What is the definition of marketing? This is a question that was posed to me and several other marketing professionals in a recent poll. I was not surprised when I read the results of the poll that answers were very broad in their description and varied one from the other. Marketing is not like defining other business functions. For instance, sales is pretty easy to define. It is the function of selling something to a customer. Accounting is keeping records of your financial transactions. But marketing, is a bit harder to define.

Is it advertising?

Is it consumer research?

Is it throwing a customer appreciation luncheon?

Is it putting your logo on T-shirts?

If you are involved in marketing for your company, you know the answer to these questions are yes, yes, yes and yes… plus a lot more yeses. Marketing can become the catch all for a lot of different activities within a company. Let’s look at how the experts define marketing.

The American Marketing Society¹ defines it like this:

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

"Value… for society at large?” With that definition, it appears that any activity, including seeking world peace, is marketing! Let’s go to another source. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary² gives these three definitions of marketing:

1. a. The act or process of selling or purchasing in a market

   b. The process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service

2. An aggregate of functions involved in moving goods from producer to consumer

"An aggregate of functions” may be a more honest definition of marketing in today’s business environment. I believe that marketing is like one of those very large umbrellas under which you can place a short busload of people. Under that umbrella would be a number of business functions designed to:

1. Define your products/services

2. Help you define and understand your target market who are likely to purchase your products/services

3. Make you aware of the tactics of your competition and how you stack up against them

4. Promote the awareness of your brand

5. Advertise a reason to purchase your products/services

6. Gain the confidence of these customers so they will purchase from you again

If I could shorten all of this, I would say that marketing has to do with any function that is driving towards a sale. If it doesn’t have a connection to a sale, it is not marketing. So the next time your boss claims that the company picnic belongs in marketing because you are printing your logo on cups for the event, tell him to show you the connection to sales (and then tell him to give the company picnic to HR!)

Now wait a minute! You might be thinking of several marketing functions that don’t have a connection to sales. What about sponsorships of charitable events? What about giving to civic causes? What about press releases, blogs and "likes” on the company Facebook page? They aren’t driving anyone to a sale and they are part of marketing, aren’t they? It depends upon your strategic direction with marketing. Under point #2 above, we listed that understanding your target market was an important marketing function. This understanding includes getting a good grasp on what the people that make up potential customers value. If your sponsorships, press releases, blog posts and Facebook following is in accord with the values of your target market, then you can make a case that those activities are influencing them in a positive way to purchase from you. Understanding the values, attitudes and choices of your target market is a very important for long term sales. But if your sponsorships are running counter to the values of your target market, you are doing yourself long-term harm.

Marketing is the big umbrella. If it is driving to a sale, it belongs under the umbrella. If it is not, let it get wet! It doesn’t belong.

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1. American Marketing Association web site: www.ama.org/AboutAMA/Pages/Definition-of-Marketing.aspx