What is YOUR definition of Marketing?

[Young Recruit]

As I see it, marketing experts cannot explain what they do in a sentance of under 15 words, without using gobbldeegook words, so what hope do we have

Most small companies do not employ a marketing department, most big companies do,

Hi Chris,

Good points.

What kind of gobbldeegook do find most annoying?

JA

 

[Young Recruit]

I don't get my hands dirty.

Not sure where you got plasterer from, I've never plastered anything in my life.

Sorry Stretchy, marketing consultant yes, but I thought you were a builder after reading this thread about all of your other building and gardening businesses http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=163422&page=4 (post number 38) where you said you lay paving.

I presumed you did plastering because of your special wall application business.

JA

 

[S-Marketing]

Sorry Stretchy, marketing consultant yes, but I thought you were a builder after reading this thread about all of your other building and gardening businesses http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=163422&page=4 (post number 38) where you said you lay paving.

I presumed you did plastering because of your special wall application business.

JA

I see. As you are probably aware (as a regular reader of my posts) I operated a landscaping business whilst I was at University studying marketing, hence the paving expertise.

No, no plastering. Specialist wall covering application is a long winded way of saying we paint stuff. Granted, my guys can paint stuff that practically no-one else can paint in the time they can, or for the cost we can, but at the end of the day it's just painting stuff.

As I said, I don't get my hands dirty these days.

 

[directmarketingadvice]

Steve

That's a bit confusing. I was reading what is showing as your post and thinking ''that's odd, that sounds like what I wrote''.

Do you not agree that innovation is part of (or at the very least should be led by) marketing?

I think innovation should be customer focussed. There's no point in changing a product or service in a way that the market won't value.

("New coke", anyone?)

But finding out what the prospect would like is, IMO, "research".

And changing the product would be innovation. (Think about a car that's designed to get the best MPG - would the engineers building the engine be "marketers"?)

The marketing wouldn't, IMO, happen until it's time to tell the world about the changes.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Hi Chris,

Good points.

What kind of gobbldeegook do find most annoying?

JA

Cucumer sums it up rather well

 

[Chris Ashdown]

My question is why would a good salesperson or department not fully cover all that marketing describe as marketing, but good sales would clasify as sales or sales research

 

[S-Marketing]

I think innovation should be customer focussed. There's no point in changing a product or service in a way that the market won't value.

("New coke", anyone?)

But finding out what the prospect would like is, IMO, "research".

And changing the product would be innovation. (Think about a car that's designed to get the best MPG - would the engineers building the engine be "marketers"?)

The marketing wouldn't, IMO, happen until it's time to tell the world about the changes.

I see what you are saying. It would appear that we have completely opposite views as to what marketing actually is, so to continue this debate will send us round and round in circles.

 

[Steve Sellers]

I think the difference Chris is that marketers make deals, sales people close them so to speak. That to me is the big difference between the two.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using UK Business Forums

 

[Young Recruit]

My question is why would a good salesperson or department not fully cover all that marketing describe as marketing, but good sales would clasify as sales or sales research

Most businesses normally have one main goal - to make a profit.

On route to making a profit there are lots of different tasks that need to be done, i.e, choosing products and services to sell, hiring people, making your customers aware of you, maintaining records for the tax department, etc, etc, etc, amen!

When someone starts a business, they do all these tasks themselves. They are all 'departments', i.e; HR, Marketing and Sales (whatever they are!), Accounting, IT, Business strategy, operations, all rolled into one.

When a business begins to grow and new people are needed to share the task load, arguments about who should be doing what tasks develop. Sales and Marketing people are notorious for arguing about which tasks they own and who is responsible for developing the business.

JA

 

[SliQsw]

In my experience many people confuse marketing with promotion. Promotion is just one aspect of marketing. Marketing is about:

1 Identifying what you want your marketing to achieve
2. Identifying specifically who your customers are and what you know about them
then and only then do you ...
3. identify the most appropriate promotional tool to reach those customers.

By the way I have just been employed to do some marketing & customer support for a small accounting software company, SliQTools. I'm writing a series of blog posts about marketing. If anyone's interested message me and I'll send you the URL.

Interesting reading all the other comments here!

