Well, marketing certainly isn't fraud if done in a socially, ethically and environmentally responsible way. Dilbert and his engineer mates see marketers as the enemy and, sometimes, I think librarians do, too. My impression is that some public librarians also don't understand what marketing really is. Many use the terms marketing and promotion interchangeably. Marketing is not promotion. Promotion is a part of marketing. It's one of the 4Ps of marketing, which are:
* Product (which includes services, too)
* Price
* Place (or distribution)
* Promotion
Some people say that the 4Ps are out of date but I think that they are still pretty useful. So do most writers and researchers in marketing.
So marketing is about a lot more than promotion. It's about creating, pricing, distributing and promoting products and services for our customers. Let's start with my favourite definition of marketing.
"Find out what your customers want and deliver it to them profitably" (Auld, Malcolm, Direct marketing made easy. Cornstalk Harper Collins, Sydney, NSW 1999. p 6)
Short, sweet and spot on.
Let's have a look at a few more definitions of marketing.
"Marketing is a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering and exchanging products of value with others." (Kotler, Philip, Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control, 9th ed. Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River NJ, 1997. p 14)
"Marketing - the systematic planning, implementation and control of a mix of business activities intended to bring together buyers and sellers for the mutually advantageous exchange or transfer of products." (Bradmore, Don, Australian Marketing Dictionary, Macstyle, Hampton Victoria, 1990. p 112)
"What is marketing? The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably." [In our case cost-effectively]. (Chartered Institute of Marketing UK)
“Marketing is three things:
1. A set of activities such as identifying customers or markets, designing products or services for each, ensuring that these products or services are made available to them and monitoring the results.
2. A tool bag of different techniques and concepts which allow the marketing manager to complete these various processes. Like all tools each is useful for certain tasks.
3. A philosophy which becomes a culture within an organisation. The organisation and the individuals within it become customer driven, that is everything they do is concerned with providing markets/customers with what they want, at a price which they are willing to pay. (UK Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, 2002)
"Marketing can be described as all activities designed to generate and facilitate any exchange intended to satisfy human needs or wants." (Rix, Peter and Stanton, William J, Marketing: A practical approach, 3rd ed. McGraw-Hill, Roseville, NSW 1998. p 7)
"Marketing is a total system of business activities designed to plan, price, promote and distribute want satisfying products, services and ideas to target markets in order to achieve organisational objectives." (Stanton, William J et al, Fundamentals of marketing, 2nd ed. McGraw-Hill, Roseville, NSW 1992. p 8)
Notice that word 'exchange' cropping up all the time? As librarians, we're probably thinking of the exchange of money for goods and services. Certainly, our customers are doing that. They have already exchanged money for their 'free' public library in their rates and taxes and also exchange money for 'value added' services, too. But the crucial exchange these days, in the public and private sectors, is the exchange of the customer's time and effort for not only goods and services, but the experience of acquiring them.
The experience of the customer in dealing with an organization is often the only differentiating factor between competing offers. The convenience, the simplicity, the positive memorability of the experience is what customers are willing to exchange for their precious time.
We could go on and on with even more definitions, but I think you get the idea. Marketing's a lot more than just promotion, isn't it?
What is Marketing Management?
Once you know what marketing is, it's time to do it. That means the ongoing management of all the functions that are marketing, or as Philip Kotler defines it:
"Marketing Management is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals."(Kotler, Philip, Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control, 9th ed. Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River NJ, 1997. p 15)
i.e. marketing in action!
More on that in posts to come.
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