What Is Marketing? A Better Definition (and Why It Matters)
Ask ten stakeholders in your organization what marketing is, and you'll get ten different answers.
Your CFO thinks it's lead generation. Your CEO thinks it's brand. Sales thinks it's the team that makes the brochures. And your marketing team — somewhere in the middle of all that — is trying to do work that none of those definitions actually makes room for.
That misalignment isn't just frustrating. It's expensive. The definition leadership lands on shapes what they fund, what they measure, and how much strategic weight they give the function. Get it wrong, and marketing ends up perpetually underfunded, mismeasured, and quietly treated as a cost center.
I typed "What is marketing?" into Google recently — mostly out of curiosity, partly out of professional masochism — and what I found was a problem. Not only were the definitions incredibly vague and unhelpful. But something crucial was missing from all of them.
So before I get to a better definition, let's look at what's wrong with the ones we have.
What do common marketing definitions get wrong?
In this post, I’m going to break down four run-of-the-mill definitions and take a closer look at what’s missing.
The first one, straight from the dictionary:
No surprise that words like “promoting” and “selling” show up first.
That’s exactly what people associate most with marketing: Flyers on windshields. Pushy sales reps. Endless ads for things we never asked for.
This definition that paints marketing as a scattered list of disconnected tasks. And maybe, somewhere in the middle, a bit of market research.
But marketing done right? It’s so much more than that.
What came up next: The definition from the AMA (American Marketing Association).
Definition #2:
From ama.org
More comprehensive than the last. But for me, it reads like something written by committee.
Technically accurate, yet sheds little light on what marketers actually do.
In short, it’s a definition no one can really use.
What we need isn’t a vague, all-encompassing statement. We need a definition that actually makes sense—and helps people see the real value of marketing.
The next one (from HubSpot):
Definition #3:
From HubSpot.com
HubSpot comes closer than most in defining the role—and value—of marketing.
Instead of focusing on promotion or persuasion, it emphasizes attracting an audience. It also introduces the idea of “standalone value,” suggesting that marketing content should be genuinely useful, even without an immediate sale.
It’s also one of the few definitions I came across that acknowledges the role of time in the customer journey.
But even so, it doesn’t quite capture everything.
And that brings me to the final definition—
Definition #4:
From impactplus.com
That last one is worth sitting with. Framing marketing as a revenue generator sounds results-oriented — and in a budget meeting, it probably feels like the safe answer.
It's why marketing gets judged on last-click attribution. It's why brand investment is the first thing cut when Q3 looks soft. It's why the function keeps getting pulled toward short-term tactics at the expense of the work that actually compounds.
But, as marketing expert Dale Harrison puts it, marketing isn't a direct line to revenue — it's a multiplier. It doesn't always close the sale, but it makes everything else more effective: by increasing awareness, attracting higher-intent leads, shortening sales cycles, and strengthening pricing power.
Marketing creates the conditions for revenue to happen—especially in complex, long-cycle buying environments where trust, relevance, and timing matter most.
Framing it purely as a revenue engine lends to the “salesification” of marketing—and overlooks the strategic, long-term value it brings to the business.
A More Useful Definition of Marketing
“Marketing is the art and science of building brand awareness, trust, and memorable associations with an audience over time—then activating that familiarity through strategic, physical availability, ultimately driving sustainable business growth.”
There are three core ideas behind this definition. Let's break them down.
Marketing is both an art and a science:
Marketing gets called the "arts and crafts" department more than any of us would like to admit. And yes — it's creative. But it's also rooted in a serious understanding of human behavior.
It draws from disciplines like:
Psychology, which helps us understand what motivates action.
Sociology: which tells us how what influences what people buy, how they shop, and what brands they identify with
Behavioral economics, which explains the often irrational shortcuts people take in decision-making.
Market research, which grounds strategy in the actual needs, preferences, and language of real people.
These provide a foundation for understanding how people perceive value, how trust is built, and what ultimately drives decisions.
The creativity comes in applying that knowledge in ways that resonate. But the process begins with insight, not instinct.
This definition reflects that reality. Marketing isn’t just a creative exercise—it’s an applied behavioral science with a strategic goal.
Marketing builds memory before it drives action:
One of the most persistent misconceptions — even among marketers — is that marketing's primary job is to drive immediate action. But most decisions, especially in B2B or high-consideration categories, don't happen in a single moment. Buyers don't act when we want them to. They act when they're ready.