 

[Chris Ashdown]

But thats my point it is all selling from the salesman identifying who to sell to, where to find them and the best method of getting a sale out of them, be it via adverts, sponsership, direct sales etc

A salesman has to anylise what is selling and how to improve sales

Thats why it's always lumped together as Sales & Marketing and not a department on its own for most companies where the sales manager does the whole job

Therfore Marketing just a better sounding name than saleman sounds possher

 

[Young Recruit]

I think the difference Chris is that marketers make deals, sales people close them so to speak. That to me is the big difference between the two.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using UK Business Forums

I think this is generally how people see marketing and sales.

Also marketing is normally seen as a bit of 'fluffy' department/job/discipline, focused more on medium to long term, associated with difficult to measure things like brand equity.

Sales on the other hand is normally seen as being too focused on the short term, for example maximising next months sales figures at the expense of long term customer retention. In contrast to marketing, sales teams normally have easier to measure almost instant metrics, i.e weekly/monthly sales targets.

JA

 

[businessfunding]

In my book sales is the branch of marketing that deals with immediate needs and customer engagement. That still leaves big grey areas such as whether customer services is a sales function (I say yes)

Marketing itself, as pointed out is totally linked to pretty much every business function - why would you produce a high MPG engine if there was't a market for it?

Even forgotten functions such as credit control can impact or be impacted by marketing.

 

[S-Marketing]

In my book sales is the branch of marketing that deals with immediate needs and customer engagement. That still leaves big grey areas such as whether customer services is a sales function (I say yes)

Marketing itself, as pointed out is totally linked to pretty much every business function - why would you produce a high MPG engine if there was't a market for it?

Even forgotten functions such as credit control can impact or be impacted by marketing.

Exactly. I couldn't agree more.

If you want to have exceptionally good marketing, you need to understand that absolutely everything you do is marketing.

There is nothing a business does that shouldn't be led by marketing.

 

[Homshaw]

When I did my exams in accountancy it was the 4 Ps

It is about getting the right Product, in the right Place, at the right Price with the right Promotion

Is it important? Yes I see people excellent at what they do but fail because of poor marketing

 

[VapingStore]

Marketing = Hard Work!

 

[JamieBaker200]

When I did my exams in accountancy it was the 4 Ps

It is about getting the right Product, in the right Place, at the right Price with the right Promotion

Is it important? Yes I see people excellent at what they do but fail because of poor marketing

You have a good point out there because that topic is discussed not only in Accountancy but also in Business Administration courses as it is their main point.

1. Getting the right product is the first option as you will be going to decide. Know first the demands of the people as what I said earlier.

2. The place should be strategic enough. It is quite awkward if you install your business to a place far from the target clients. See to it that it should be located at the center of the City or somewhere where people can see it often.

3. Price is one major important consideration especially to customers. Being competitive enough will raise you from other competitors. Select price lower than them but much better quality to what they sell.

4. Promotion is the most important of all. The 3 things mentioned are the stages of plan before arriving to a good promotion. This will determine how many clients you may gain after promoting your products.

These are just my opinion about marketing. "Work Harder, Even Harder" if you want to "SUCCEED".

 

[thelegalstop]

It is an interesting thread, I`d love to read different definitions for marketing. In my opinion marketing is the ability to promote an idea - service or product- in the best possible way, through using the right channels.

 

[Young Recruit]

When I did my exams in accountancy it was the 4 Ps

It is about getting the right Product, in the right Place, at the right Price with the right Promotion

Is it important? Yes I see people excellent at what they do but fail because of poor marketing

These are still the main ingredients of your marketing mix, although even more P's have been added over the years!

JA

 

[JamieBaker200]

These are still the main ingredients of your marketing mix, although even more P's have been added over the years!

JA

You are right Young recruit. As years pass by, there are still more P's that have been added and in fact not only P's have been added but also other elements that innovated how marketing works. Plans and strategies have been altered from time to time.

 

[Young Recruit]

Marketing = Hard Work!

Short but sweet!

JA

 

[directmarketingadvice]

Marketing itself, as pointed out is totally linked to pretty much every business function - why would you produce a high MPG engine if there was't a market for it?

You wouldn't, but that doesn't mean that the engineering work required to design the engine is "marketing". Many of us would describe that as "engineering".

Or that the research you do to find out there's a market for such a market is "marketing" (rather than "research").

