Marketing Definition With Special Details & Over 15 Supporting Examples

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. Marketing refers to activities a company undertakes to promote the buying or selling of a product or service.

Marketing is the process of getting potential clients or customers interested in your products and services. Marketing includes advertising, selling, and delivering products to consumers or other businesses. It is a management process through which products and services move from concept to the customer. In short, the motto of marketing is; Marketing is everything; everything is marketing.

The definition of marketing can vary according to the perspective and various opinions. As the world changes, the marketing world keeps pace with it and its definitions, such as the functions of marketing, also change. Yet there is something quite clear about marketing that it has a direct or indirect impact on all steps of business processes.

Although marketing in its most primitive form is defined as the process of exchange between buyers and sellers. Nowadays this definition does not fully reflect marketing, because marketing is defined as a process that has operational functions in the form of creating benefits, meeting needs, and improving customer relations rather than changing the hands of the product.

Marketing begins with the selection, grouping, and discovery of the target audience. Marketing includes research, targeting, communications, and often public relations. The purpose of marketing is to analyze and research consumers, conduct focus groups, send out surveys, study online shopping habits, and ask one underlying question: “Where, when, and how do our consumers communicate with our brand?”

Highlighted points in the marketing definition:

• Marketing is geared towards satisfying people’s needs and desires.

• Marketing facilitates and realizes change.

• Marketing consists of various actions.

• Marketing actions are done by people and organizations.

• Products, services, and ideas are the subject of marketing.

• Marketing actions must be planned and supervised.

History of Marketing

The concept of marketing, surplus production, and then trade must have been applied since the day it started, but if we tell according to the historical data we have, we should mention the firsts that can be associated with marketing.

The first magazine appeared in 1730, and soon the first advertisement was published. The first poster was advertised in 1839. Posters promoting the company and its products were adorning the walls in Europe’s major cities. The first billboard was used in 1867.

Radio advertising started in 1922, and TV commercials started in 1941. By 1954, the revenues of TV commercials had exceeded the revenues of all other advertising channels. In 1970, telemarketing, that is, telemarketing started.

In 1984, Apple advertised the world-famous Super Bowl. This ad, which cost 900,000 dollars, broke ground with both its budget and its content. 46% of Americans watched this ad. Print ads started to become popular in 1985. SMS marketing emerged in 1990.

Search engines such as Infoseek, Altavista yahoo were popular between 1995-1997. In 1998, Google came out. PPC (Pay Per Click) marketing started to be used under the leadership of Google. Social media sites began to turn into the most popular advertising channels in the 2000s, just after personal blogs. Between 2005 and 2010, people started to connect to the internet with smartphones, and as of 2012, they started shopping on mobile devices. Today, we can say that the basic medium of marketing is digital platforms.

Holistic Marketing Conception Stage

The idea of ​​developing, designing, and implementing marketing programs, processes, and activities have gained more importance in the 2000s.

Marketing mix elements (product, price, distribution, promotion) in connection with the consumer; Paying attention to customer relations and focusing marketing on customer satisfaction are the processes of this period. Nowadays, when creating marketing strategies, a macro perspective that takes into account many variables is dominant.

The post-modern understanding of marketing, which has developed in parallel with important issues such as technological developments and the spread of the internet, is now in the entire framework from the design of products or services to their quality, price, distribution; It is defined as the mix of important stages in which the consumer is involved and based on creating value.

The 4P of Marketing

The classic 4Ps of marketing are Product, Placement, Price, Promotion. Over time, there have been marketers adopting the 7P model by adding 3p more to this model, taking into account the changing market conditions. Added 3P are Physical Space, People, Process Management. Thanks to these principles, it was determined how the product would be associated with consumers and how to communicate.

In the ’90s, Kotler and some authors coined the concept of 4C: Customer, Cost, Communication, and Convenience. This model focuses on communication between the brand and the consumer. Its main task is to sell the right product to the right customer at a more convenient and lower cost.

When writing your marketing plan, be specific, using detailed steps, visuals, and budget projections. Remember your brand promises to the customer so that your marketing strategy matches what you want the customer to experience when doing business with you. Make sure you refer to your marketing strategy when developing, evaluating, or changing your marketing plan.

What is the 4P’s of Marketing and Marketing Mix?

