What is Marketing?

Marketing is engaging customers and managing profitable customer relationships. The twofold goal of marketing is to attract new customers by promising superior value and to keep and grow current customers by delivering value and satisfaction.

Definition: What is marketing?

Many people think of marketing as only selling and advertising. However, selling and advertising are only the tip of the marketing iceberg.

Today, marketing must be understood not in the sense of making a sale—“telling and selling”—but in the sense of satisfying customer needs.

If the marketer engages consumers effectively, understands their needs, develops products that provide superior customer value, and prices, and distribute and promotes them well, these products will sell easily.

In fact, according to management guru Peter Drucker, “The aim of marketing is to make selling unnecessary.”

Selling and advertising are only part of a larger marketing mix—a set of marketing tools that work together to engage customers, satisfy customer needs, and build customer relationships.

Broadly defined, marketing is a social and managerial process by which individuals and organizations obtain what they need and want by creating and exchanging value with others.

In a narrower business context, marketing involves building profitable, value-laden exchange relationships with customers.

Hence, we define marketing as the process by which companies engage customers, build strong customer relationships, and create customer value in order to capture value from customers in return.

 5 Steps of the Marketing Process

There is a very popular five-step model of the marketing process for creating and capturing customer value. In the first four steps, companies work to understand consumers, create customer value, and build strong customer relationships.

In the final step, companies reap the rewards of creating superior customer value. By creating value for consumers, they in turn capture value from consumers in the form of sales, profits, and
long-term customer equity. 

These steps are; 

1. Understanding The Marketplace And Customer Needs And Wants.
2. Designing A Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy.
3. Constructing an integrated marketing plan that delivers superior value.
4. Build Profitable Relationships.
5. Capturing Value From Customers.

Areas of Marketing