Marketing: What It Means, What It Is, History and Evolution of the Discipline

Marketing is the process by which an organisation understands a market, identifies needs and demand, builds a value proposition and brings it to the people it is intended for. To fully understand what it means and what is meant by marketing, one must consider its dual nature, operating on both a strategic and operational level and capable of steering both b2b and consumer markets. Its practices have ancient origins, but marketing as an autonomous discipline emerged in the United States in the early twentieth century and took its modern form in the second half of the century.

Closely related disciplines revolve around marketing: branding builds the perception of the brand, communication makes its value legible, the unique selling proposition distils one possible reason to choose it, and social media management governs an increasingly important part of its presence on the digital channel, constantly monitoring every conversation on social networks; all of these disciplines can be orchestrated by a modern agency or brought together within a marketing consultancy.

Meaning and translation of the term

The meaning of marketing encompasses advertising and commercial promotion and places them within a broader process. The term comes from the English to market, “to bring to market”: its literal translation evokes the act of placing goods and services. This is why the term has a wider scope than any possible synonym: sales and advertising are its tools, communication is one of the levers through which marketing delivers value to the customer, and branding builds the perception of the brand. Over the twentieth century marketing underwent a radical transformation: from a pure, product-oriented sales logic (1950s) to a customer-centred philosophy (1970s), and on to the systemic, data-driven approach of contemporary digital marketing.

So, in simple terms: what is marketing? Marketing means understanding what the market wants before it is even produced, building a value proposition consistent with those needs, and communicating it relevantly to the right audience, through the right channels, at the right moment. From this perspective, marketing should be understood as a mindset that orients the entire organisation towards the customer.

There are, however, two particularly authoritative definitions that will help us understand who studies this discipline and how it is applied.

The definitions from Philip Kotler and the American Marketing Association

Two authoritative definitions serve as a reference for those who study or apply this discipline.

According to Philip Kotler, father of modern marketing and author of the textbook «Marketing Management», marketing is “a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering and exchanging products and value with others”.

The American Marketing Association (AMA) has also offered its own definition of marketing, updating it several times to reflect changes in our society. The latest version reads:

“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, partners, and society at large.”

Compared with Kotler’s formula, the AMA definition therefore broadens the perspective: value also concerns partners and society, and marketing becomes a set of institutions and processes. In other words, an organisational architecture that goes beyond a simple activity.

These definitions point to three pillars of marketing:

1. Need: the human necessity to be satisfied.
2. Value: the benefit perceived by the customer relative to the cost.
3. Exchange: the act of obtaining a desired object by offering something in return.

History of marketing: when it began and how it has evolved

Although the modern discipline took shape in the twentieth century, marketing has ancient origins. Each era added a tool and changed the relationship between business and customer. Knowing the main stages of its evolution will help you read what marketing is today: how it was born, and what it has become.

From the origins to the Industrial Revolution

The earliest traces of practices comparable to marketing date back to antiquity.
In the markets of Mesopotamia and along the Mediterranean trade routes of the Bronze Age, marks were already used on goods to certify their origin and quality: a primitive form of branding and packaging. In Pompeii, too, in the 1st century BC, mosaics displayed brands of garum, signalling notions of reputation and recognisability.

In the Middle Ages, with the growth of local markets, rudimentary forms of marketing emerged: merchants travelled between fairs, selling goods and learning from customers’ direct feedback.

The invention of movable-type printing in 1450 enabled the spread of leaflets and posters, one of the earliest forms of advertising. In the 17th and 18th centuries, rising literacy then opened the door to trade publications and consumer research. The Industrial Revolution, with mass production and ever-wider distribution channels, forced businesses to innovate in order to survive the emerging competition and win market share.

The twentieth century and the birth of modern marketing

Marketing as a structured discipline emerged between the early and mid-20th century. In the United States, between 1910 and 1920, the first professional associations were formed, such as the National Association of Teachers of Advertising, paving the way for the founding of the American Marketing Association in 1937. In the 1950s and 1960s, companies moved from hard selling to building offers based on customer needs; in 1960 Jerome McCarthy introduced the 4Ps, making the marketing mix operational.

