By Robert Clay, Founder, Marketing Wizdom Ltd

If you think that marketing is just about spreading your message, you need to think again.  Marketing should actually be at the epicenter of your business, whether you realize it or not.  For nearly 10 years, once or sometimes twice a month I ran 3-day, 30-hour  workshops opening people’s eyes to an array of low-risk/high-return marketing  strategies. I discovered that the definition of marketing varied enormously  between people. So the workshop always started with some definitions of marketing, which I am pleased to share with you now.

To a lot of people, marketing is about running an ad tomorrow so you can have sales the next day. If it were that simple you’d be a multi-millionaire and there would be nothing more to learn. But there’s so much more to it than that.

6 Definitions

1. A good general definition of marketing, quite simply, is “The process of educating people to the advantages and benefits you offer them and compelling them to choose your products or services over those of your competitors.”

2. Jefferey Gittomer, a renowned sales guru, defines marketing as “Getting your telephone to ring with qualified buyers.”

3. Kenrick Cleveland, one of the world’s top authorities on influence and persuasion, defines marketing as “Selling to people you’re not in front of.” I very much agree with this definition.

4. In 1973 Peter Drucker suggested that the aim of marketing was “To make selling superfluous; to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.”

5. Julian Richer, one of Britain’s most inspiring businessmen, defines marketing from a retail perspective, as you’d expect. He says it is “Every aspect of telling people about your business: advertising, the way you present your premises, the design of your stationery, and the way you look after your customers, because they tell other people, and customer service is the most effective form of marketing there is.”

6. John McKitterick of General Electric said that: “The principal task of marketing is not so much to be skillful in making the customer do what suits the interest of the business, as to be skillful in conceiving and then making the business do what suits the interests of the customer.” And that is so, so true.

All six of those definitions are good.

That could all be said another way: “If you could see the world through John Smith’s eyes you can sell to John Smith what John Smith buys.”

In other words if you want prospects or clients to beat a path to your door you should look at everything from their perspective.

Going deeper …

Moving on from those excellent definitions, which consider marketing mainly from a ‘spreading your message’ perspective, a deeper definition of marketing is “The profitable identification, attraction, getting and keeping of good customers.”

Tomorrow we explore this definition in more detail.

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Robert Clay is the founder of Marketing Wizdom Ltd., http://marketingwizdom.com/ , which helps you to achieve market leadership in your niche using world-class low-risk/high return marketing strategies, in a structured manner. You can reach Robert at office@marketingwizdom.com.

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Thursday, February 18th, 2010, 9:41 pm   |   General Marketing  |  RSS feed |  Respond  |  Trackback