What is Marketing?
Man. What a layered question.
“Marketing” has always meant, very basically, presenting products and services in an alluring way to the marketplace. Across human history, the concept of marketing has played out in very different ways - in ancient times, this simply meant showing up to a literal city or town market with whatever it is you make or source, so you can trade those goods for other necessary goods or for agreed upon currency.
It’s a great system, the basics of which still hold their validity today, but we can all agree the concept of marketing has become infinitely more complex with the progression of humanity.
For instance, let’s say you’re a merchant in Greece around 200AD. You show up with your necklaces that you make with your family from ore that you’re mining from your own land. And just across the bustling street, someone else is selling necklaces, but they’re giving away a free fig with every purchase.
Enter competition.
A simple concept like a free fig truly would give this other merchant an edge, simply because they’re giving something away for free, even if it is just a paltry piece of fruit… so if you’re not doing a good enough job telling your story (I.E. “pure ore sourced from our family mine”, “Blessed by the gods”, etc.), the guy giving away the figs is very likely going to destroy you.
Why? Capitalization on the consumer’s frame of mind.
Who is the customer? Just another person shopping for necklaces (they are obviously much more than that as a person, but you don’t have sophisticated enough means to know any more about them; after all, it’s only 200AD).
Where is the customer? In a busy marketplace, thusly only able to give you their attention in a very limited window (you’ve learned this by noting consumer behaviors every week - you can at least analyze that much).
What do they want? Most of them want to make a quick purchase and get the most they possibly can for their money (you’ve seen this play out again and again).
Conclusion: Atticus is gonna take your business because of a fig.
Now… fast forward 1800+ years, where human beings are driving cars, covering mind boggling distances in no time at all, flying around the sky in big metal birds called “planes”, accessing all available knowledge just by tapping these luminous tablets they all carry around in their pockets, able to shop for almost whatever they want without even leaving their homes… and you’ll need much more sophisticated mechanisms for pushing your product into the marketplace - a term that’s evolved so much, it’s almost too big to even define.
My desire as a marketer is to remain a student of the marketplace and the methods by which we can analyze and capitalize on the market forces which influence it.