What does marketing mean? Definition and the 4Ps

Marketing comes from the word "market". In short, it is all the work of understanding a customer's need and designing, pricing, promoting and delivering a product or service that offers them value. Marketing is often confused with advertising, but advertising is only one part of it.

The best known way to describe marketing is the 4P model introduced by E. Jerome McCarthy in 1960:

• Product: what are you selling and what problem does it solve?
• Price: what will customers pay, and where are competitors?
• Place: through which channel does the product reach customers; a store, e-commerce or resellers?
• Promotion: where do customers hear about it; ads, social media, search or word of mouth?

For services, people, process and physical evidence are added to make the 7P model.

Advertising is paid promotion that delivers a message to an audience. Sales is closing the deal with an interested customer. Marketing covers both and starts earlier: it decides who you sell to, what you say and which channels you use.

Today much of marketing runs through digital channels: search engine optimization (SEO), search and social ads, email, content and influencer partnerships. In Turkey, IAB Turkey reports that 74.2 percent of media spending went to digital in 2024. The advantage of digital is that it is measurable; you can see which channel brought how many customers. For market figures, see our explainer on digital marketing in Turkey.

First write down one type of customer and their problem. Then find where that customer would look for you: if they search on Google, SEO and search ads; if they spend time on social media, content and social ads. Not missing incoming leads is part of marketing too; even the best ad is wasted on a message nobody answers.