What Is Marketing?

Marketing…

In plain and simple terms, marketing activities and strategies result in making products available that satisfy customers while making profits for the companies that offer those products.

Good marketing produces a win-win situation because:

• Customers have a product that meets their needs and healthy profits are achieved for the company.
• These profits allow the company to continue to do business in order to meet the needs of future customers. This bares repeating — NO Profits — NO Business. Even ‘Non-Profits’ bring in enough funds to cover overhead and special project expenses.

Stated another way, focus on what the customer wants is essential to successful marketing efforts. This customer-orientation must also be balanced with the company’s objective of maintaining a profitable volume of sales in order for the company to continue to do business. Marketing is a creative, ever-changing orchestration of all the activities needed to accomplish both these objectives.

How Are The Customer And Business Objectives Met?

The American Marketing Association’s definition of marketing is: the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives.

You see in the above definition that the process of marketing begins with discovering what products customers want to buy. Providing the features and quality customers want is a critical first step in marketing. You’ll be facing an uphill battle if you provide something you want to produce and then try to convince someone to buy it.

The marketing process continues with setting a price, letting potential customers know about your product, and making it available to them.

What Activities Are Included In Marketing?

Marketing activities are numerous and varied because they basically include everything needed to get a product off the drawing board and into the hands of the customer. The marketing process includes activities such as designing the product so it will be desirable to customers, using tools such as marketing research and pricing, and promoting the product so people will know about it, using tools such as public relations, advertising, marketing communications, and exchange with the customer, through sales and distribution.

It is important to note that the field of marketing includes sales, as well many other functions. Some people incorrectly assume that marketing and sales are the same – they are not.

In our next Pleiades Publishing Services Blog we’ll review “How Marketing Fits Into the Company Structure”

I’m a very capable marketing technician. I’ve been trained to know what to do, and why, to what probable result. Over the years, as both a content developer for Pleiades’ clients and as a SBDC counselor, I’ve had lots of practice and plenty of lessons learned. Joe Vitale, however is a “Guru status, marketing maven. He knows all of the above and executes with panache. Any marketing book by Joe is a good business investment.

As a retired SBDC counselor, I know where to find business-related information — both online and IRL. In this case my marketing source is a SBA publication (Ohio Women’s Business Network, Columbus, OH, 6/97). For individual business support with any aspect of your business contact the nearest SBA-sponsored Small Business Development Center.

Serial Entrepreneurs Love to Market!