Marketing As a Discipline

Marketing is a unique discipline. Yes, discipline. Because most organization don’t understand and therefore don’t respect what it is or does, it’s the area usually under the most scrutiny. Marketing gets blamed for failures in a program or applauded for a program’s success. One of my marketing professors in business school told us that marketing, at its essence, creates value whether perceived or real.

Branding Vs Marketing

Branding and marketing are confusing elements within the discipline. Promotion, pricing, positioning and product/services are other elements that also experience confusion. Let’s stay with branding and marketing for now. Branding is a subset of marketing. It provides the identity in a customer mind of what a product and service stand for. Marketing is the mechanism that reinforces that belief structure in customers minds. Marketing can be considered the structure where meaning and therefore value is attributed to a brand. Marketing is the plan that lays out a brand’s position in the marketplace, whether it’s in a good, better or best category. Marketing lays out the pricing to the market to substantiate that positioning, and Marketing is promotion – whether to build awareness through advertising or drive trail through selling. So, you can see, without marketing there really is no way an organization can expect to deliver a product or service to its customers or community.

Marketing Creates Value

Obviously, I’ve tried to give you a very simplified overview of marketing so you can understand its role in an organization and in creating value. So, the next time someone starts to blame marketing for a business performance problem, remember without it, customers will not have a reason to buy your product or be interested in your service.