Marketing, as a discipline, has not been with us for a long time. Marketing’s earliest forms, present in “awareness” elements such as magazines, billboards and posters, date back to less than 300 years ago. In the modern world, after new mediums such as radio, we have only been practicing marketing as we know it for less than 100 years.
Ask two people to define marketing and you’ll inevitably get two different definitions, some of which overlap.
When television hit in the mid ’50s, marketing took hold. Eventually, TV advertising surpassed magazines and radios, a trend that carried over the years through a variety of mediums – computers, mobile, internet and email, search engines, blogging and now social media.
So, you’d think we’d know what marketing is by now, right?
Truth be told, the lack of clarity over what marketing is and how it works is fascinating. Ask two people to define marketing and you’ll inevitably get two different definitions, some of which overlap. Ask yourself this: How do you have departments in charge of marketing make decisions and create programs if they struggle with a definition for the practice?
Google “what is marketing?” right now and you’ll see just how confused people are on its definition. This confusion is second only to the word “quality,” which an expert I know once defined it as, “I know it when I see it.”
Let’s take a closer look at some of those marketing definitions out there to see if we can find one that helps us hit our goals.
Definition No. 1 – The Wikipedia Approach
Wikipedia defines marketing as “a social and managerial function associated with the process of researching, developing, promoting, selling and distributing a product or service.”
Defining your offerings is an essential way to get your marketing efforts correct. You can’t successfully market something where there is no need or market for it.
That’s not bad. A good takeaway here is that it’s more than a vehicle for broadcasting awareness of an offering. Marketing is not simply advertising. It includes, in this definition, both the social and managerial functions, as well as the researching and developing of a product or service.
Too many times, we equate marketing with advertising or the art and science of promoting the product or service. But as practitioners of marketing know, the marketing activities must be effective as offerings are created. Defining your offerings is an essential way to get your marketing efforts correct. You can’t successfully market something where there is no need or market for it. That means you must think about including product management and marketing in your marketing efforts. Without professionals like this involved in the definition of the business and the offering, marketing simply is left with the communications portion of marketing.
Definition No. 2 – The American Marketing Association Approach
The American Marketing Association suggests that marketing is “an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.”
Parts of this definition get marketing right. For example, creating and delivering value for your customers. Again, an important part of what marketers are responsible for is finding and defining the value proposition for what you’re selling. If you’re not included in the original definition of the offering, you still must be clear on why the offering was built and what its value is for customers in order to appropriately communicate the value to prospects and customers.
Definition No. 3 – The Philip Kotler Approach
World-renowned marketing expert Philip Kotler, the S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, widely is acknowledged as the father of modern marketing. He is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on strategic marketing and is author of “Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control.” The book is the most widely used marketing publication in graduate business schools worldwide.
Marketing creates the environment for a successful sales organization. Combining the two, which is easy to do, actually does a disservice to both.
In his earlier works, Kotler wrote that “marketing is human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through exchange processes.” Later, he created a more granular definition: “Marketing is the process by which an organization relates creatively, productively and profitably to the marketplace. Marketing is the art of creating and satisfying customers at a profit. Marketing is getting the right goods and services to the right people, at the right places, at the right time, at the right price, with the right communications and promotion.”
Kotler gets much right about marketing in his definitions. Pay close attention to the last part of the second definition, where he talks about what we should consider as we define what marketing is and how it can be used in our organizations. It’s about creating the right offerings – or goods – and getting them to the correct target market, at a price with the “right” communications.
If you really break it down, isn’t Kotler suggesting that marketing is what we commonly call the 4 Ps – Product, Price, Promotion and Place? That definition is something you need to reflect on more often. To limit marketing to simply promotion is disabling other key elements of the marketing function.
That being said, I take issue with the definition of marketing that include sales. I have found that marketing suffers when marketing and sales are included in one function or is driven by one leader. Marketing is not selling. As the old saying goes, “Marketing is the air war and sales is the ground war.”
Marketing creates the environment for a successful sales organization. Combining the two, which is easy to do, actually does a disservice to both. The tension created actually is healthy as long as mutual respect and accountability is maintained.
Definition No. 4 – The Coticchia Approach
My definition of marketing is about “removing barriers to transactions.” I jokingly refer to this as “Coticchia’s Claim.” My definition is shorter – and broader – than most. But like the others, it attempts to be more inclusive of marketing than simply the communications or advertising aspects of marketing.
In reducing barriers, a company and its management must think through, like Kotler defines, the 4 Ps and look for ways to efficiently and effectively get to market. It doesn’t include selling. We are not making the transactions, just simply reducing the barriers to them.
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