s play.
While “Dark Legends in Blood” is not just a play but another level of entertainment to say the least, there were still certain aspects that needed to be defined before that first audience member would be ready to purchase a ticket. These aspects, or marketing variables as they’re called, are product, price, distribution, and promotion. The marketing variables define everything that needs to be done that will make the first ticket sale possible, and repeat ticket sales in the future likely.
Product
In Maurice’s case, the product is the play itself. From a marketing standpoint, we needed to define who this product was for. While Maurice had already done the hard work of writing, producing, and casting “Dark Legends in Blood”, was there a clear idea of who would want to pay money to go see it? We needed to determine the audience (or target market) – whether it be women, men, families, seniors, children, African-Americans, Hispanics, etc.
Price
Once the target market of the product is determined, the next thing to figure out is the price. Few people realize that the price is not so much about what the product is worth, but about how much your target market is willing to pay. In the case of “Dark Legends in Blood”, if we had decided that the target audience was senior citizens or high school students, they may have less to spend than middle-to-upper class families – and the play we feel is worth $60 per ticket may only be able to pull in $40 per ticket.
Distribution
The next aspect to determine was where the target group I selected will go to see this type of play for this type of price. Depending on the audience and what they were going to pay, it could be the Wilshire Ebell, Kodak Theatre, a local senior center, or high school auditorium. Whatever you choose, the distribution channel must fit where the audience would expect to go for the amount they paid. If it doesn’t – repeat ticket sales will be unlikely.
Promotion
The last thing to do is to get the message out to your target market. Having rehearsed, securing great singers, and having excellent production is not enough. The definition of promotion from my school textbook is to “inform, pursue, and influence a purchasing decision”. With Maurice, this was all about turning what his audience may want to do into what they needed to do; for example "They need to see this play and they need to see it now."
In a nutshell, marketing is getting a compelling message (promotion) to those who are most likely to buy your product (target market), and then doing everything to meet their expectations on how much they should pay for that product (price) and how they want that product delivered (distribution).