What is Marketing?

Good morning entrepreneurs!  Welcome to a new series called “Monday Marketing Moment.”  Each Monday, we will share simple, yet effective marketing tips, answer questions and provide general information on the topic of marketing. Our goal is to arm your small business with the knowledge it needs to succeed.

We’ll kick this series off with a simple question – What is Marketing? While the question is basic, you are likely to get a myriad of answers.  Go ahead, do a quick poll of 10 entrepreneurs, and you’re likely to get 10 different answers. To define marketing, I decided to go to the source: Merriam-Webster.  The dictionary defines marketing as ” the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service.”  To put it another way, marketing involves everything you to do to get your product or service into the hands of the right consumer when and where he or she needs it most.  The first important phrase here is “right consumer.”  While your product or service may benefit a large number of people, it’s highly unlikely that your marketing budget is big enough to reach everyone in the world.  If it is, contact me…let’s do business.  🙂  The second important phrase is “when and where he or she needs it most,” or the right time and place.  I’ll give you a quick example.  It’s snowing right now, and I am not a fan of shoveling snow.  This is the perfect time for an entrepreneurial teenager to knock on my door (the perfect place) offering his or her shoveling services.  It wouldn’t be the right time or place if this same teenager approached me at the local pool in the middle of summer.  Why?  Snow is the farthest thing from my mind.  There will be more on these topics of understanding your right consumer, right time and right place in future Monday Marketing Moments.

Did you do your 10 entrepreneur poll yet?  If so, what marketing definitions did you hear?  Share them in the comments section below.  As you ponder the importance of marketing and what it means to your small business, I encourage you to submit your question today! We’d be happy to use these Monday Marketing Moments to point you in the right direction.