When I first joined Arapina’s family I had no idea what great opportunities are going to come my way! From my first day I dove in helping whichever way I could which meant making thousands of cookies, work both in the back & front of house and of course working at our stall at the Greenwich Market! I fell in love with the concept and the people instantly! After only a short while my interest in the creative side of the business became more and more visible and now I’m a part of our marketing team!

Hard work pays off!

I was a bit weary as I had no experience in the field but under the invaluable guidance of Michaela Pontiki – the founder of the company, and Nicola who is our PR representative I’m running Arapina’s social media sites, I help with perfecting our website contents, I’m designing a variety of new ways to improve our online publicity and marketing in general! With hard work & willingness anything is possible!

What is marketing?

Even though I use it one way or another every day marketing can be a bit confusing as a term, that’s only because there’s so many components to it. It’s a bit of advertising, sales, product development, graphic design and a whole lot of the ability to understand what the customer wants/ needs! Marketing is a vital aspect of any successful business and for me the easiest way to describe it is as a convenient communication line between the business and its customers.

All the gimmicks!

When I first started doing creative it was a bit overwhelming but then once I’ve been shown how to use all the useful applications and websites it became so much clearer & more enjoyable! We are living in the internet, apps & smartphone times after all… 

For our social media posts I use hootsuite which makes it very easy to schedule multiple posts on multiple sites simultaneously for longer periods of time. 

Mailchimp is a great straightforward platform to write & compose newsletters.

For all graphic design needs Adobe always comes to the rescue, whether it’s an urgent leaflet, a poster for an event or another chapter needs to be added to one of our manuals!

4 P’s

In the 1960’s, E Jerome McCarthy came up with the 4 Ps of marketing: product, price, place, promotion. They are supposed to explain how marketing interacts with each stage of the business.

Product

It’s all about research! Once you decide on the kind of business you are and what kind of products you’ll be selling you need to do market research to answer some critical questions about these products, targeted audience, market needs etc.

Price

It’s always worth to check on your competitors’ prices but it’s the industry research & consumer analysis/ feedback that will help you set a good price. Remember about the saying „You get what you pay for”!

Place

Now this one might be surprising but placement plays a great role not only in marketing but also sales! It’s important to understand where and how to sell your products.

Promotion

Online, print & word advertising! Raising awareness about the products which will (hopefully!) lead to more sales!

However, this has expanded with an additional 3 Ps  to included – Packaging, Positioning and People as outlined by respected entrepreneur Brian Tracy

Customer!

If you really think about it it’s all about the customer. The purpose of marketing is getting people interested in your product, idea or service. In Arapina it’s all of the above! “Where, when, and how does our consumer want to communicate with our business?” – I’m trying to understand that better every day to help increase awareness of Arapina’s concept & further our success. 

So we do enjoy the interaction and when people connect with us.  So connect with us on the platform of your choice:

Izabela’s Deputat