Marketing is a science devised to help drive customers to your door. There are lots of ways to define how to market well, including the four P’s of marketing (1): product, price, promotion and place. This is considered to be the producer-oriented model. These are still the driving focus behind most marketing courses, and deserve to be so.
Then there is the four C’s, the consumer-oriented marketing model (2). The four Cs: Consumer, cost, communication and convenience. This makes sense too, and surely deserves time.
Oh boy. Then there’s the compass or cardinal definitions model for marketers: N=needs, W=wants, S=security, and E=education. We can go on forever. But I have my own model that is even simpler.
I’ll call it my IDC model, just to fit into the scheme of the conversation.
[Email readers, continue here…] I= increase revenues. Find a way to position the company and the product to be wanted so much that it moves into the needs column for the consumer. Use all the techniques you learn in marketing classes to drive demand. Higher demand results in higher prices – if there is 
limited supply. Or, with or without limits on supply, higher demand results in greater revenues, satisfying the “I” in the formula.
D=Decrease costs. With greater demand comes the option to increase production and gain efficiencies of scale, driving costs down in the process. Even without higher demand, reducing costs should always be a focus for management to provide breathing room for increased profits.
And finally: C=Customers, and more customers. Marketing should provide a pool of ready to listen customers, no matter what the price or complexity of the product. More importantly for management, finding a way to focus on extreme customer service will be the most inexpensive, effective marketing tool of all. Existing customers have low acquisition costs, addressing the “D” in the equation. Extremely happy existing customers are the greatest marketers you will ever have.
Increase revenues, decrease costs, and better serve customers. IDC: that could be a motto or even a manifesto for any good management team. And it’s a good place to start a focus upon positioning.
(1) First proposed by Jerome McCarthy in 1960
(2) Robert Lauterborn, 1993
