Most people mistakenly identify marketing with selling and promotion, while selling and promotion are a part of marketing, they are not the most important part. If an entrepreneur does what they are should do and effectively identify consumer needs, develop appropriate products or services, and pricing, distribution, and finally use effective promotion, these prices will sell very easily.

Marketing can be defined as an activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through exchange processes, with the ultimate goal of marketing, to make selling nonessential, to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him or her and basically sells itself.

Marketing deals with goods, services, and ideas, with a good being something that you can touch, a service is providing an intangible benefit to the customer, and an idea can include concepts or images.

One of the underlying concepts of marketing is trying to satisfy a customer’s needs wants and demands, and let’s face it, needs are plentiful, with basic human needs including food, clothing, warmth, safety, and belonging, and wants are simply needs shaped by culture and the individual. Demands are simply the wants of a consumer when backed by the ability to pay for that specific want.

Marketing helps facilitate an exchange between a buyer and seller, and there are many forces at work that effect the marketing environment including competition, laws and regulations, economic and social conditions, and cultural factors, all of which can be dramatic and difficult to predict, so remain aware of these forces at all times because they can create threats and generate opportunities for your business.

The marketing mix is another important concept to understand when it comes to marketing, which refers to activities that a firm can control to produce the response it wants from the target market, and these variable can be categorized into four groups, also known as the four P’s of marketing.

Product, which is what you are offering to your target market, be it a tangible product or service, and price, which is the amount you will charge for the product or service, place, which are the channels your product will go through to reach the customer, and promotion, which is how you raise awareness with your target market.

While the previous four P’s are important to the marketing mix, there is one extremely important one that is left out, and that is positioning, which is not dealing with where you will place your product in the market, but where you will place your product in the mind of the consumer.