Marketing is an activity that involves creating and communicating the value of a product or service to the end-user. Profit-making organizations depend on this process to educate their customers about their products and to motivate them to buy them. Marketing can also be considered a continuous business development strategy for building a strong relationship with the customers. Usually, marketing strategies are designed for the benefit of the organizations and the people involved in it. The marketing concept of an organization revolves around designing and implementing a marketing strategy that identifies, gratifies and retains their customers. They are created with the needs and tastes of the customers in mind, and aim at delivering products and services accordingly. Traditional marketing usually comprised of three activities - advertising, distributing and selling. Advertising is a creative process that presents the product in a positive light, based on the psychology of the targeted customers. Distribution aims at making the product accessible to the user, and selling is offering it to them at a certain price. A modern approach to marketing, called 'relationship marketing', is popular among several organizations. Relationship marketing focuses on customers, and aims at narrowing down its target market to a niche level for better results. This customer oriented approach also includes after-sales assessment, and using feedback from customers for improving the product. Industrial marketing is an approach that focuses on businesses and social marketing targets the society as a whole. Online or internet marketing, search engine marketing, social media marketing etc are among the newest marketing practices that are being adopted by big and small organizations alike. |