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"Marketing" is probably one of the most misused and loosely defined words in business. Some use it to refer to their advertising and promotional plans. Others refer to it as their sales strategy (what the sales force of a company will do in a given period). Actually, the most advantageous use of the term is to define it in its broadest sense

"Marketing is everything you do to promote your business from the moment you conceive of it to the point at which customers buy your product or service and begin to patronize your business on a regular basis." (Jay Levison, Guerilla Marketing, 1984).

With this understanding every element of your business represents an opportunity to market your product/service.

Market Profile

Probably the most important aspects of marketing is to define your "Target market". This is a profile of the people who will buy your product/service. It is prepared according to "demographic" characteristics. These demographics are statistics about different ways to categorize people. These categories normally include gender, location, socio-economic status, age, marital status, and several more. One can develop a very precise profile in describing the potential customer by carefully identifying the average customer and directing all the resources to this target market.

Pricing Policy

A basic decision that will define your business is the selection of an overall pricing policy. Essentially, the business person can select from three positions.
-Upscale, which means that you will maintain high prices for exclusive products/services,
- market pricing, which means you will essentially charge what your competitors are charging,
- discount, which means that you will depend on low pricing to attract the volume of people needed to be successful.

Positioning

This aspect of you marketing effort simply means how are you going to differentiate your business from the competition. What is your unique marking position? This is often developed through an analysis of your competition using the "SWOT" approach:
- STRENGTH, means what are the things that the competition does well. It is useful to copy these.
-WEAKNESS, means what are the things that the competition does poorly. Your response is to avoid these and develop better systems in your company
-OPPORTUNITY, means identifying those characteristics of the competition that provide you with an opportunity. This usually means identifying market segments that the competition is overlooking.
-THREAT, means what aspects of the

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