How Marketing Can Lead the Charge for Business Innovation

Marketing Profs, November 6, 2007 — It's surprising how many business professionals don't really know what marketing is. Some people perceive it to be a necessary evil that consumes budgets and provides little payback; others see it as a person or department tasked with producing tactical "creative things" such as advertising, Web sites, email campaigns, and so on.

If we can take one idea away from all of these definitions, it would be that Marketing's job is to create customer value, engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty. Marketing serves as the stand-in for the customer, informing product development and other functions of what customers want and need.