Marketing

Many people just think of marketing as advertising and media activities, but correct marketing actually deals with much more. Marketing's sole purpose is to satisfy the needs of customers and suppliers, regardless of the product or service being provided. To accomplish this broad goal, marketing managers must complete a wide variety of tasks in relation to pricing, promotions, location, advertising outlets, product design, and much more. Successful marketing is accomplished by identifying potentially profitable business opportunities and acted on them. This paper will define marketing and explain marketing's importance on organizational success.
Marketing has many different definitions, and they all hold some truth. How marketing is defined depends on the customers being targeted, the product or service being sold (or given away, in the case of a non-profit or charity), the organization's location, the available media outlets, and many other factors. Marketing can be simply described as "meeting needs profitably" (Kotler & Keller, 2009, p. 5). However, this definition may be a little too simple, since not all organizations use marketing to turn a profit. Charities frequently utilize marketing techniques but do not make a profit, so this definition may not be applicable in today's complex market. Possibly a better definition of marketing is as follows: "Marketing is the performance of activities that seek to accomplish an organization's objectives by anticipating customer or client needs and directing a flow of need-satisfying goods and services from producer to customer or client" (Perreault, Cannon, & McCarthy, 2009, p. 6). This definition seems to more appropriately encompass all the aspects of marketing for all types of businesses, whether they turn a profit or not. Using this definition, we can see that the objective of a successful marketing plan is to satisfy all involved stakeholders, which may be customers, producers, distributors, stock holders, and others. To do this marketing managers must know not only their target customers, but they must also understand every stage of production or development for the product or service they are promoting. This requires meeting with all involved parties, gathering lots of feedback from different stakeholders when making decisions, collaborating with many different agencies and departments, and bringing all this together to develop a clear, accurate, and complete marketing plan. Even after all this work, marketing doesn't stop here. After the development of the marketing plan, marketing professionals must constantly evaluate and assess the progress and effectiveness of their plans, and make necessary adjustments. Each adjustment requires compiling a whole new set of interventions to be implemented to move the marketing activities toward optimal effectiveness. To further complicate the marketing professional's position, according to Kotler & Keller (2009), marketing can involve "10 different entities: goods, services, events, experiences, persons, places, properties, organizations, information, and ideas" (p. 6). Marketing may focus on getting vacationers to a certain resort, bringing a certain emotion over a potential customer with a product, or improving an organization's reputation. Needless to say marketing professionals must be extremely versatile when designing an organization's marketing plan to ensure the target audience will be reached by all means possible.
Many aspects of organizational success are dependent on the firm's marketing ability (Kotler & Keller, 2009). Financial success is one major aspect of organizational success that depends greatly on marketing activities. Without marketing, the demand for the organization's goods or services would be non-existent, and all other functions of the organization, including production and accounting, would be unnecessary. What's the need of producing a good no one wants to buy? For this reason, organizations spend millions to billions of dollars each year on marketing activities. Many firms have executive level marketing officer positions now to oversee the vast number of marketing activities necessary to keep customers and suppliers content (Kotler & Keller, 2009). Goals of successful marketing are common problem areas for executive officers, such as customer retention and product line growth (Kotler & Keller, 2009). Experience proves that executives who realize the importance of marketing activities and execute marketing interventions effectively achieve the highest levels of organizational success and goal achievement. Marketing activities have a profound effect on both short and long-term organizational goals, so without marketing activities, many businesses would cease to exist. Without the demand for goods and services that meet the needs of consumers that marketing generates, we would be forced back into a self-sufficient, "pure subsistence economy", with a lower quality of life and less socialization from inter-community to international. Marketing is a huge part of every aspect of today's society, and this is why successful marketing activities are so crucial to our society's continued progress and success.
Marketing is a broad area that encompasses all the activities organizations participate in to satisfy customer needs along with employee and supplier demands. The focus of marketing processes may be goods, services, experiences, events, locations, property, and more. Marketing professionals must assess the needs of all stakeholders throughout their relationship with the organization's product or service, from initial exposure to purchase, then on into support and warranty services. The target customer group must be identified and isolated, the entity must be explained to the target audience in a way that the good or service simply sells itself, and then positive and effective customer service actions must persist throughout the purchase right until the end of the entity's service life. Marketing is so important to organizational success because marketing covers so many aspects of an organization's functions, such as production, finances and accounting, customer service, governmental regulation, and more. Without effective marketing, the supply and demand system we currently enjoy would not exist.

Marketing
Kotler, P. & Keller, K. L. (2009). Marketing management (13th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Perreault, W. D., Cannon, J. P., & McCarthy, E. J. Jr. (2009). Basic marketing: A marketing strategy planning approach (17th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.