One year later and I’m still pondering the meaning of Marketing. Even more surprisingly, I’ve been re-reading “Kolter on Marketing” and this time I think it’s sinking in.

I’m trying to understand Marketing because it increasingly seems a prerequisite to effectively executing online marketing. That may seem obvious, but I don't think I'm the first or only 'online marketer' to skip the pre-req's.

That and the fact that every time I hear someone use the word in a sentence, I increasingly feel like Inigo Montoya – a strange accent comes over me as I resist the temptation to say those immortal words: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Peter Drucker has provided my favorite overall definition of Marketing (he called it the process of creating customers) but the Kolter book is full of useful definitions that cover the subject from all angles which cumulatively provide a more complete picture. Here are the ones I’ve take note of:

• Marketing is demand management
  Influence the level, timing, and composition of demand in pursuit of the company’s objectives.

• Marketing is about value
  Understand, create, communicate, and deliver perceived value.

• Marketing is about opportunity
  The art of finding, developing, and profiting from opportunities.

• Marketing starts with a desire to attract a response
  Gain someone’s attention, interest, desire, purchase, referral.

• Marketing has the main responsibility for achieving profitable revenue growth for the company.
  Identify, evaluate, and select market opportunities and create strategies for achieving eminence if not dominance in target markets.

I should immediately make clear that I’ve edited and paraphrased most of these for my own reasons, so if you want the real list go buy the book.

So if the meaning of Marketing is up in that list somewhere, what does online marketing mean?