In the affiliate space, the word marketing gets thrown around a lot, but what many Agencies, Networks, and Affiliates forget, is that there is much more behind the word than we care to think about. When you’re done reading this post, I would like you to walk away with a more three dimensional concept of what encompasses the nature of our business.
The primary purpose of marketing is to create a long-term and mutually beneficial exchange of relationships between an entity and its external and or internal elements, with which it interacts. The nature in which these preceding functions stem from, surround keynote principles that facilitate five questions you should ask of yourself, and or your employing organization:
1. How do I define my organization’s business, mission, and goals?
2. How would I identify and frame my organizational growth opportunities?
3. Should I consider formulating product market strategies?
4. Can I contribute or promote better budgeting solutions for marketing, financial, and production resources?
5. How would I approach or engage a reformulation and recovery strategy?
On a more simplistic level:
1. What might we do?
2. What do we do best?
3. What must we do?
Asking yourself these questions will allow you to search deeper into the growth capacities that you can achieve within your organization. Remember, being proactive in answering these questions will allow you to become more competitive in both your product offering and in your ability to resolve and sustain the most optimum level of business success.
Once you’ve surveyed the internal capacity of you organization, you can then determine where your organization tiers within its own industry, as well as against its competing forces. In an effort to build and maintain a long term, mutually beneficial exchange of relationships, you must also consider the safety and longevity of one’s own organization, bearing in mind that competition is always eminent. In doing so please consider the (5 forces model).

Factors that underline companies competing in the industry:
1. Rivalry among competing firms
2. Bargaining power of suppliers
3. Bargaining power of buyers
4. Threat of new entrants
5. Threat of substitute products or services.
As I close this excerpt, I’d like to leave you with this; not one of these factors alone, will guarantee successful business growth. But, if you incorporate all of these congruent aspects of "marketing" YOU WILL have a more thorough premise, denoting both your limitations as well as your potential gains as a business. All in all, this will most surely increase your levels of success, and bring you that much closer to your organizational goals and objectives.
Posted by Fernando