What is Marketing?

Marketing is working out what people want and how you can provide it in the most effective and efficient way.  As someone said:”Marketing is getting the right goods and services to the right people at the right time at the right price with the right communications and promotion.

You might associate marketing only with commercial organisations that aim to make a profit, but it is just as relevant to non-profit making organisations and those in the public sector.  We just have to re-think our idea of ‘profit’ - for learning centres that are not profit making, the objective might be to maximise the number of people who are involved in learning.

Marketing is not just advertising, sales promotions or mailings. These are important elements of marketing, but are really tactics - ways of communicating and persuading your target market to ‘buy’.  Before you decide which tactic(s) to use, you’ll need to think about what you want to achieve and develop a plan.