This activity behind the scenes is not the beginning either of the performance or of the campaign. The play does not start with the scene shifting or with the preparations of the actors. It starts much farther back, in the mind of the great producer—the man who knows audiences, who knows the stage and its technique, who knows actors and how to handle them, who knows competition, who knows public taste, who is able to study, appraise, test and weigh all the fac tors that go to make up theatrical success or failure, and who, out of careful study and wide experience, is able to shape the complicated tools of his craft into what finally takes form as the smoothly running play that the public-sees.
In the same way the promoter of the sales cam paign must have solved many problems prior even to the preliminary activity of the sales department and of the advertising department. He must have stud ied the campaign as a whole with an unprejudiced eye on all its parts. He must have studied also many facts about the product itself, about the market and about methods of reaching the market. If he has not done so the campaign is not a planned campaign at all; it is merely a patchwork, based on guesses and hastily formed opinions. To deserve the name of campaign, it must be planned in advance by someone who sees the relation of all its possible parts, and who has carefully analyzed everything that can reasonably be foreseen.
4. What marketing methods include.—No word in general use indicates all the activities that are included in the complete sales campaign. The word selling might properly include evelything that is done by the man who has anything to dispose of in a commercial way. But in general usage this word is often incor rectly restricted in its meaning to personal salesman ship only. :In its stead the word marleeting is gradually coming into popular use to apply to the dis tributing campaign generally. Some advanced busi ness houses have officials called marketing mana gers, who direct both the salesmen and the advertising. The word is a good one and we shall use it. The term marketing methods includes everything done to influence sales. In these chapters, however, the study of marketing methods will exclude the consideration of the technique of advertising and the technique of salesmanship, and be devoted to those sales considera tions that must receive attention before either sales manship or advertising is started on its mission of in fluencing the market.
5. How salesnianship and advertising work to gether.—One result of a study of marketing methods is a realization of the single purpose of all selling ac tivities. Unfortunately the partisans of personal salesmanship and the partisans of advertising have at times attempted to set up a wall between their respec tive methods of building business. We hear of lack of sympathy between sales managers and advertis ing managers, of salesmen WhO have little use for advertising, and of advertising men who forget that they are salesmen. Worst of all, occasionally a so called advertising campaign is put forth by a manu facturer as something distinct from the sales cam paign of the same company. This failure properly
to link up salesmanship and advertising is not so gen eral as it used to be, but there is still enough of it to demand warnings against it. As long as the work of the personal salesman is studied only as an art by itself, and as long as the work of the advertising man is similarly isolated and studied as if it bad no relation to its complementary method of sales building, there will continue to be misunderstanding of the oneness of all marketing procedure.
6. Why study marketing need of business is for executives who can get back of the technique of making sales—who can investigate, ana lyze, weigh and understand basic market conditions —who, on the foundation of their broad-minded seek ing after facts, can construct a sales-making cam paign that will use one or both of the two selling methods as conditions may demand, and who can weld them both into a common weapon for competitive of fense. A study of marketing methods is essential in the training of such men.
7. Study of trade the first part of our study of marketing methods we shall take up those factors in trade that carry manufactured goods to the consumer. We shall consider, among other things, the place of the middleman in the distributing system, make a study of the various kinds of retailers and their changing relations, and analyze the jobber and his status. This part of the text should be of value to the manufacturer, because unless he has stud ied the live problems of trade relations, he cannot intelligently select trade channels or direct any of his selling effort. It should be of value to the jobber who wants to strengthen his position by finding the facts and adjusting himself to them. And it should be of value to the retailer who is daily confronted with problems involving his relations to his sources of supply, and who must base his whole business develop ment on the right answers to questions about national advertising, mail-order and chain-store competition, branded goods, private brands and similar develop ments of modern business.
8. Actual campaign.—The study of trade relations is the most important thing in preparing for a mar keting campaign, and naturally occupies the larger space in this treatment. When a manufacturer has aiven careful consideration to all the various fac t, tors that he may use in marketing his product, he studies his product and his market, and then selects the trade channels and the selling methods that seem most likely to result in maximum sales at minimum expense. These considerations will occupy us in the later portion of the Text which will also deal with special problems in planning the campaign, such as exclusive agencies, price maintenance and the costs of competitive methods of selling. The point of view is chiefly that of the manufacturer, since the special interests of other distributors are considered in a later Text. Nevertheless, the principles discussed are basic in all selling, and are as suggestive and im portant to the retailer, jobber, agent and broker as they are to the man who both manufactures his goods and sells them.