That’s why effective marketing works on two levels:
First, it builds mental availability—creating recognition, trust, and meaningful associations through consistent and relevant exposure over time.
Then, it ensures physical availability—that the brand is present, accessible, and easy to act on when the buyer reaches a decision point.
This isn't theory. Decades of effectiveness research — including the work coming out of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute — consistently shows that long-term brand building combined with timely activation outperforms a short-term, sales-first approach.
Our new definition reflects that. And crucially, it respects the buyer’s timeline — not the business’s.
Marketing starts with the audience, not the business:
In business, they like to say “the customer is everything.” But the way we talk about marketing rarely reflects that belief.
Most definitions still start with the company — the product, the promotion, the sale.
But marketing that actually works starts with a genuine understanding of the people we're trying to reach:
The behavioral science? It’s not about what we want them to think—it’s about how they actually form associations, trust and respond.
The short vs. long term? It’s a recognition that action happens on their timeline, not ours.
Relevance? It only exists if what we say connects with their world, their needs, and their context.
And marketing’s role—its true role—is to make that understanding actionable.
This isn’t about ignoring revenue—it’s about understanding how revenue actually happens.
Here’s the truth:
When attention is scarce, we can’t afford to define marketing from the inside out. We have to start with the audience.
If we’re not really understanding them, we’re marketing in the dark. We’re throwing tactics into the world and hope they land. We get ignored. And the work becomes inefficient and ineffective.
This Isn’t a New Idea—It’s a Forgotten One
Philip Kotler defined marketing in 1980 as "satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process." Dry, but fine. By 2018, he'd rewritten it entirely: "The process by which companies engage customers, build strong customer relationships, and create customer value in order to capture value from customers in return."
Notice something?
Business outcomes are still present — but the customer is mentioned three times.
And here’s the key:
This isn’t about relationship-building in a sentimental sense.
It's grounded in how memory, familiarity, and trust are formed in ways that eventually lead to preference, credibility, and choice. Durable brands are built the same way durable relationships are: through repeated, meaningful interaction over time.
That’s why marketing, done right, is inherently audience-centric.
And any useful definition should reflect that.
Why this definition matters for your organization
So why don't more companies define — or fund — marketing this way?
Because promotion is familiar. Highlighting features, pushing messages, tracking clicks feels like action. It's immediate. It fits neatly into a report. It's easy to defend in a room full of skeptics.
Long-term brand building is harder to justify at budget time. Measuring memory and trust doesn't show up cleanly in attribution models. And in organizations wired for short-term wins, the incentive to invest in the work that compounds tends to quietly disappear. But that’s exactly where marketing delivers its deepest value.
But here's the real cost: every time marketing gets redefined as a lead-gen function or a revenue lever, it moves one step further from the work that actually builds a business. It gets measured on the wrong things, funded at the wrong level, and staffed for the wrong outcomes.
Getting the definition right isn't a semantic exercise. It's the foundation for how marketing gets resourced, how it gets evaluated, and whether it ever earns a real seat at the table.
Change the definition, and you change everything downstream. We'd fund it differently. Measure it differently. Prioritize it differently.
But then again... a gal can dream. 💫
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Frequently Asked Questions:
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Marketing is the discipline of building awareness, trust, and memorable associations with an audience over time — then ensuring your brand is accessible and easy to act on when that audience is ready to buy. It's not just promotion. It's the long-term work of being known, trusted, and chosen.
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The purpose of marketing is to create the conditions for revenue to happen — not to directly generate it. It builds mental availability (recognition and trust) and physical availability (being present when a buyer is ready), which together make every other business function more effective.
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Promotion is one tactic within marketing. Marketing is the broader strategic discipline: it includes research, positioning, content, brand building, and long-term audience relationships.
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It's both. Marketing draws on behavioral science, psychology, sociology, and market research to understand how people form associations, build trust, and make decisions. The creativity comes in applying that understanding — but the process begins with insight, not instinct.
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Mental availability is how easily a brand comes to mind when a buyer is in a purchase situation. It's built through consistent, relevant exposure over time — creating recognition, trust, and meaningful associations before a buying decision even occurs. Research by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute shows it's one of the strongest predictors of brand growth.
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Most definitions either reduce marketing to a list of tactics (promoting, selling, advertising) or try to frame it narrowly as a revenue driver. Both miss what marketing actually does: build the trust, familiarity, and mental availability that makes every other business function more effective over time.
