Marketing is basically the process of consciously stimulating demand for the sale of products and services; possibly including choice of a targeted market; choice of certain characteristics or styles to promote a particular brand or type of product; and creating or assembling a plan for how to make this happen. Marketing, however, is often viewed in much the same light as advertising: both are processes through which goods and services are promoted or sold to buyers. However, marketing involves much more than simply choosing which media to use to publicize a product or service. Marketing is actually an integrated set of processes, each of which contributes to the achievement of one’s marketing objective.
One of the primary objectives of marketing management is to make the sale. However, this is not an easy task, especially when it comes to selling large quantities of merchandise. For instance, if a business sells twenty widgets, it may be difficult to obtain the cooperation of a large number of potential buyers if each buyer perceives them to require only one widget. Therefore, many businesses choose to take the route of social marketing, by creating websites that allow users to search the marketplace for a particular widget and providing links to sellers who provide more widgets of a similar kind. Social marketing, in addition to being a useful tool for marketing goods and services, has also been found to be successful when used in the context of increasing a company’s bottom line. This is because the increased sales that result from a consumer spending several extra minutes searching for a widget, rather than just clicking on a search engine results in increased dollars spent.
Another goal of marketing is the creation of an awareness of the products and services that are offered by a business. This strategy is referred to as product promotion, and involves the creation of advertisements or other forms of communication that draw consumers’ attention to specific goods and/or services, as well as educating consumers about a business’s reputation or history. In order for a marketing concept to be considered a successful process for selling, there must also be some sort of measure taken to mitigate market risk, such as the ability to collect data on customer behavior. Marketing research can help achieve this end by providing quantitative analysis of marketing strategies and the results gleaned from marketing research.