Table of Contents
What is Marketing? Part 1
Marketing is one of the most important activities for any business organisation. As such I shall discuss the same in several parts, each 5 to 10 minutes reading time, so newcomers can comfortably read and understand the whole matter in a simplified way. The first part is on what is marketing.
As per AMS (American Marketing Association) marketing is the activity defined by an organisation for creating, communicating, delivering and/or exchanging offerings that have transit or intrinsic value for a client, business partners and sometimes for society as a whole.
However, people are often confused what is the jurisdiction of marketing and sales. One needs to be very clear about the difference between Sales and marketing. Indeed, these two are the most important pillars of any organisation and often cross one other’s area. There is also a wide variation of the responsibilities and activities from business to business. However, there are some accepted definitions that I want to discuss here.
In the simplest form, Marketing attracts customer’s attention towards their own products, makes differentiation and generates leads for products or services. Sales, on the other hand, works directly with prospects to reinforce the value of the company’s solution to convert prospects into customers.
Marketing Vs Sales
While these two business functions are different, they both share a common goal: to attract prospects and convert them to customers, ultimately generating revenue. However, there are some conflicts also we can see in practicality. “Sales departments tend to believe that marketers are out of touch with what’s really going on with customers. Marketing believes the sales force is myopic — too focused on individual customer experiences, insufficiently aware of the larger market, and blind to the future. In short, each group often undervalues the other’s contributions.” No, No! It is not my comment but nicely explained by Philip Kotler who is one of the most regarded authors of several books on marketing with authoritative knowledge.
Marketing Now Vs Then
We all agree that marketing was not so prominent in past, and sales were doing the most related to selling a product. And in today’s world marketing is the most spoken subject and attracts the highest investment, especially for consumer products. Sometimes marketing hype and innovation make us spellbound. The below diagram can give a distinct differentiation what was in past and what is in today’s world.
Some more views on what is marketing.
“To impress to get”. It is my thought and I feel it can be the smallest definition which gives the deepest insight of the purpose f marketing.
Let’s see what other experts said.
# As explained above, marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. (AMA)
# Marketing refers to activities a company undertakes to promote the buying or selling of a product, service, or good. (Wiki)
# 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, by which an organisation communicates to, connect with, and engages its target audience to convey the value of and ultimately sell its product and services. (Julie Barile)
# Marketing is a process by which a firm profitably translates customer needs into revenue. (Mark Burgess)
# Marketing is building your brand, convincing people that your brand is best and protecting the relationship you build with your customers. (Clayman)
# Marketing is creating irresistible experiences that connect with people personally and create the desire to share with others. (Saul Colt)
# Marketing is how you tell your story to attract customers, partners, investors, employees and anyone else your company interacts with. (Jeff Cutler)
# Marketing is delighting a customer, customer and/or user to achieve a profit or other pre-established goal. (Steve Dickstein)
# Marketing is essentially involved in outward communication, in promoting the corporate goals of the company it is serving. (Antoine Didienne)
# Marketing is branding, naming, pricing and the bridge between paid and earned media. (Gini Dietrich)
# Marketing is about knowing the market, creating the right product, creating desire of the product and letting the right people know you have it. (Gini Dietrich)
# Marketing is helping people to know your products and services (Jason Falls)
# Marketing is the business playmaker. (Sam Fiorella)
# Marketing is the act of developing and engaging relationships with every single human being who shows an interest in you. (P. Flanigan)
# Marketing is the process of exposing target customers to a product through appropriate tactics and channels, gauging their reactions and feedback, and ultimately facilitating their path to purchase. (Dr Augustine F.)
# Marketing is the word we use to explain how we encourage people to buy our products. (Lois Geller)
# Marketing is making connections between customers with your products, brands and business, such that they are likely to buy from you. (Sam Decker)
Did you enjoy reading the definition? I enjoyed and it gives great clarity when our brain sums up the different concepts to one.
I came across these definitions at different times and on different platforms, defined by many well-known authors and capturing in one place in brief so that you may also relate yourselves with the thoughts. None of these is wrong and none of these is complete too in my view. Especially, the marketing concept, ideas, base, process and technique evolved a lot with time. Especially when the world became a global village at the end of the twentieth century and when digitisation took the lead for almost everything. So, whatever the thoughts, came out from experts in different decades may not be appropriate or cover the vastness of the thoughts of the next decades. And some radical changes in the last one decade with inclusion and several new thoughts, technologies, and products. And the quest going to continue at a faster pace.
Modern Marketing
When I disagree with the stalwart of authoritative knowledge, I need to give some defensive explanation to say I do not disrespect them but trying to say something more contemporary on the foundation stone they made. The majority of the most popular marketing book was written several decades back. The fundamentals they explained are mostly right but the world has changed so much in the last two decades which was not in the last two centuries. Marketing is one of the areas where we find radical changes with massive technological advancement and the availability of vast choices. The way of doing business changed a lot especially the sharp change that happened post covid eta. So, I shall cover the topic widely collecting the thoughts and blending them with my own knowledge in this blog in subsequent posts, may not be serially but surely shall cover most of the aspects one sales and marketing professional should know. Follow it and live in the contemporary world.
Check this blog for part 2.
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