what is marketing?
July 15th, 2009
“Marketing is an integrated communications-based process through which individuals and communities discover that existing and newly-identified needs and wants may be satisfied by the products and services of others.
Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as 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. The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market, as in shopping, or going to a market to buy or sell goods or services.
Marketing practice tended to be seen as a creative industry in the past, which included advertising, distribution and selling. However, because marketing makes extensive use of social sciences, psychology, sociology, mathematics, economics, anthropology and neuroscience, the profession is now widely recognised a science, allowing numerous universities to offer Master-of-Science (MSc) programmes. The overall process starts with marketing research and goes through market segmentation, business planning and execution, ending with pre and post-sales promotional activities. It is also related to many of the creative arts. The marketing literature is also infamous for re-inventing itself and its vocabulary according to the times and the culture.”
This is wikipedia’s take on marketing, or at least the masses that make wikipedia what it is (whether this is always to everyone’s advantage is another point at all) – read more on their site at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing .
In the language of normal people, marketing can be said to be those activities that tell people about your products and services so that they start using it.
We can expand a lot more on this statement by adding qualifiers such as “bringing it to front of mind”, “ensuring return business”, “unique product placement”, etc. but in the end it all comes down to making people aware of your products/services and the advantages they offer.
In further articles, I’ll deal with the basics of marketing, strategies, tips and tricks and where you can promote yourself in order to best reach your market and communicate with them in a way that they will understand.
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