Building a Brand and Reaching Your Customers

Sales, Marketing, and Branding

Why it matters

Marketing is the activity and processes for: creating, communicating, and delivering offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large. 


A sales and marketing strategy within a business is your plan for reaching, engaging, and converting your target market into profitable customers. The goal behind marketing is to promote your product or service in return achieving sales and revenue. 

5 Ps of Marketing

According to Investopedia, marketing includes advertising, selling, and delivering products to consumers or other businesses.

Marketing comes down to the four P’s of marketing:

  • Price

  • Product

  • Place

  • Promotion 

There is one more “P” that is the most important component of marketing; which is people. Knowing who your customers are and who you are wanting to buy from you is key in figuring out how to price your products, what products to stock, where to put them, and how to promote them to reach your customers. 

Sales

A business can have strong marketing but not be selling the right products. It is necessary for a business to create a selling strategy around the products it sells. Marketing is how you get your product or service in front of your ideal customers. Marketing and selling go hand in hand but you can’t do one without the other. You could have the best product around but if no one knows about it, it won’t sell. Marketing and sales must work together in order for each other to succeed. 

Selling comes down to a product or service that your business is offering to its ideal customer. 

Products to sell depend on:

  • Income levels of your ideal customers

  • Personality of your ideal customers

  • Where your customers are located

  • Buying behaviors


There are a few reasons someone might make a purchase: rational and emotional motives. Rational motives are behaviors that are based on logic and reasoning. Emotional motives are buying behaviors that are based on a feeling or emotion. Establishing the motive behind the product or service a business provides, helps them message the value proposition correctly to their ideal customer. 


Branding

A brand is the recognition and experience the consumer has with a company. A brand can also mean the feeling, aesthetic, consistent design or visuals, that define unique characteristics of the product or services. 

Brand Recognition is when a product or service becomes can be identified by the greater public due to consistent branding (through consistent wording, design, and company personality) on a large scale

Spirit Box Application

Each year new students and faculty enter your school building. Create a marketing and sales plan for how you will reach and engage your community. Ask yourself, why should our study body purchase from your Spirit Box, instead of another vending machine? 

As a team, create a plan:

Current teams, don’t forget to use our resource portal! It is filled with lessons, PowerPoints, and worksheets to help strengthen your Spirit Box team.