Exchanges for the Win

The exchange is incredibly important component of marketing. I'm going to go over the key parts of an exchange, and explain why they are important to marketing. This is relevant in real-life marketing, as well as Internet marketing.

The first thing I will mention, is that there have to be two parties involved in any marketing transaction. Obviously you can't sell something to yourself, so that's fine of the parties needed. Perhaps you could sell something to yourself to avoid some sort of tax liability, but that's not what this discussion is about.

The second important portion of an exchange, is that both people have something that the other person wants. As I've mentioned previously, in most cases the customer has money and the company has a product. This could be an idea, a service, or anything else you can imagine selling. It's not the most complex idea, but it's easy to forget that these things need to be there in order for transactions to work.
The third portion of this discussion involves communication. If you cannot communicate with your customer, or your customer cannot communicate with you, you're not likely to get a sale. You also need to have a way of actually delivering your product, and your customer needs to have a way of delivering their money to you. This seems simple, but too often marketers forget this is required component to marketing. You can market all day, but if you don't have adequate communication and delivery, you're not actually going to get anywhere.

The fourth portion of an exchange is that both parties have free will. If you don't have the ability to actually make a decision, you cannot successfully market successfully and facilitate an exchange. Both parties need to be given an offer, and then they need to either accept or reject this offer. If that freedom is not there, the transaction cannot occur.

The fifth and final thing I will mention, is that reputation is important. You have to get past social norms and taboos to be able to market. Each party has to think that it's okay to deal with the other party. This is why I had mentioned that in marketing, it's very important to maintain a good reputation. If people believe it's good to deal with your company, or even outstanding or desirable, you're going to gain more transactions.

So after all this discussion, I have to say, this still doesn't guarantee that you're actually sell a product. However, all these things need to be true for an exchange to actually take place. So if you're really serious about marketing, you should be aware of all these things. Here is a relevant video about the basics of marketing.