What Marketing Is Really About

Marketing, more than any other business function deals with your customers. Customers can be anybody, a select group of people, the public at large, or even stakeholders.

Getting a sale at any cost was traditional marketing. Creating customer value and satisfaction is at the very heart of modern marketing. Creating this value while dealing with a noisy and cluttered marketplace is what new marketing is all about.

Ultimately, marketing is about delivering customer satisfaction at a profit (you decide what profit means). By under promising on your offering and over delivering on your product you create value. Real value. Value that creates long term relationship (think dating). Sometimes those relationships term into marriages (think brand Loyalty).

But it's not easy to do marketing as it used to. People distrust messages they hear from organizations, and trust their friends more. People are afraid of commitment and want to explore different purchasing avenues.

The job of marketing is not getting any easier. It's important to distinguish between a new marketer and an old one when looking for help or advice. They come from different schools of thought and have different ways of solving problems.

Everyone markets whether they believe it or not. It's up to you to decide what marketing means to you and how you will use it grow your business, organization, or personal brand.