What's Marketing?

What is marketing? MarketingProfs has an answer.

First things first. Let’s get the definitions straight right from the beginning so we all know what we mean when we say marketing. There is always a bit of confusion about the difference between sales and marketing, and for that matter exactly what marketing is and does anyway. A simple answer I’ve used before is this: marketing is everything that happens before the phone rings, and sales is everything that happens after the phone rings.

Now, this is a very simplistic definition, but it helps break down the areas of responsibility. Marketing has three major areas of responsibility in my opinion:
- Defining the product or service and how it differentiates itself in the market (differentiation)
- Defining the target set of prospects or customers (segmentation)
- Determining the best way to communicate the benefits of the solution to those that need it (communication and channels)

These are the things that have to happen to make a sales person’s phone ring. Sales then owns the responsibility to help a customer understand the differences between various solutions and why our solution is better than a competitors.

Three major areas of responsibility

Above I’ve identified three major areas of responsibility – or maybe four if you’d like to break out communication and channels as separate. Let’s do a quick review of the history of marketing to see how that aligns with other noted experts in the field. Several earlier thinkers and writers defined the four “P”s (note that since marketers are fairly simple minded everything becomes a mnemonic). The traditional four “P”s according to Kotler and others are:

- Product – what am I trying to market and sell
- Price – what price should I communicate (since that also communicates value)
- Promotion – what should I say and communicate to my audience
- Place – what channels should I use to communicate these messages

Later, many other marketers felt this four P model was too product centric and not customer centric. So the four Ps became – you guessed it – four Cs. Here are several variations of the four C model:

- Customer Needs – not product driven – what does the customer want or need?
- Communication – what interaction do I have with a customer? This is not one way
- Cost – what does my product cost the customer? Not just to buy, but also to own long term
- Convenience – can I make it easy to buy and own the product or service

Another four “C” model:

- Capabilities – what capabilities does my product or service offer
- Customers – what do my customers and prospects need
- Competitors – what products, services and messages do my competitors offer
- Conditions – what are the conditions of the market

As marketing matures as a discipline, we can see the evolution of thought from a product centric viewpoint to a customer centric viewpoint – and even to a market centric viewpoint.