What's Marketing?

Marketing is quite a broad term, such that no one definition can positively get into all what it entails. You are thus better off with an understanding of what it involves and how you can use this to your advantage. Suppose you are working on a company that sells men’s jeans. Where would marketing come into the picture? Well, marketing is all about getting people interested in those jeans such that they are willing to demand them. That demand translates to sales which in turn give you profits. That is marketing in a nutshell, but it goes deeper than this.

Creating demand is not as easy as it sounds. It’s not that you will post the jeans on a social site and get tons of replies within a few hours without doing some work beforehand. You need to do some market research and figure out what men want in their jeans and what trends are taking over the market. You also need to analyze your target consumers and figure out what draws them to specific products and what drives them away. What are their interests and how can you meet them using the jeans you have in mind?

Now, all that information you get from studying the target audience is what you will use in the making, distribution, sale, and promoting of your jeans. And this is what we refer to as marketing. It is not only about the final product, but it also encompasses the processes that take place to result in that pair of jeans that will have people reaching into their pockets for a feel of that good quality.

Is marketing a promotion?

The best way to answer this would be no. Promotion is one of the aspects of marketing in that it is one of the processes that you use to get your products to the intended audience. Most people pay for promoting as they seek to create awareness about their brands. Take an example of if you want to sell your jeans and your target audience is youthful. The chances are high that you will conduct the campaign on social media sites where you can pay for ads and customize them based on the people that you have in mind.

Marketing, on the other hand, is much broader as it involves coming up with strategies to use the information gained to not only develop, but also distribute and sell the product while getting feedback from the consumers. Thus, in the example above, the promoting was a part of the bigger picture, which is marketing, in that its success hinges on whether the research and analysis in play were as per the 4Ps of marketing. Wondering what this is? Check out our blog on this and find out more.