The most radical leap in the history of marketing came with digitalisation. Philip Kotler, professor at the Kellogg School of Management and adviser to companies such as IBM, Ford and General Electric, systematised this transition during that period through progressive stages: first product-centred Marketing 1.0 (1960s–1990s), then customer-oriented Marketing 2.0 (1990s–2000s), followed by values-driven Marketing 3.0, omnichannel Marketing 4.0 and Marketing 5.0, founded on artificial intelligence. With Marketing 6.0 (2023), Kotler places generative AI at the heart of experience design, anticipating immersive, hybrid brand ecosystems.

In parallel, several schools of thought developed: from the Chicago School, quantitative and demand-oriented, to Christian Grönroos’s Nordic School of relationship marketing, through to Vargo and Lusch’s Service-Dominant Logic.

Each phase reflects a shift in the relationship between brand and consumer; to explore the topic further, read: From Kotler to digital: how modern marketing has evolved.

What marketing is for: who does it, why and when

Who does marketing?

Anyone who wants to bring an offer to market does marketing: from the entrepreneur to the marketing manager who coordinates its strategies and budgets, from the start-up to the multinational group, from the independent professional to the manufacturing SME. Business marketing concerns both those selling to consumers (B2C) and those selling to other businesses (B2B), where buying cycles are longer and decisions involve more people. The tools differ too: in B2C, awareness, experience and immediacy matter; in B2B, demonstrated expertise, in-depth content and relationships with decision-makers matter. For companies operating across several countries, international marketing adds a further layer of complexity: different languages, cultures and channels to govern under a single identity.

The function that plans, coordinates and controls all these activities is marketing management: it sets objectives, budgets, responsibilities and measurement criteria.

Why do marketing?

Marketing serves concrete objectives that reinforce one another:

• building awareness and reputation;
• generating demand and acquiring customers;
• retain those who have already bought;
• defend the competitive position;
• build brand equity that outlasts individual product cycles.

Each objective requires different tools and metrics: awareness is measured in brand recall and brand searches, acquisition in leads and customers, loyalty in repeat purchases and lifetime value. The picture is clear: marketing is a value multiplier and, like any investment, must be measured by the results it produces.

When to do marketing?

Continuously.
Marketing is a system that works over time and supports the company through every stage of its growth. Companies that treat it as a one-off action obtain inconsistent, intermittent benefits, while those that integrate it permanently build a competitive advantage day after day. If anything, the real question concerns method: that is, how to invest with strategic consistency.
Even in times of uncertainty, cutting marketing to zero means ceding ground to competitors precisely when demand is reorganising.

Business marketing: B2B, B2C and international

Although the underlying logic always remains the same, business marketing tends to change form depending on the market the company addresses.

B2C Marketing, for example, targets consumers directly. The purchase journey is therefore usually short and emotional, driven by awareness, experience and ease of access.

B2B Marketing, by contrast, targets other businesses. The sales cycle is, by its very nature, long and rational, involves several decision-makers and therefore rests on trust, expertise and in-depth content.

Finally, there is international marketing: the process of taking an offering into multiple countries. It requires adapting messages, channels and prices to local cultures, while striving to maintain a single, recognisable brand identity.

The three dimensions of Marketing: Analytical, Strategic, Operational

Understanding how marketing is structured in management practice is the starting point for building the right approach. The three macro-activities follow one another in a logical, cyclical sequence.

Three examples help to distinguish these levels:

• a competitor analysis that identifies an untapped market space is analytical marketing;
• the decision to occupy that space with premium positioning is strategic marketing;
• the campaign that communicates the new positioning across social, search and points of sale is operational marketing.

Analytical marketing feeds on intelligence: the continuous gathering of information on the market, customers and competitors that makes decisions verifiable. Strategic marketing, on the other hand, is the mind: it defines long-term objectives, positioning and the criteria for choosing between competitive alternatives. Finally, operational marketing is the arm: it translates these choices into concrete, measurable actions.

In everyday practice, companies blur the three dimensions or, worse still, neglect them in favour of the purely operational level, all without having defined either the strategy or the analytical foundation. The result is the classic “marketing that doesn’t work”: a series of activations with no direction, far more costly than mere inefficiency.

For more on this topic, read: Marketing Intelligence: definition, history and uses.

The Marketing Mix: from the 4Ps to the 7Ps (and beyond)

The Marketing Mix is the set of levers through which a company takes its offer to market. The models have evolved over time, always around the same logic: each lever must be consistent with the others and with the chosen positioning.

