What Is Marketing? Types, Channels, and Strategies

What Is Marketing?

Marketing is the activities brands engage in to:

• Attract new buyers
• Retain existing customers
• Encourage repeat purchases

Marketing can be as simple as an ad in a newspaper.

Or, it can be as complex as a multi-touch content strategy delivered across several online channels.

As long as the activity involves communicating with customers and has the long-term goal of growing revenue—it’s marketing.

What Is the Purpose of Marketing?

Modern brands use marketing to differentiate themselves from competitors and grow revenue.

To achieve this, marketers must attract more customers or keep existing ones. Depending on their stage in the marketing funnel.

The end goal here is almost always to sell products or services and make money. That said, marketing can pursue many goals, often simultaneously.

And breaking that larger “grow revenue” objective into smaller, more specific goals helps focus your marketing strategy.

Your strategy is your company’s long-term plan for how you’ll promote yourself, reach your target audience, and convert people into customers.

These goals generally fall into one of five broad categories:

Brand Awareness

Increasing brand awareness means more people know about your company, whether or not they buy your products or services.

Greater brand awareness means you show up more often in “consideration sets.” These are the options a buyer considers when purchasing.

Because if someone doesn’t know about your brand, they won’t buy from you....