2. MARKETING vs. ADVERTISING

Many people think that the mission of marketing in any organization is to promote and advertise the organization's products or services, which is a complete misconception. Marketing in any mature organization plays a significant role and has a holistic and overlapping dimensions across the entire organization's departments, from human resources to inventory and from finance to operations. Marketing is essentially caring about making what will be sold, not selling what was made.

The definition of marketing, according to the American Marketing Association (AMA), 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. By breaking down this definition, marketing creates and exchanges value (both functional and emotional) and meets needs profitably. The essence of marketing is the intersection point between business and psychology (study of mind and behavior).

According to this definition, the main tasks of marketing management are: 1) Understand the marketplace and customer needs and behaviors by using many tools like market research, as an example, 2) Developing marketing strategies and plans including segmentation and targeting the right market and customers, and positioning the products/services to occupy a place in the minds of the target customers, 3) Studying and implementing an integrated marketing program, part of which is called the "marketing mix" which includes product, price, place, and promotion (4Ps) strategies, 4) Managing customers relationship (CRM), 5) Building strong brand management to create, develop, maintain, and enhance a brand's reputation and image, and 6) Tracking and measuring performance to achieve the marketing objectives.

Advertising, which is incorrectly understood as marketing, is a part of the promotion strategy, as the promotion strategy includes advertising, public relations, sales promotion, direct marketing, personal selling, etc. The promotion is also a part (mainly the 4th item) of the marketing mix, alongside product, price, and place. The marketing mix is finally a part of the previous main six tasks of marketing management.

Therefore, advertising occupies a small portion of marketing management and is not the main role of marketers. On the contrary, mature organizations usually outsource most advertising works to external professional agencies. Their own marketers typically contribute in providing only a "Marketing Brief" to these agencies, not creating the advertising content themselves.

Article by Amr H. Abayazeed - April 25, 2024.