Have you ever wondered what is marketing? As NAIWE’s Branding and Marketing Expert, I thought it might be helpful for our members to define marketing terms, starting with the definition of marketing. It’s a term you hear frequently, but have you ever wondered exactly what it means?

What Is Marketing?

To get started, let’s explore the definition of marketing. Many use the term marketing synonymously with advertising, and while advertising is part of it, marketing is much more than the methods you use to promote your goods and services.

Marketing Is More Than Advertising

Thirty years ago when I entered the marketing profession, I thought marketing was only about advertising, too.

Marketing was what you did to promote your products. It might mean the promotional activities we did to get the word out to the customers that we had this product or that service. Sometimes, it meant thinking about prices, such as discounts. It also meant who were were selling to – what marketers call the target audience.

To better understand the full definition of marketing, it may be helpful to look at a traditional way of defining it, called the “four P’s” of marketing. (Today, many have added other “P” words to the definition, but for the purposes of this article, we will stick with the traditional four-P model.)

In 1960, E. Jerome McCarthy introduced a simple phrase, the four P’s of marketing, to summarize this concept: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.

• Product refers to the goods or services sold
• Price refers to how goods or services are priced vis a vis the competition
• Place refers to both the geographic area, such as the United States, the industry, or the people we sell to (the target audience)
• Promotion refers to the method by which we get the word out.

It is the intersection of these four core concepts that form the basis of marketing. Marketing management means the overall guidance of the marketing program, including assessing the products and services, determining the audience for them, pricing goods or services in relation to the marketplace, and then promoting the benefits and features of the goods and services to the target audience with the goal of making revenue.

The Ever-Changing Dynamics of Marketing

When I was a little girl, my dad’s company held an annual company picnic every June. They used to give the children “goody bags” filled with small toys. One such toy that always fascinated me was a toy called a fidget, or a space fidget. It was a small, round disc, about three inches in diameter. The back was white plastic, and the front was clear plastic, and in between was a liquid that changed colors if you pressed it or drew your fingernail across the plastic. It looked a little like the colorful pictures one sees of galaxies. It was oddly soothing but ever-changing; if your fidget created a really neat picture, in one second, it could disappear just by putting the toy in your pocket.

Marketing is a lot like that little space fidget toy. The colors that swirled and danced between the two sheets of plastic are like the marketplace itself, dynamic and ever-changing. There’s a consistency about it, like the fidget, but it is always changing, too. Fidget colors were pink or green, and that was always the same, but the patterns it made changed depending on how it was shaken or touched.

We have the same dynamic in marketing today. Some elements of marketing are constant. People always want good things cheaply or for free! (Product and price). Marketers always struggle to get attention (promotion) for their products and services. And the target marketing (place) can be fickle.

Your marketing approach must strike a balance between changing to adapt to shifting circumstances and the consistency needed to gain traction in a cluttered, saturated marketplace.

How you handle this depends on many things, and we will talk about this in subsequent blog posts as we get more granular about key marketing concepts.

Key Takeaways for Independent Writers and Editors

1. The term marketing is often used synonymously with advertising, but the two terms mean different things. 
2. Advertising (promotion) is one of four aspects that comprise modern marketing. 
3. It may be helpful to think of marketing as the intersection of four “P’s.”
4. The four P’s are product, price, place, and promotion.
5. Considering all four aspects will help you market your products and achieve positive revenue.

What questions do you have for me about marketing? I’d love to answer them. Drop me a note through NAIWE or at jeanne@sevenoaksconsulting.

About Jeanne Grunert

I’m a writer and marketing expert with over 30 years of experience. My company, Seven Oaks Consulting, provides business-to-business marketing services for technology and manufacturing companies. My fiction and non-fiction books may be found on Amazon.com.