"Marketing is finding a need and filling it."

--John Blossom

Author of "Content Nation: Surviving and Thriving as Social Media Changes Our Work, Our Lives, and Our Future" from Wiley Publishing

"Marketing is a relationship -- with a customer, partner, or your ecosystem. As the heart and soul of every business, marketing is a game changer for competitive advantage by helping companies make better decisions, create and drive better strategies, and have better execution. In today's world, in which CEOs are focused on growth and profit, marketing can be one of the winning ingredients that help to propel a company forward. As Peter Drucker once said, 'Business has only two basic functions: marketing and innovation.' Marketing and innovation produce results; the rest are support."

--Sandy Carter

Author of "The New Language of Marketing 2.0: How to Use ANGELS to Energize Your Market" from IBM Press

"The SCIENCE of marketing is: 1) targeting the right customers for your product or service, 2) presenting an offer that solves their specific problems, and then 3) making it easy to buy by presenting an offer too irresistible to pass up. Once you've developed an ongoing relationship with those key elements as the foundation, you're practicing the ART of marketing."

--Stephanie Diamond

Author of "Web Marketing for Small Businesses: Seven Steps to Explosive Business Growth" from Sourcebooks

"You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say, 'I'm fantastic in bed.' That's direct marketing. You're at a party with a bunch of friends and see a gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her and pointing at you says, 'He's fantastic in bed.' That's advertising. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and get her telephone number. The next day you call and say, 'Hi, I'm fantastic in bed.' That's telemarketing. You're at a party and see a gorgeous girl. You get up and straighten your tie, walk up to her, and pour her a drink. You open the door for her, pick up her bag after she drops it, offer her a ride, and then say, 'By the way, I'm fantastic in bed.' That's public relations. You're at a party and see a gorgeous girl. She walks up to you and says, 'I hear you're fantastic in bed.' That's brand recognition." (from Geoffrey Kidd)

--Lewis Howes

Coauthor of "LinkedWorking: Generating Success on the World's Largest Professional Networking Website" from 418 Press

"At its core, marketing is simply the process of connecting buyers and sellers. But to be truly effective, marketing also requires the creation of measurable, repeatable results by listening to customers and prospects, engaging in meaningful discussions, developing strong relationships, delivering value, and finally, engendering loyalty."

--Kent Huffman

Chief Marketing Officer at BearCom Wireless and coauthor of "Maximizing Your Marketing Efforts: Leading CMOs on Overcoming Budget Constraints, Positioning Your Brand, and Harnessing Creativity" from Thomson Reuters/Aspatore Books

"Marketing is communicating to your customers and prospects what you want them to do and why."

--Simms Jenkins

Author of "The Truth About E-mail Marketing" from FT Press

"Marketing is the art of getting people to want something before they would have come to the same conclusion."

--Guy Kawasaki

Cofounder of Alltop and author of "Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition" from Penguin Group

"Marketing is the process of teaching consumers why they should choose your product or service over your competitors; if you are not doing that, you are not marketing. It's really that simple! The key is finding the right method and defining the right message to use to educate and influence your consumers. Companies make the mistake of thinking that marketing is just 'one' thing, but marketing is everything that the consumer encounters when it comes to your business -- from advertising, to what they hear, to the customer service that they receive, to the follow-up care that you provide. It's all marketing and creating the decision within the consumer whether or not to choose you initially or for repeat business."

--Laura Lake

Author of "Consumer Behavior for Dummies" from Wiley Publishing

"The definition of marketing is actually a two-part answer. Part one boils down to a simple formula: Marketing is the RIGHT product + the RIGHT market + the RIGHT media + the RIGHT message + the RIGHT time. Marketers can only control the first four. Time is the one thing prospects control -- WHEN to buy. And that leads into part two: The PURPOSE of marketing is to be on the mind of the prospect when the prospect is ready to buy."

--Steve Miller

Author of "How to Get the Most Out of Trade Shows" from NTC Business Books

"Marketing is writing a book that your intended market wants to read/is waiting for, rather than writing the book that you want to read."

