A Resource for UC Discovery Grant Students

April/May Focus: Marketing - beyond soap brands

Marketing - that's what Procter & Gamble does, right? Yes, but even if you're not peddling soap you will need to think hard about understanding and reaching your customers. Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of your product or service.

The goal is to identify a need and produce something that satisfies it. Any new company should be able to identify clearly what its product or service is, who the potential customers are, what benefit the product delivers, and how it differs from the competition. Many technology start-ups don't market directly to consumers; in fact, business-to-business marketing is expected to dwarf the consumer side of the business in the next decade. So identifying a need increasingly means understanding how other businesses operate. Satisfying that need is more than simply making the product available - it can also involve explaining to each customer exactly how their business will profit from choosing your solution.

Don't consider market analysis as an afterthought to technology development - if no-one needs your product, you need to think about changing the product. Changing what your customers need is much harder.