4p’s or marketing mix is ​​the name of the process that a brand uses in preparing its strategic marketing plan and includes all marketing processes in detail. 4p is the abbreviation of marketing mix stages consisting of the initials of product, price, place, and promotion.

1- What is a Product?

Product refers to an item or items the business plans to offer to customers. With the information obtained, the production, packaging, etc. of the product. Processes are carried out. This process is the first step of the marketing mix, also known as the 4P of marketing. Before they can prepare an appropriate campaign, marketers need to understand what product is being sold, how it stands out from its competitors. The basic questions to ask are: What are you selling? What are the physical features of your product or the uniqueness of your service? What do you offer from your competitors, and what advantages does it offer your customer?

2- What is Price?

Price refers to how much the company will sell the product for. After deciding on the product and how it will be presented in line with the demands and needs of the target audience, it comes to the price of the product. When establishing a price, companies must consider the unit cost price, marketing costs, and distribution expenses. How much does it cost to buy your product or service? How does it compare to your competitors? What will your profit margin be by selling at this price?

3- What is Place?

Place refers to the distribution of the product. After the product is decided and the product is priced, the third critical stage takes place, which is the ‘place’ process. In this process, questions such as where and how the product will be brought to the consumer and how it will be delivered to the relevant place are answered. For example, it is decided in this process whether the product will be sold through retail stores, wholesalers, or directly over the internet. Key considerations include whether the company will sell the product through a physical storefront, online, or through both distribution channels.

Can your products and services be purchased? This is more than just a home office; it should be where consumers can buy. If you have multiple locations, you should work on calculating the percentage of sales from each location. For example, what will your Internet marketing strategy be? What is your sales strategy? How will the transaction take place, what is the cost of getting the product/service to the customer, and what will be your refund? What is your return policy?

4- What is Promotion?

As you can imagine, the last step of Marketing 4P is ‘promotion’, that is the promotion process. Yes, the promotional part is only part of marketing. Do not think about it all! Otherwise, you would be very wrong. In this process, the answers to questions such as how the product will be promoted, which promotion channels will be used, which message will be given to the target audience are sought. Promotion includes a variety of activities such as advertising, selling, sales promotions, public relations, direct marketing,

How do you think the market will be informed about your products or services? How will you tell them about the features and benefits you offer them to control what you offer them? What marketing tactics will you use, and what do you expect, will each method have results? Include information about any incentives or discount coupons you will use to attract the business.

Basic Concepts in Marketing

With the emergence of customer-centered marketing and global, technological developments, institutions have had to change their organizational structures, marketing has passed all units and became the primary function.

It is possible to list the main elements in the concept of marketing as follows: Requirements, requests and demands, products, value, price, satisfaction, exchange, relations and networks, markets, marketers, and potential customers.

Types of Marketing

Your marketing campaigns are more about the areas where your customers spend time. It’s up to you to conduct market research and find out what kind of marketing you need. Marketing types that are valid and used today are as follows:

a) Internet Marketing: This idea requires your business to have a presence on the internet and to work on it. Internet marketing, which largely overlaps with digital marketing, is the very idea of ​​putting your business online merely to become more available to your customers. The subject is not what you offer, but how available you are online.

b) Search Engine Optimization: This type of marketing, known as SEO in short, includes optimizing site content and getting a place on the search engine result page. It’s used by marketers to attract people who perform searches that imply they’re interested in learning about a particular industry. The idea is to get a website in front of the eyes of potential customers as they search for a product or service that you offer. When done well, it can keep your advertising campaign spend low and keep your sales high. To get started with SEO, you must familiarize yourself with search engine ranking factors and produce content for search engines to index.

c) Blog Marketing: The days when blog pages were seen as an author-only place are gone. Brands are now providing information about their industry by sharing blog posts and providing the information they are looking for to potential customers. Most content marketing today involves writing and publishing blog posts either on the brand’s website or other websites that share a similar target audience.

d) Social Media Marketing: Businesses use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and similar social media to increase visibility to their target audience over time. Besides developing your own marketing tactics on social media, influencer marketing is another powerful way to reach potential customers through social media marketing. Social media gives brands and businesses the opportunity to interact with the public in a personalized way.

