Online Christian Colleges with Business/Marketing Degrees

Are you intrigued by the field of marketing? If so have you looked for online Christian colleges with successful business programs? With Grace College’s online MBA or Business Administration bachelor’s degree, you can discover more about the skills needed in the world of business and earn the credentials to start or advance your career.

It’s generally accepted that entrepreneurs behave differently concerning marketing, according to Management & Marketing. Unfortunately, entrepreneurial marketing is not highly developed. “There is a strong need to develop tools, principles, and theories to help businesses — especially start-ups and small ones — to survive and thrive in an increasingly hostile and unpredictable environment.”

As you learn about the best online Christian colleges, keep discovering more about your field of interest. The following sections explore entrepreneurial marketing and how it contrasts with traditional marketing.

What Is Entrepreneurial Marketing?

One commonly used definition for entrepreneurial marketing says that it’s “proactive identification and exploitation of opportunities for acquiring and retaining profitable customers through innovative approaches to risk management, resource leveraging and value creation,” according to Management & Marketing.

Others believe the marketing process is fully assimilated into entrepreneurship. Instead of the market being a place for transactions, it’s a process that enables producers and consumers to co-produce and co-consume not only a product but a lifestyle and an identity. Thus, entrepreneurial marketing is, in this sense, a process of co-creating opportunities.

There are many other definitions for entrepreneurial marketing. But one thing that’s clear is that the concept is better understood when contrasted with traditional marketing.

Entrepreneurial Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing

There are four key concepts that separate entrepreneurial marketing from traditional marketing, according to the Journal of Research in Marketing in Entrepreneurship.

• Business Orientation: While traditional marketing is defined by customer orientation, entrepreneurial marketing is defined by entrepreneurial and innovation orientation. The former typically requires an assessment of market needs before developing a product, but the latter often starts with an idea and then tries to find a market for it.
• Strategic Level: A top-down approach is used in traditional marketing, where a clearly defined sequence of activities, such as segmenting, targeting and positioning, takes place. “Successful entrepreneurs practice a reverse process from the bottom up: once identified a possible market opportunity, an entrepreneur tests it through a trial-and-error process,” according to Management & Marketing. “After that, the company begins to serve the needs of some clients, and then expands as the entrepreneur, in direct contact with clients, finds out their preferences and needs. Later, new customers with a similar profile to those who have purchased the product are added.”
• Tactical Level: Entrepreneurial marketing doesn’t fit in with the “four Ps of (traditional) marketing” — product, price, place and promotion — because entrepreneurs adopt an interactive marketing approach that’s driven by their preference for direct and personal contact with customers. Entrepreneurs interact with customers through activities like personal selling and relationship marketing. From word-of-mouth marketing to online audience engagement methods, entrepreneurs are trying to connect with customers in a personal way. Even when, for instance, entrepreneurs create a nonprofit marketing plan, they are looking for messaging, tactics and more that abide by the key idea of interacting with and connecting to customers.
• Market Information Gathering: Entrepreneurs understand the importance of monitoring the marketing environment, but they use informal methods like personal observation or collecting information through their networks of contacts.

“It is surprising that the best practices of successful entrepreneurs often ignore traditional marketing concepts. Entrepreneurs declare that they do not use marketing, as they associate marketing with advertising, because they cannot afford high costs of communication. Moreover, entrepreneurs seem to be concerned about current, operational issues and seem to ignore long-term ones. Their approach does not follow the textbook discipline. But these appearances are deceptive: entrepreneurs practice a different kind of marketing, they are flexible in terms of tactics but are always concerned about how to provide long-term customer value. Their approach is not necessarily logical and sequential, rather unconventional and organic, because they “live” with their customers’ needs and preferences.”

–Management & Marketing

Advancing Your Career

There are many online Christian colleges where you can pursue a degree. But Grace is unique. An online Business Administration degree at Grace College provides you with a biblical framework for a career in today’s business world. As you consider an array of online Christian colleges for business, be assured that when you find your way to Grace, you will discover an accredited online college, and your Bachelor of Business Administration will be taught with a biblical worldview. A Grace Online business degree will help you make workable connections between economic growth and market-based business, preparing you to weigh questions and create conversation in a Christian college online context.