There are different models of new economy that will be present in Nesi that can help you find a fairer world but in all there is a problem you need to face sooner or later: how to sell your products or services and be consistent with your principles and values?
Marketing is usually the answer and this answer often scares entrepreneurs aa good heart because marketing is a word (and discipline) deeply rooted in capitalism. If you ask in your environment, marketing means pushing sales, create needs and even deceive people, that marketing is only "consumer", "goal" as the jargon of marketing calls it a bellicose manner.
But back to the beginning. In any company we have to sell something to someone. Can marketing help us do this by following our values? I'm sure you can just have to approach it with a fresh eye, as we are doing with economic models.
So what is marketing? According to Philip Kotler, considered the father of modern marketing, "marketing is the science and art of exploring, creating and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market at a profit" . There is nothing wrong with this definition!
Marketing is not about creating needs, or at least not only that. It is about creating value. To market our products and services we need to create value for our customers and extract value from them.
The marketing push is not about sales and make people buy when they need it by creating consumerist rituals like black friday , the Cyber Monday or one day . It is a tough sell, focused on a product that I have and that I have to sell: the old school marketing. Today, marketing is to find out what the customer wants, when and how, for how much and then create it and market it .
We must leave these red oceans full of competitors and fierce competition, and find and define blue oceans, new spaces where we can explore, create and deliver value and values. Following Kotler, "marketing mission is to raise material living standards worldwide and quality of life."
Therefore, our main and first challenge is to assess whether people, if the market is ready to consider more sustainable and conscious products and services raise their material life and quality of living. We need to create this "market" through awareness and evangelization to marketing our first goal is to explain why we are doing things differently.
Once we have a market that finds value in our product, we must find a fair price for the product. This price is delimited by two quantities: the bottom line, the cost of producing our product or service in a sustainable manner for the planet paying just all suppliers and top quantity, the value that the customer gets our product or service.
As for distribution or convenience it means that we need to put our product available to our customers wherever they want at the price you are willing to pay. This price is not only a monetary amount, but also the cost of finding and buying the product.
Our customers need to know how much it costs them, society, the environment, the future, get the product you want where you want. For example, we need to make visible e-commerce spending, both economically and ecologically as opposed to "all free" installed in the customer's mind. Only then the customer will choose freely.
What about the promotion, the last of the classic marketing 4ps? In a more contemporary approach we refer to it as communication: we need to reflect our values in our communication and seek a balance between the promotion of our products and the respect of a non-consumerist way of life.Difficult challenge ahead!
To summarize, we need to have a new marketing viable economy because companies need to have a profit to be sustainable and contribute to change the world. We will not change the world if we create products and services that people do not want to buy or a price that does not match the perceived value. When developing a marketing strategy for our business, we return to one of the pillars of the "good economy": the core of a model of new economy are the values and these have to be co-created in society from the bottom up . And remember, always marketing.