How to practicalize Kotler’s four pillars of marketing to get good results as a marketer

How to practicalize Kotler’s four pillars of marketing to get good results as a marketer

Throughout my stay at the undergraduate level reading strategic communication, I have come to realize that marketing is not just about having good products and services or having the best communication skills to persuade people to buy into your ideas. Marketing as I see it is a science on its own that needs to be studied. Even in the history of marketing, many scholars came up with theories and other findings based on their experiences to explain how a marketing communicator can perform his professional roles in the right way. Kotler is one of these scholars. You can read more about him. He established four pillars that marketers can use in their profession to get good results. Therefore, in this article, we will discuss how marketing communicators can practicalize Kotler’s four pillars of marketing in their day-to-day marketing activities to get good results.

How to practicalize Kotler’s four pillars of marketing to get good results as a marketer by quikcounsel,com

Marketing is a managerial function and not just any function as people would be roaming about selling products calling themselves marketers. Well, I do not doubt their efforts but they are obviously not professional marketers because they have no plan not to talk of execution. They just go out there intending to make money out of whatever they are selling but marketing goes beyond that. What if the purpose of the products could not manifest in the hands of the buyer, you already have your money so that is not an issue to you right? 

The central idea of marketing is exchange. If somebody gives you money, you need to give something valuable to the person in exchange and not anything at all. Value for money they call it. All these can be achieved when there is a plan and once there is a plan, execution would definitely take place. Kotler’s four pillars of marketing were designed in such a way that when you can follow and practicalize them very well, there are going to be good results. I know what I am saying.

The idea behind Kotler’s pillars of marketing is who you want to become your customers, what they actually need, how would you market your products to them, and finally the results of the efforts thus the profit. Technically, they are the target market, customer needs, integrated marketing, and profitability. I am going to take each of them, explain them in detail, and teach you how you can practicalize them in your professional duties.

The target market is a must-know for anyone who is a professional marketer. Who do you intend to sell your products to and why? This is where you are differentiated from the people who are not professional. They have the goods and services but they randomly sell to anyone they meet. That is not a good plan, you must have a specific group of people who are your target. This is why I said marketing itself is a science, you need to study it and it is only through research and observations that you can establish your target audience. You can read more about the division of the audience to have more mastery over the audience segmentations and how you can group them.

You identify your target audience before you even think about the products you must sell to them. You see, marketing is a strategy and some people have failed in this field because they only applied common sense but it goes beyond that. How can you produce goods and services that the people you have identified as your target customers don’t need? Who would buy them then? This is why Kotler established that a professional marketer must know his or her customers’ needs right after identifying the potential customers. It is also about research. 

You need to go out there, ask them about their priorities, gather the necessary data, and bring it back to your organization, or if it's your personal business and then out of the research conducted, you can produce goods and services that meet the needs of the people. This, I call a key in marketing. You just don’t sell because you are a marketer, you sell because you know what you are selling and who will buy.

The next thing to do as directed by Kotler is integrated marketing. This is a broader topic on its own but I will talk about the 4Ps in marketing which many of you already know. You have your target audience and know your customer needs, now you have to employ the product, price, place, and promotion for your marketing campaign. If you know their needs, you can go ahead to produce their needs (products), give them a price, know a particular place where you would display such products, and finally promote them. That is all about the 4Ps under integrated marketing.

The last pillar is the profitability. Even though you are more concerned with exchanging value for money from your customers you need to make a profit too. It all falls back to integrated marketing where you give prices to your products. A good marketer does not tag a price that is overwhelming but would still make a good profit. Personally, I advise that you make more sales to make more profits than naming huge prices for the excuse of value sake. The more you sell, the more you make a profit.

If you knew these four pillars and didn’t know how to utilize them, now you do. Go out there, and start acting as a professional marketer. Do more research and plan to execute these four pillars established by Kotler. Be consistent and optimistic. If you do it well, why wouldn’t it pay off for you? Happy marketing fellow strategists.

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