Many have the gist of marketing being related to promoting
and selling products to customers through advertising on various media
channels. Well, it is correct. To have a more logically sound understanding of
marketing, we explore the negative aspects and filter out everything that is
not marketing.
First, it is not customer service.
Although both of them have correlation as clients expectation might help
marketers to chalk out plans and strategies to attract clients.
Second, it is not sales. Marketing
focuses on attracting appropriate clients and encourage them into buying the
product by providing supporting materials.
Third,
it is not graphic art. It revolves around devising plans and strategies to
cater to broader needs of the business. It does not develop the logo and
related collateral for advertising.
Fourth,
it is not senior management’s personal publicity machine. Senior management’s
role is to create and support the corporate by leading them and focus on
publicizing more executives than a single one.
Fifth, it is not human resources. Marketing’s ability to promote
the company to prospective employees and coordinate with HR for advertising is
an important element.
Last but the
most critical point- it is not crisis management. Effective crisis management
decisions need to span over different levels and departments in the business
like legal, senior management and so on and today’s concept of putting it under
real time PR might not yield results.
While marketing handles and drives sales, it is usually another
person’s or department’s job to close the deal. Marketing is about developing
the strategies and tactics that help in achieving an organization’s goals by
building relationships with various prospective customers.
