What is marketing? Definition, types and what it is for

Marketing is the set of decisions a company makes to understand who it sells to, what that person needs and how to put a valuable offer in front of them. It is not “making ads”: ads are a small part, and almost always the last one.

Marketing is not advertising

This is the most common confusion. Advertising communicates an offer that already exists. Marketing is everything before that: researching the market, defining your audience, setting the price, choosing sales channels and building the brand promise. When marketing is done well, advertising costs less and works better, because you already know what to say and to whom.

The four classic pillars

The most widely used model is still the four Ps: product, price, place and promotion. Treat it as a checklist: when a campaign underperforms, the problem is usually in one of those four decisions, not in the ad itself.

Types of marketing you will come across

• Digital marketing. Everything happening in search, social and email. Its advantage is that almost everything is measurable.
• Content marketing. Attracting people with useful material (articles, video, guides) instead of interrupting them.
• Brand marketing. Works on recall and association over the long term, even when it does not sell today.
• Relationship marketing. Focuses on keeping and growing the customers you already have.
• Institutional marketing. Communicates an organisation’s purpose rather than a product. This is the territory of NGOs and the public sector.

Why video became central

Video solves three problems at once: it explains complex things quickly, it builds trust (real people and real places are on screen) and it works across every channel. That is why a single shoot usually pays off on the website, on social, at a trade fair and in a sales presentation.

The key is not to think “I want a video”, but “what decision do I want the viewer to make”. An institutional video seeks credibility; a product video, desire; a training video, understanding. They are different pieces even if the same camera shoots them.

How to start without overspending

Before producing anything, write one page describing your customer, their objection and what you want them to do. That document — the brief — saves more money than any budget negotiation, because it stops you shooting material nobody will use.