The ultimate outcome of marketing is to influence action, and there is no better way to influence action than being part of the community.
According to dictionary.com, marketing is
1.the act of buying or selling in a market.2.the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling.
That definition needs a little editing now that marketing has moved from the act of buying or selling in a market to engaging in a market. No where in that definition words “engagement” or “community” is to be found. Today, if I want to buy a product, I don’t just head out to the store. I usually turn to the online community to learn about the product. Facebook, twitter, forums, blogs, any form of social media that is out there I will make use of it before I decide on spending my money. This is exactly why businesses have started utilizing the social web by engaging with their target market. There are still a few that don’t see the value of it all, but for some it’s hard to break the monotony that the traditional marketing has set.
One of the first questions I get from my clients is – “How will this effect the bottomline? What’s the ROI?” I think it all depends on what ROI means to you. Do you calculate return on investment solely in monetary value or does brand loyalty and long term growth matter? If you are a business, you can’t always look into short term goal. The key is to get the word out there, it’s necessary in todays world to have a presence on the web and make “everybody” aware that you are out there.
Marketing isn’t just about creating an advertisement and asking people to buy. Do you fall for it when you see an ad on TV that says “Buy my product. It’s the best out there!” ? I hope not. I sure as hell don’t. Marketing is about engaging. Dell is a prime example of it. They have been able to boost their sales by millions by including twitter into their marketing strategy. When they take the time to answer our tweets, are they just being nice? No! Each tweet has an indirect marketing message which tells us “See. We are different than our competitors. We are here for you even though you aren’t shelling cash right away.”
Whether you are promoting a blog, a product, affiliate links, business as a whole or whatever it is that you are marketing, if you fail to engage in the market your competitors will beat you to dust. Here is the new definition of marketing which I think should be :
1. the act of engaging in a market with community building and engagement being primary goal and sales secondary.
2. the total of activities involved in being a community member of the target market and in the transfer of goods including advertising, shipping, storing, selling and utilizing different social media tools.
If you disagree let’s have a healthy discussion in the comments section. Beer is on me 
Hi, My name is Ritu. I am a member of SMA (Social Media Anonymous) ;-) & help bloggers and businesses utilize the social web. 
Hmm… I like your idea of engaging instead of selling. Consumers don’t want to be sold to anymore. They want to be engaged in the buying process. However, I think your definition of marketing is about 50% short of the true meaning. Marketing also involves the concept for a product in general and pricing strategies. (See Internet Marketing Mix.) You can engage all you want but with out remembering those other two aspects you have nothing and fall short of being a successful “marketer”.
@Phil : I see you have integrated the 4Ps of the marketing mix into internet marketing. I agree with you to a point. But generally marketing = promotion. This article deals with the promotional aspect of it.
Also, the concept of a product and pricing is related directly to the promotion as well which is the last element of the marketing mix. One of the reason why product concept and pricing is essential to marketing mix is so that it is feasible for the target crowd to purchase the product.
In the end, marketing in general sense is a sales pitch. The element that falls into marketing mix is what goes behind the scene before actually promoting the product. My 2 cents. And I owe you a beer
Ritu, I totally get what you are saying. (And thanks for giving the 4 Ps a shout out.) But I gotta respectfully disagree when you say “marketing in general sense is a sales pitch”. Marketing encompasses everything it takes to bring a product to the consumer(before, during, and after the sale). I do agree that most people think of internet marketing as only promotion, which is too bad. Maybe that is what I am trying to get at. There are huge opportunities for things like research etc. You’re only shooting yourself in the foot if your marketing efforts don’t include them.
@Phil : I truly appreciate you disagreeing with me. I might have put it the wrong way when I said marketing in general sense is a sales pitch. But like I said the article deals with the promotional aspect of it alone. I should have made that clear and thanks for bringing in a different side to it.
I think it also depends on what task you are handed. If you are an “internet marketer” and your sole job is to market a product or service then I think engagement can’t be beaten. But I do get where you are coming from.
