Marketing defined. What is it? You hear the term used in a wide range of conversations: business, personal, and casual. All too often we lump the concept of marketing into advertising, sales, and other attributes or functions of marketing that are not, in themselves, marketing.
How do you define it? Pause and ponder a minute. Write the definition in your brain. Hold that thought and read on, because how you define marketing will define your small business. Marketing defined often means sales increased. Marketing defined also means customer satisfaction refined.
Before I define what marketing is, let’s clarify what it’s NOT.
Marketing is NOT:
- Sales
- Public Relations
- Advertising
- Branding
- Messaging
- Management
- Communicating
- Networking
These preceding bullets are aspects of marketing, but ultimately, they are only means to your marketing ends. Think essence not attribute. The essence of marketing is the active and sustained process that delivers the product or service to your customer. An attribute, such as advertising, is a means to an end, but not the end. An attribute is a piece of the puzzle, but it does not complete the puzzle:
So what do you think?
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