What is "marketing"...

One of my pet peeves is how often "Marketing" is confused with some of its components, such as advertising, or with the selling process and sales. This isn't just done by a customer, who perceives that being on the receiving end of television advertising or a sales call is being "marketed" to. Well-known and popular motivational speakers and sales consultants use "marketing" interchangeably with "advertising", "promotion", "selling" - which provides some great ideas and incentives, but sets up a distorted and inaccurate paradigm for their audience to follow - describing one-shot activities that do not follow an integrated strategy.

I believe that it is critical that marketing professionals and business leaders have a firm understanding of what marketing is, is not, and understand the strategic and planning processes of marketing. Marketing should start with an environmental assessment - thorough company and market intelligence, leading to a well-planned integrated set of marketing mix strategies, and ending with an ongoing process for control, including budget planning, performance measurement and strategy adjustment. Otherwise it isn't marketing - it is one of the components of marketing and should be positioned as such.

Marketing's objective is to define the best customer and ensure that all touch points - through product design and packaging, pricing, communication and distribution channels and messages - are lined up with that target customer's behaviors and interests. Internet technology allows anyone to sell at any level, but ultimately is doing a great job of driving marketing and selling industries to become more disciplined in their processes and planning, due to the need to have a solid foundation allowing them to be intelligently and rapidly responsive in a way that gets measurable results.

The many marketing definitions by recognized authorities focus on identifying customer needs and wants, and communicating those within the organization that is producing the goods and services, and then communicating to the “buyer” how the organization can meet those needs and wants better than any other alternative.

• Marketing on the Internet (MOTI) says that, “In general, marketing activities are all those associated with identifying the particular wants and needs of a target market of customers, and then going about satisfying those customers better than the competitors.”

• Text-book author and professor Philip Kotler’s definition is that, “Marketing is a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others.” Philip Kotler. Marketing Management.

• According to the Self-Management Institute (SMI), “Marketing is a comprehensive business activity for conveying value to potential customers.”

• Legendary Harvard Marketing Professor Theodore Levitt, who passed away last year, described the objectives of marketing mix elements in straightforward terms in saying that, “The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer. To do that you have to produce and deliver goods and services that people want and value, at prices and under conditions that are reasonably attractive relative to those offered by others.”

The bottom line for any marketing plan is improving incoming revenue streams. The ultimate test of performance for any private sector organization is profitability. For public organizations, it is increased or maintained funding. For a non-governmental organization, it is stable or increasing donations and grants. Because of the focus on near-term revenue streams, it is difficult for most organizations to focus on long-term prospects, which are critical for stable growth.

David Aaker in his book, Strategic Marketing, says that it is necessary for an organization to set strategies that look at trends and growing customer groups that may impact their service or product ‘sales’ over time, and incorporate measures that reflect long-term viability and health for the organization. These measures can include market standing (market share / market position), product value and performance, relative cost, new product activity (both within the organization and with competitors), manager development and performance, and employee productivity and attitude.

Often companies, especially new or smaller companies, don’t have separate marketing divisions or employees. The executive team or sales department sets the direction for the organization’s products and / or services, with the perspective that common sense decisions about the product and sales channels will suffice. Too often this direction is set internally from the perspective of the product or service development divisions, rather than by strategically evaluating customer groups and their needs, or the impacts that the legal, political, economic and other environmental will have on marketing decisions. For these young companies or companies that have gotten into the mode of selling a relatively successful product over a long period of time, marketing often becomes an exercise in advertising technical features in well-known channels, rather than promoting the benefits that meet current targeted customer group interests.

Based on your current perception of marketing, how would you define the function of marketing within your organization?

Do you think a marketing plan would be needed for a not-for-profit organization like the Red Cross? or a government organization - like USPS or your public school system? Is it feasible to do this based on customer segmentation and targeting?