The Definition: Marketing Management
1
Marketing: separating fact from fiction
Most people, when asked what marketing is all about, usually give the following responses:
Advertising! Sales! Products! Free gifts!
Research!
This isn’t unusual. These words often describe what most people think marketing represents, whether they’re students or indeed fellow professionals who work in industry.
The descriptive words above certainly form part of the jigsaw puzzle of what the world of marketing constitutes, but marketing itself is so much more. This is one of the first myths of marketing that needs dispelling. Marketing is not just about advertising and promotional work. People perceive it as such because promotional work, whether it be advertising, PR or sales promotional activity, is often the most visible part of a marketing team’s effort to the outside world.
The second myth that needs dispelling, one most people, even those who work in business often believe, is that marketing is just a function of business that merely churns out
4 ■ Develop your marketing skills
products, free gifts and advertising matter from employees who work in the marketing department. However, marketing is much deeper and significantly more profound than this.
If marketing is used and truly understood and implemented correctly in a business, it becomes a philosophy, a way of doing business – a whole approach, which should and must permeate throughout an entire organisation. Hence, marketing is everybody’s responsibility, not just the specialist marketers who work in the marketing department.
Why is it everybody’s responsibility?
Well, think about it logically. How many times have you phoned an organisation and been cut off, or not spoken to in a professional manner, or not been given the answers you deserve? How many times have you visited organisations as a customer and your feet stick to the floors because they haven’t been cleaned properly, or you meet staff who haven’t been
Marketing: separating fact from fiction
Most people, when asked what marketing is all about, usually give the following responses:
Advertising! Sales! Products! Free gifts!
Research!
This isn’t unusual. These words often describe what most people think marketing represents, whether they’re students or indeed fellow professionals who work in industry.
The descriptive words above certainly form part of the jigsaw puzzle of what the world of marketing constitutes, but marketing itself is so much more. This is one of the first myths of marketing that needs dispelling. Marketing is not just about advertising and promotional work. People perceive it as such because promotional work, whether it be advertising, PR or sales promotional activity, is often the most visible part of a marketing team’s effort to the outside world.
The second myth that needs dispelling, one most people, even those who work in business often believe, is that marketing is just a function of business that merely churns out
4 ■ Develop your marketing skills
products, free gifts and advertising matter from employees who work in the marketing department. However, marketing is much deeper and significantly more profound than this.
If marketing is used and truly understood and implemented correctly in a business, it becomes a philosophy, a way of doing business – a whole approach, which should and must permeate throughout an entire organisation. Hence, marketing is everybody’s responsibility, not just the specialist marketers who work in the marketing department.
Why is it everybody’s responsibility?
Well, think about it logically. How many times have you phoned an organisation and been cut off, or not spoken to in a professional manner, or not been given the answers you deserve? How many times have you visited organisations as a customer and your feet stick to the floors because they haven’t been cleaned properly, or you meet staff who haven’t been