The Biggest Misconception of Marketing

Marketing is a terribly misunderstood subject in all circles of life especially when it comes to business and the public's mind.

Companies think that marketing exists to support manufacturing, to get rid of the company's products. The truth is the reverse: manufacturing exists to support marketing. The company can always outsource its manufacturing, but what makes a company is its marketing offers and ideas which is difficult to permanently outsource (although a consultant can help from time to time) as said company would no longer exist. All the functional areas of business: purchasing, finance, R&D, HR exist to help the company achieves its goals in the customer marketplace

Marketing is also often too confused with selling. Selling is only the tip of the marketing ice berg. What is unseen is the extensive market research, development of product/services, the challenge of pricing them right, finding the right distribution, letting the market know about their product, and measuring it's success. It is thus a more comprehensive process than selling.

Selling starts only when you have a product (downstream), whereas marketing starts way before that (upstream) and is a long term investment effort (this may be way CMO's in public companies are often short lived0

When marketing is done well, it occurs before the company makes any product or enter any market; and continues long after the sale.