Teddy Leung raised an interesting point about Positioning in his blog post “Presumed Front-Runner”. https://blogs.ubc.ca/teddyleung/

It is important what a product or service really is, but it is equally important what it is perceived to be – by the company’s employees, by its competitors, and by the customers. This reminded me of “impression management”. An article on it in Wikipedia suggests, among other things, that “any individual or organization must establish and maintain impressions that are congruent with the perceptions they want to convey to their publics” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impression_management]. Isn’t that exactly what marketers are doing?

In his blog, Teddy suggests, that in order to become a “front-runner”, a company needs to position itself as such. It does take effort to convince opinion leaders, but there are many people who “want to play it safe and follow the crowd”.

Well, in order to become a “front-runner”, the product/service does have to satisfy its customers’ needs or wants better than competitors’ products/services do, but getting people to believe that the product is a success is sometimes just as hard as creating a superior product.

And, as Teddy stated in his blog: “It takes courage to succeed”

Facebook’s preparation for the IPO ignited discussions on changes this might bring to what has become part of everyday life for millions of people around the world.

Mitch Joel, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Marketing Association and one of the top 100 online marketers in the world, shares his views in blog post “Expect Big Changes at Facebook”.

In his blog post, Mr. Joel suggests several directions for Facebook in the coming years: a change of Facebook’s team and culture, trend towards better compatibility with mobile devices, and integration into developing platforms like Apple television and Google TV.

More interesting is, though, how Facebook has revolutionized the world and how it continues to grow and impact the way that people interact. Although much of Facebook’s recent profits come from advertising, it creates new opportunities for marketers in a more significant way. Mr. Joel believes that Facebook is primarily a source of valuable information, that when used wisely becomes a powerful tool.

The level of detail of information that Facebook has is indeed unprecedented. Most importantly, information about people’s lifestyle and personality – factors that apparently affect consumers’ behavior the most. With more precise understanding of consumer’s needs and wants, marketers will be able to develop better products and services.

As Mark Zuckerberg wrote in his Letter to Shareholders, “a more open world is a better world because people with more information can make better decisions”

An introductory course reveals how much more there is to marketing than simply advertising and selling. However, advertising and selling is what many people commonly ‘equate’ to the term marketing.

We are bombarded with hundreds of ads, promotions and special offers every day, while most of what people in marketing do is happening behind the scenes. But that is only part of the explanation I think…

On the level of corporations, marketing truly is a sophisticated art and science, incorporating continuous research of consumers’ needs and wants, building the brand, improving existing products and developing new, and making these products available to customers at the right place and at the right time!

Small businesses, comprising of up to 50 employees, often do not have the resources to perform all this work.

[It is interesting to note that in Canada small businesses make a significant contribution to total GDP: and average of 28% from 2000 to 2009 according to Industry Canada’s “Key Small Business Statistics” report published in July 2011]

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/sbrp-rppe.nsf/vwapj/KSBS-PSRPE_July-Juillet2011_eng.pdf/$FILE/KSBS-PSRPE_July-Juillet2011_eng.pdf

For many small companies marketing is indeed finding the potential customers to the products and services that they are offering. ‘What’ to produce is usually well established. And apparently, for these businesses marketing often does boil down to the ‘advertising and selling’ aspect of it. What do you think?