The classic 4P model (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) was formulated by Jerome McCarthy in 1960 and remains the fundamental framework. Over time, however, it has expanded into a 7P model (adding People, Process and Physical Evidence), which is needed for services and for contexts in which the customer experience is an integral part of the offer.

From this perspective, two companies may sell a similar product: the first opts for superior quality, a high price, selective distribution and communication centred on excellence; the second focuses on an accessible price, mass retail and frequent promotions. Both can succeed, provided their levers tell the same promise. A single inconsistent lever (such as a high price in a discount channel) is enough to undermine the entire positioning.

The lever that has changed most in recent years is Promotion: today it encompasses social media management, public relations, corporate communications, content and performance activities. Levers with different measurement logics.

We covered this in more depth in: What is the Marketing Mix: the 4Ps, 7Ps and 5Ps explained with examples.

The main types of marketing

Marketing breaks down into different disciplines, each with its own distinct tools and metrics.
Here are the most common types and how they connect:

Digital marketing and SEO

SEO remains the channel with the best cost-benefit ratio over the long term. According to Backlinko, across 4 million searches the first organic result captures 27.6% of clicks and only 0.63% of users click on a result on the second page.

But in 2026, SEO has expanded into GEO (Generative Engine Optimization): with Google AI Overview, Perplexity and other generative engines synthesising direct answers, being on the first page is no longer enough. You need to be the source that AI models cite. This is why the work of an SEO agency must now be assessed over broader horizons.

Performance marketing

Global spending on search advertising has reached $190.5 billion. Google holds 82% of the PPC market; on average, PPC generates twice as much traffic as organic SEO. 87% of digital advertising revenue will be generated programmatically by 2026 (Loopex Digital, 2025). The average ROI of PPC is 200%.

The challenge in 2026 is no longer the size of the spend but creative quality: as algorithmic targeting replaces demographic targeting, performance increasingly differs on the quality of the message rather than the precision of the audience.

Content marketing

The global content marketing market is worth $94 billion in 2025, with growth of 10.4% forecast for 2026. 72% of marketers say that a solid content strategy has increased engagement and traffic. Companies that maintain an active blog are 13 times more likely to see a positive ROI than those that do not.

Social media marketing

With 5.66 billion users worldwide on social networks (Statista, 2025) and social advertising spend projected to grow by 9% a year until 2030, social media remains an indispensable channel, but with increasingly complex dynamics. TikTok was the most downloaded app of 2025 (second only to ChatGPT); social commerce is projected to account for 17% of all e-commerce sales by 2025. The figure that calls for strategic reflection, however, is this: 30-50% of Gen Z consumers bypass search engines and look for brands directly on social media, which means reputation is increasingly formed in environments the company cannot control.

Influencer marketing

According to Influencer Marketing Hub, influencer marketing reached $32.55 billion in 2025 and is now a fully fledged performance channel. Large companies have integrated it as a fully fledged performance channel: no longer just brand awareness, but lead generation and direct conversion. According to Business Insider, brands such as Unilever have shifted significant shares of budget towards partnerships with creators.

Email marketing and marketing automation

Email remains the most efficient channel for retention, with a return that, for one marketer in three, exceeds $36 for every dollar spent (Litmus, State of Email 2025). Marketing automation connects the two channels: email sequences triggered by user behaviour (sign-up, download, abandoned basket) that guide the user without manual intervention.

Not to mention other disciplines such as:

• Inbound marketing and lead generation, which aim to make a business findable by customers at the very moment they are looking for an answer.
• B2B marketing, which works with long cycles, multiple decision-makers and trust built over time.
• Brand marketing, which builds the brand over the long term and makes every other activity more effective, because a recognised brand converts at lower cost.
• Neuromarketing, which studies how perception, emotions and cognitive mechanisms influence purchasing choices, often before we are aware of them.
• Growth hacking, which applies rapid experimentation to product and channels to identify the most efficient growth paths.

Naturally, these channels work when they are coordinated by a single strategy, with shared objectives and metrics.

To explore this kind of strategy further, our Magazine offers: Digital Marketing Strategies: the complete guide.

Marketing, communication, branding and advertising: the differences

Revolving around marketing are also closely related disciplines, which are often confused with it:

• branding builds perception of the brand;
• communication makes its value legible;
• the unique selling proposition distils one possible reason to choose it;
• social media management governs an increasingly important part of its presence on the digital channel, monitoring every conversation on social networks.