Steve

 

Marketing itself, as pointed out is totally linked to pretty much every business function - why would you produce a high MPG engine if there was't a market for it?

Because in the case of Fords new 3 cylinder ,its much cheaper to produce.

 

[Innovation]

After reading the 7 pages of posts , and all the marketing guy's not once did I read or see the word "INBOUND MARKETING" I believe inbound to be the most effective method

 

[JSmith]

Hi everyone,

It's clear from many discussions on this forum that marketing means different things to different people.

It would be interesting to hear what each of your definitions of marketing are and what you feel marketing has to do with your business. For example, is marketing really necessary? or is it an essential part of your business?

If possible could you please add to your post what your business does (if you have one) and how many employees you have?

Look forward to your responses,

JA.

I think marketing is essential part for every business.Actually day by day business tends to be increases so the competition b/w B2B and B2C also increases.Whenever there is a competition there will be a need for marketing to make business in sable for market.

 

[JSmith]

After reading the 7 pages of posts , and all the marketing guy's not once did I read or see the word "INBOUND MARKETING" I believe inbound to be the most effective method

Hello Sir,
I appreciate your points, I think yes,Inbound marketing is very useful. It means acquiring customers by attracting with exceptional content, data and customer service, not interrupting them with spam.

 

[Innovation]

Its not what You say - Its what others say about You

 

[directmarketingadvice]

Hello Sir,
I appreciate your points, I think yes,Inbound marketing is very useful. It means acquiring customers by attracting with exceptional content, data and customer service, not interrupting them with spam.

Are those the only 2 choices?

Steve

 

[directmarketingadvice]

Its not what You say - Its what others say about You

And, if they aren't saying anything about you, what do you do (that isn't "marketing")?

Or do you just give up?

Steve

 

[Innovation]

And, if they aren't saying anything about you, what do you do (that isn't "marketing")?

Or do you just give up?

Steve

Thats not marketing - come on , its the best form of marketing end of - do you disagree? no you do not give up , You are the marketing person here, name a better way of marketing

 

[directmarketingadvice]

Thats not marketing - come on , its the best form of marketing end of - do you disagree?

This thread is about definitions of marketing. You wrote,

"Its not what You say - Its what others say about You"

As for "the best", that depends. If you're making £10,000 a week from what you're saying, and only £100 a week from what others are saying, would you conclude what other people are saying is "the best"?

It's like saying the best form of marketing is to be in the situation where you're selling all your stock so easily, that doing any pro-active marketing doesn't increase your sales.

Well... great... now explain how you get to that point without marketing.

Steve

 

[SliQsw]

But thats my point it is all selling from the salesman identifying who to sell to, where to find them and the best method of getting a sale out of them, be it via adverts, sponsership, direct sales etc

A salesman has to anylise what is selling and how to improve sales

Thats why it's always lumped together as Sales & Marketing and not a department on its own for most companies where the sales manager does the whole job

Therfore Marketing just a better sounding name than saleman sounds possher

Hi Chris

Hmmm not sure about that one. There's a lot of overlap but if you take the 4 P's definition of marketing Product / Price / Place / Promotion I'm not sure that the Sales team are directly involved in shaping the product are they? Possibly more overlap re pricing. Or maybe in a small company where the sales person is also the person doing other things? Interesting debate...

 

[mattleescott]

Marketing is connecting the emotional needs of your target market to the unique benefits of your product or service.

..then building a relationship based on trust..

..sales usually comes as a by product..

Matt

 

[puresilva]

If you can improve upon the service or product you offer, then making it better makes it easier to sell. As simple and obvious as that sounds, for me that's a big part of marketing. Let's face it - who hasn't been pitched to before by a salesperson who spends all of their efforts creating smoke and mirrors simply because their product isn't that compelling? On the other side, there are products/services that sell themselves just on their feature lists.

 

[ridgeweb]

[FONT=&quot]There are many definition of marketing exist in world which depend on the different business. But in my point of view marketing is way to promote our product and services which is good for us as well as customer, client and society at large. But it is only significant for large business, not for small business. [/FONT]

 

[serendipitybusiness]

Over the years many of my clients or people I have advised, if not most at one point or another have mixed up sales and marketing and put them into one box. This is the way I explain it to illustrate how the two work separately...

Sales - is you are searching out the customer
Marketing - is you are helping the customer find you