--Roger C. Parker

Author of "Design to Sell: Use Microsoft Publisher to Plan, Write, and Design Great Marketing Pieces" from Microsoft Press

"Marketing is telling a story to a targeted customer segment that they want or need to hear -- resulting in some behavior change or transaction. In order to build a long-term relationship with the customer, the story must be valuable, relevant, compelling, and consistent, and must truly solve the customer's pain points."

--Joe Pulizzi

Coauthor of "Get Content, Get Customers: Turn Prospects into Buyers with Content Marketing" from McGraw-Hill

"Marketing is understanding how people get and share information, experience things, and consume stuff -- and responding accordingly."

--Brian Reich

Coauthor of "Media Rules! Mastering Today's Technology to Connect with and Keep Your Audience" from Wiley & Sons

"Marketing is essentially a process of interaction between companies and customers that is based on four fundamental propositions: customer centricity, creative engagement, co-creation of value, and consistent enhancement of shareholder value."

--Martin Roll

Author of "Asian Brand Strategy: How Asia Builds Strong Brands" from Palgrave Macmillan

"Marketing has always been a simple mandate to me: invent desire. The title of Karen Stabiner's book about Chiat/Day, the employer that shaped my perspective on work, was "Inventing Desire." That's the game we're in. Not selling more stuff to more people anymore, and probably never was, but definitely leaving them wanting and respecting what we have on offer: product, service, leadership, style, cause."

--Marian Salzman

Chief Marketing Officer at Porter Novelli and coauthor of "Next Now: Trends for the Future" from Palgrave Macmillan

"Marketing is the use of strategies that create a transaction between a buyer and a seller."

--Dan Schawbel

Author of "Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success" from Kaplan Publishing

"Unlike sales which is working with one buyer at a time, marketing is the art and science of identifying a distinct group of buyer personas and learning about the problems they face and creating a product or service that solves the problems. Marketers then create information to capture the attention of the buyer personas so they learn about the company and its products. The materials can be Web based ways to generate attention (YouTube videos, blogs, content-rich Web sites, Twitter feeds, and the like) or offline (tradeshow exhibits, speaking gigs, advertising, and the like). Marketers also communicate through the media and analyst communities to generate attention."

--David Meerman Scott

Author of "The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing, and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly" from John Wiley & Sons

"Fundamentally, marketing is the process by which marketers prepare their customers to buy. This begins with the first contact, perhaps in the form of a business card or blog post, and continues all the way through to the sale. Soft sell marketing, which we teach and write about, holds that spiritual service is the deepest form of marketing integrity available because with soft sell, you market with heartfelt care for your potential buyer. Marketing as spiritual service is neither shy nor modest in preparing the customer to buy because neither shyness nor modesty are in service to the customers' needs. Honesty -- in product description, pricing, and persuasion -- is the hallmark of marketing as spiritual service in that the buyer receives a clear and credible picture of the true benefits to be expected from the purchase -- without spin or scam."

--Dr. Judith Sherven and Dr. Jim Sniechowski

Coauthors of "The Heart of Marketing: Love Your Customers, and They Will Love You Back" from Morgan James Publishing

"Marketing is the process of influencing a target market's perceptions and/or behaviors around a brand."

--Kim Skildum-Reid

Author of "The Ambush Marketing Toolkit" from McGraw-Hill

"Marketing is the process of persuading others that what you have is what they've always wanted."

--Michael Stelzner

Author of "Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged"

"Marketing is creating valuable content that you are passionate about, that your intended audience wants to consume for free, and that inspires them to make a purchase down the road."

--Debbie Weil

Author of "The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right" from Portfolio

"Marketing is the process of making a difference by meeting customers' needs or wants through providing goods, services, experiences, or ideas they value while benefiting the organization (company or nonprofit) and its employees, suppliers, partners, communities, and our planet. It goes without saying that marketing should, by definition, be ethical and transparent rather than manipulative or sneaky."

--Marian B. Wood

Author of "The Marketing Plan Handbook" from Pearson Prentice Hall

Resources

Top Categories

Product

Company