What is your understanding of marketing?

[FarahW]

Hi guys -

I have joined SBF and its sister site (at least, I think they are sister sites) and I have noted some interesting discussions on marketing.

Being in marketing, one the biggest battles I often face repeatedly is fighting misinformation disseminated by companies or organizations who have a poor grasp on marketing and its inherent dilemmas but choose to "fake it till they make it" (and often choose to charge an absurd amount of money for their charade).

When Jake very kindly invited me to pen a piece on the fundamentals of marketing, it got me wondering about Australian popular opinion and I thought I'd take an impromptu survey: what is your understanding of marketing? What do you think it entails, and when should marketing start (e.g. when a company enters the market, or when sales start to dwindle, etc)?

P.S. It would help me a lot to understand your answer as well if you tell me your industry/background/occupation.

[v2Media]

Marketing is process of communicating business offerings to potential and existing customers, associates or business partners. What, when, where, why and to whom these communications are directed is a fundamental part of marketing. Marketing also includes additional processes for measuring the success of communications, usually by additional information gathering during the sale/exchange. So marketing covers the creation, delivery, analysis, reporting and fine tuning of communications of business offerings to the target market.

[JakeThomas]

I always have difficulty answering this question, trying to work it right.

Mainly, I see marketing as your all encompassing strategy - everything from your logo (or any design for that matter), your website, your social media, your staff etc.

Whereas I believe advertising is when your are communicating directly to your customers.

I'm sure there is a better way to explain it!

- Jake

[v2Media]

That sums up advertising nicely to me Jake. Have you considered indirect communications to customers though? When a customer recommends your business to another customer, your business is being advertised indirectly. The more you delve into the possible routes of communication, the more you see advertising as merely a vehicle being steered by marketing.

[FarahW]

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my question guys!

v2Media, you are right, communications is an integral part of marketing! And I suppose that is why a lot of people think marketing is advertising, because of the element of trying to convey something to the customer. So if you feel marketing is about communications, when do you think marketing should begin?

Jake you're right when you say marketing is all encompassing. That is often the reason why many people confuse it with sales. It has an interesting co-relation with advertising because marketers often see it as an avenue of support for marketing, whereas people in advertising often feel it is its own arena. I think you're trying to point out, more specifically, that advertising is a paid presentation or promotion. As a print and design business where do you suppose you fit in (especially since I gather from your response you feel design is part of marketing)?

However, v2Media brought up the idea of word-of-mouth influence also, which he interestingly enough has catagorized under advertising. I am assuming (please correct me if I'm wrong), that he has done so because it is very often known as "word-of-mouth advertising". So where do you guys feel that public relations fits in under all this?

[Chris Bates]

Bit of a pandoras box isn't it? Could it really be summed up in one paragraph?

I agree with Jake that your marketing is all encompassing - from your branding, to your messages (USP, Value Props, etc), to your product design, to your website/brochures/business cards, etc etc etc.

To me advertising is a subset of marketing, it's a specific action - there's no line where marketing ends and advertising starts. Whereas WoM is another subset of marketing, having a strategy in place to promote WoM.

Sales is one of many metrics used to measure the effectiveness of marketing.

As a curve ball, I also consider split-testing an aspect of marketing.

[FarahW]

Hi Chris -

Thanks for taking the time to reply!

You're right that it is hard to sum up marketing sometimes in a succinct manner that can really convey the concept. What is interesting is that in the UK, USA, and France have all come up with definitions that have different slants to it.

It is definitely a surprise that you suddenly brought in split-testing. By split testing do you mean A/B testing or multivariate? It's interesting to me that you would bring up a method usually defined as statistical analysis as a subset of marketing. Perhaps it just goes to show that with the amazing amount of information available to us now, it is getting harder to just be aware of one aspect of business without getting involved in another, and invariably they all overlap!

So when do you think marketing should begin?

Farah

[JakeThomas]

PS: Just out of curiosity, what is out sister site?

- Jake

[v2Media]

It is definitely a surprise that you suddenly brought in split-testing. By split testing do you mean A/B testing or multivariate? It's interesting to me that you would bring up a method usually defined as statistical analysis as a subset of marketing. Perhaps it just goes to show that with the amazing amount of information available to us now, it is getting harder to just be aware of one aspect of business without getting involved in another, and invariably they all overlap!

Are you proposing that analysis of marketing effectiveness is not part of marketing? Marketing has no special exemption from testing and analysis. Do you just come up with the strategy/plan and outsource analysis of effectiveness to a 3rd party?

In regards to indirect advertising from a previous post, I'd hardly label a customer referral as marketing. Should a deliberate marketing action be in place to increase referrals, that referral may be attributed to marketing. But at the end of the day, what does it matter if you label it advertising or marketing?

I see marketing, advertising and sales as interdependent; you can't have one without the others (or absence thereof). Inevitably the distinction between them blurs and trying to pigeon-hole everything into one of them is folly. I can't see any advantage in ripping out the labelling machine here.

[v2Media]

And I think I just contradicted myself...