By the way, beer on tab or you coming over?
This is an interesting conversation. I am using Twitter for my employer and treading a fine line between a very soft sales pitch and engagement. For example, posted support for a non-profit where we had a presence by giving away product.
The term engagement feels more like the activity than a traditional promotion.
Where do I send the beer?
@Pat : Exactly! Times have changed. Today people buy from the ones they know, whether it’s a company or an individual and that’s exactly why engagement works rather than a traditional promotion.
By the way, I would love a six pack delivered here
Many good points in the post and the comments. I don’t agree that the definition of marketing has changed. It will always be about creating a product and bringing it to market. How that is done has changed, there is no doubt.
A business will always want an ROI. They have to focus on sales and revenue or they go broke. Brand loyalty means they are buying your product. Long term growth means increasing revenue.
The old way of pushing messages is not effective anymore, and engagement is the way to go.
We do still have the 4Ps. But how we practice them is a new approach. To cite Dell again, their R&D is now fueled by their market’s input – IdeaStorm.
The 4Ps model has been turned inside out.
I disagree with your new definition. Sales still has to be goal number one. The way I see social media working with this is that by engaging, you are helping the potential customer solve a problem. This is another way of saying that you are qualifying a customer.
Engaging in conversation with a customer, even if you send him elsewhere, is still a positive mark in the ledger sheet of your business life. So you are right that social media and engagement are important investments and will pay off more in the long run than right now.
Something a lot of people don’t get is that not everybody should be using social media. You have to consider who your audience is, along with how you treat customers when you meet them through more traditional routes. also, what steps are being saved by social media engagement? How is this really acting as a tool we can use to streamline or facilitate the sales process?
Modern “marketing” is evolving so fast…I think it probably changed a bit in the time it took me to write this sentence. The definition of marketing needs to be fluid. I think THE key aspect of marketing is brand building. I co-founded a small children’s footwear brand, and as a true startup, we had NO budget for marketing or advertising. I turned to Mom Bloggers to review our products and host giveaways – it was the best thing I could have done. It instantly got the brand name out there and got people talking about it all over the internet. We didn’t even have e-commerce on our site so I don’t have “ROI” direct impact on sales data, but I can say that the company became a multi-million dollar brand inside of 2 years. Based on following the site’s analytics, it is clear that blog reviews and giveaways generated thousands of hits to the website. It also showed that google searches for the brand name (rather than generic search terms) resulted in searches with a very low bounce rate. People stuck around and looked through the entire site. Social media builds community around a brand, community around a brand builds your brand recognition, and brand recognition builds ROI.
I think if we make engagement primary goal and sales secondary, as we grow and communication fosters between company and target market, sales itself becomes primary without even having to push it. It’s almost like never having to say buy my product but still being able to see growing sales.
Momblebee’s comment above is a prime example of how that model works
Interesting!
I feel like there is a scarcity of good marketing today. Good marketing means which can convert the leads into sales. The only marketing that has moved me in the last couple of years is Social Media Optimization.
Well..cool discussion this..I so love debates via threads…
I am somehow deviating from the point of discussion here but I felt I had to say this because this point is churning in my pea-sized brain since ages.
I believe that “engagement” has to to done in a more holistic sense (product-wise) than the community per-se. Why is it that we have to search for blogs, forums, wikis and sites to buy a mobile phone rather than when someone has to buy a regular OTC product. FMCG products (washing bars, waqshing powders etc.) rarely find a mention in social media circles but all things technological do. The need of the hour is to engage the consumer on a more holistic basis to make social media and viral marketing a more viable option for companies.
Ever seen a TWEET on Surf Excel or a Facebook message on the new LUX Peach which Priyanka Chopra is seen promoting hugely on television. Will surely love any replies to this one.
Ritu, I am already saying…CHEERS..(and i need 2)..
Regards,
Bhavya
You could have tole me the reason before deleting my comment!!
@Bhavya : I didn’t delete your comment. I just didn’t get around moderating the ones that were piled up. It’s there
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
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