e) Print Marketing: Newspapers and magazines are not as popular as before, but there are still people who read newspapers, and magazines and newspapers also have websites with instant news. In addition, there are local newspapers, magazines for professional groups, and sectoral magazines that are still sold with the subscription system. It makes it easier for marketers to have individual customer masses and their content-oriented towards a niche area.

f) Search Engine Marketing: This marketing exercise is a little different from SEO work. Businesses have the chance to be included in the index by paying a certain amount to search engines. It is more commonly known as pay per click. To get started with pay-per-click SEM, you must work with the search engine you’re looking to purchase placements with. Google Ads is a popular choice. There are also ads management tools to make creating and managing PPC campaigns a breeze.

g) Video Marketing: There were only ads for a time, but marketers now spend the money on creating and publishing the kind of videos that can entertain and educate customers. YouTube and social media to boost brand awareness, generate conversions, and close deals. Some video marketing apps even allow you to analyze, nurture, and score leads based on their activity.

Marketing Specializations

We have now entered a phase where digital marketing and traditional marketing meet. As a result of the dizzying speed of technology and globalization, both ways of doing business and sales and marketing strategies have changed radically. An unprecedented competitive environment has emerged for many reasons such as e-commerce transforming millions of small companies into companies with international sales and social media, enabling successful advertising campaigns with very small budgets. Now the new marketing approach takes the digital world as a reference. However, it is certain that those who set out without knowing the basic concepts of marketing will not be successful.

a) Counter Marketing

Counter-marketing, in other words, Contra Marketing, refers to the efforts of the brand or company to respond to the other party when exposed to an attack. Naturally, every company needs to defend its brand value when it is targeted by its competitor. This attitude causes marketing wars. As the best example to this; With the shots of brands such as Coca Cola – Pepsi, McDonald’s – Burger King, we can show everyone knowledgeable ads.

b) Control Marketing

It is desired by the public or interest groups to eliminate or reduce the consumer demand for certain products deliberately. Then control marketing comes into play as a strategy. The basic principle of control marketing; It is possible to define products that are known to be harmful to human health or to publicize awareness campaigns for human health.

c) Social Marketing

Campaigns carried out to promote services or products that will benefit society are included in the concept of Social Marketing. In other words; We can define it as a concept that is given to the stage where companies evolve from being consumer-centered to being human-centered and where profitability is balanced with corporate social responsibility.

d) Content Marketing

Content Marketing; It is one of the most influential marketing channels of recent years, enabling marketers to contact potential customers in all the homes of the customer cycle during research, purchasing, and review. The first known example of content marketing;

• For example, tractor manufacturer John Deere’s advertisement of his tractors was published in 1895, The Furrow, in which he collected useful information on farming.

The most common components of a content marketing program are social media networks, blogs, visual content, and premium content assets, like tools, ebooks, or webinars.

Content marketing works today and will always work; because it offers a potential customer value (the main purpose of marketing is to generate value anyway). It meets people’s urgent need for information; It strengthens its relations with them and does not use coercive methods to “sell” things to them. Content marketing, when implemented correctly, has become a very powerful tool for creating a new brand.

e) Guerilla Marketing

Guerilla Marketing is a marketing method that aims to increase brand awareness and sales, apart from classical marketing techniques. Guerrilla marketing campaigns are usually designed with creative, low-budget, and innovative strategies. The concept of Guerilla Marketing; to go viral and make an easy and fast contribution to brand value in the eyes of potential customers and consumers.

f) Influencer Marketing (Marketing with Social Media Celebrities)

In various social media channels, it is called Influencer Marketing for people with thousands of followers to convey their comments and experiences about a product or brand through the content they produce. The concept of Influencer Marketing has thus entered our lives after the emergence of large masses due to the fact that social media has been located in the center of our lives, which has increased noticeably lately.

g) Viral Marketing

Evolving from the traditional method of word of mouth (WOM) and digitizing it, Viral Marketing has recently come to the fore as the most preferred type of marketing in creative teams. This marketing method, which allows the message to be conveyed to wider audiences or sites on social media, also enables a relationship between potential customers and consumers. In this way, legendary advertisements, which are spoken for days and have been assimilated by people, are emerging thanks to the sharing of the relevant ad and the campaign by the consumers related to the brand. As a result, the more creative the campaign is, the more people it has reached, and it shows us the most significant impact of viral marketing; It appears everywhere like a virus and allows us to talk about advertising.