First day and lesson one (marketing basics)

Hello everyone!

This is our first post to our shiny new WordPress company blog. Yesterday we had our first lesson (course planning and marketing), our first step into what hopefully will become a (not only) translation agency. This lessons come in five hour sessions with a thirty minute intermission, so do not expect me to sum up everything said everyday because we would be here, well, all day.

Let me introduce myself: my name is Begoña. Friends and people without the letter ñ in their keyboards call me Bego. I am a translator and interpreter living in Cartagena. Of course, I cannot pass this opportunity of introducing you to my daughter Lucía. María and Marina (at the moment, the other 66.66…% of this project) will also hopefully be posting here in the near future.
So, without further ado…

Lesson one: Marketing basics

In our first lesson, we learn that the purpose of marketing is identifying and satisfying needs (In Spanish: identificar y satisfacer necesidades). Historically, companies have focused their efforts on either production (just produce, produce, produce), product (we create the best x), sales (just sell, sell, sell) or marketing (we study the market and act accordingly). Here you have a very interesting summary of what was said about marketing, and I suspect of what will be said today (more or less) (you just have to love Google).

The challenging sentence of the day:

If you want your business to survive, you have to base your marketing policies in human needs instead of in specific products or services.

So, what is the human need behind the translation/interpreting market? I think the answer is communication. What about you? The floor is open.