What is Marketing?

To the average business person, marketing equals promotion. The problem with defining the term "marketing" is that it is a broad domain, that covers nearly every strategic element of business.

Marketing is what you say and how you say it when you want to explain how awesome your product is and why people should buy it.

Marketing is an ad. Marketing is a brochure. Marketing is a press release. And more recently, Marketing is a Facebook page, Instagram, or Twitter account.

Marketing is the process of getting potential clients or customers interested in your products and services. Marketing involves researching, promoting, selling, and distributing your products or services.

The purpose of marketing is to generate revenue for an organization. Marketing professionals and teams achieve this through the execution of strategic digital activities that drive traffic, qualified leads, and sales, in direct collaboration with their sales team.

1.1 - Definition of Marketing

The definition of marketing is the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising. 

Today, marketing is something that every company and organization must implement in its growth strategy. Many companies use marketing techniques to achieve their goals without even realizing it. 

Marketing refers to actions a company or organization takes to promote themselves and increase sales of their product or service. It is one of the key aspects of the business. People often do not know exactly what marketing is and when asked, they define it as selling or advertising.

While these answers are not wrong, they are only a part of marketing. It involves many other things like product distribution, promotion, designing, and creating materials like landing pages and social media content.

 Marketing is very broad and includes all strategies that help a company, brand, or individual achieve its objectives. Marketing to many business people is simply selling at a larger scale.

The reality is that marketing sits at the intersection of the business and the customer – the great arbiter of the self-interests of the business and the needs of the buyer.

Marketing consists of two words: to market and to get, so marketing is actually about ways of getting or winning the market before your competitors do the same.

Quick Takeaways:

• At a fundamental level, marketing is the process of understanding your customers, and building and maintaining relationships with them.
• Marketing is the key to an organization’s success, regardless of its size.
• There are several types and sub-types of marketing, digital and offline. You should determine and pursue the ones that work best for you.
• Marketing and Sales teams need to have a unified approach. Automation helps them work towards the same goals.

Marketing is not about who can talk faster, or close better. It is about the deep psychological understanding of customer needs. If the business is composed of marketing and innovation, and marketing is about deep customer insights, then marketing is the job of every employee.

Social media has only made this point painfully clear: every employee is an extension of the brand. The brand serves to meet the needs of the customer and the business serves to innovate.

In order to motivate people to pay for your product or service, or to consider your organization superior to your competitors, you need to create meaningful benefits and value for the consumer.

There’s more to it than this, but you get the idea. Marketing is a process that can span years. The brands that win more customers are the ones who put their customers ahead of their desire to sell more stuff. The business that wins becomes known and trusted as the brand that solves customer pain points along their buyer journey.

The design of the product or service itself can be a function of marketing. The value that a marketer should seek to create should be equal to or even greater than the cost of the product to the consumer. Doing this often and consistently will grow trust in, and loyalty towards the brand and create strong brand equity

Great marketers are passionate teachers, giving away their expertise with only the hope that they are helping people.

The business benefit is in establishing trust, and building an audience of people who believe in you to help them in times of need.

Marketing starts by asking consumers who they are, what they want, and what they care about.  I would say: "marketing is having a feel of what people may want, and give them more than they expected to get"

Learn Digital Marketing @ The Dynamic Marketer