Marketing and communication have a relationship of inclusion: communication is one of the levers through which marketing delivers value. The same applies to advertising, which concerns paid communication to a chosen audience. Branding, by contrast, works on identity and positioning over the long term and steers every marketing choice.

Marketing and sales also work together without being the same thing. Marketing creates the conditions for choice: it attracts, informs, qualifies and prepares the relationship. Sales turns that relationship into a contract.

These are far from marginal distinctions, and they weigh on budget decisions: those who confuse marketing with advertising tend to invest in visibility before defining offer, price and positioning, and to measure success in impressions. All these disciplines can be orchestrated by a modern agency or brought together in marketing consultancy, or governed at advisory level, which holds them together within a single strategy.

We have, however, covered this in more depth in: Branding: definition, examples and history of the term and in: Communication: definition, examples and history of the term.

How to build a Marketing Strategy: the 5-phase framework

A well-built marketing strategy follows a logical sequence that turns insight into measurable action. Here is the framework Bliss Agency applies in its Brand Advisory engagements and in its ongoing Brand Advisory::

Phase 1, Audit and Analysis: an assessment of the current brand, the market, competitors and strategic gaps. Without solid data, every strategy is an untested hypothesis.

Phase 2, Positioning and Target: definition of the target audience, the unique value proposition and the competitive position to be occupied in the customer’s mind.

Phase 3, Strategy and Marketing Mix: choosing the channels, messages and levers that guide the customer through every stage of the funnel, from discovery to decision.

Phase 4, Execution and Governance: activation of operational actions within a Brand Governance system that maintains consistency and control across every channel.

Phase 5, Measurement and Optimisation: setting clear KPIs, monitoring performance and continuous data-driven optimisation.

KPIs should be chosen before starting and linked to business objectives:

Phases 3 and 5 are connected by the funnel: the tool that maps the customer journey, identifying the strengths and vulnerabilities of the marketing strategy.
We covered it here: Funnel: what it means, how it works and real examples.

Marketing today: the forces changing it

With the advent of digital technologies, social media and above all superintelligence, marketing today manages not only transactions but relationships: CRM, automation and analytics serve to maintain a constant, personalised dialogue with the user. This is also why four forces are reshaping the discipline.

1. Artificial intelligence as infrastructure

According to HubSpot’s report on AI in marketing, 66% of marketers already use AI in their work. 91% of Fortune 1000 companies are increasing their investment in AI applied to marketing. Gartner predicts that 30% of all outbound messages from large companies will be AI-generated in 2025. But the critical point is not automation: it is the quality of the creative and strategic direction guiding the AI systems. AI amplifies the abilities of those who know what to do, and the mistakes of those who do not.

2. The decline of Audience Targeting: the creative wins

As advertising systems rely increasingly on algorithmic distribution and less on precise demographic targeting, campaign performance now depends mainly on the quality of the creative content. As IAB research has shown, 40% of video ads will involve generative AI by 2026. The right message, at the right moment, outperforms any degree of targeting precision.

3. Privacy, First-Party Data and Zero-Party Data

With the decline of third-party cookies and tighter privacy rules (GDPR, ePrivacy), the ability to collect and use proprietary data has become a structural competitive advantage. Companies with well-built first-party and zero-party data strategies have a pipeline of customer insight that competitors cannot easily replicate.

4. Omnichannel and Phygital Experience

The 2026 consumer does not distinguish between online and offline: they expect a seamless, consistent experience across every touchpoint. 77% of visits to retail sites come from mobile; social commerce is growing 26% year on year; 97% of users check a company’s online presence before visiting in person. Marketing strategy must govern this complexity, not be governed by it.

Real examples of strategic marketing: what we can learn

Apple: positioning as a total strategy

Apple sells an identity through its technology products, all consistent with the same idea of design. The consistency of its marketing, from packaging to physical stores, from communications to pricing, is the result of a positioning strategy applied rigorously for decades. The lesson for any business owner is that strategic marketing works only if it runs through every touchpoint, without exception.

Nike: from product to mission

Nike shifted its communication from product-led to mission-led: “Just Do It” sells the possibility of being an athlete. The result is one of the highest brand equities in the world and a community of loyal consumers that goes beyond the logic of price and rational comparison.

Airbnb: marketing as a system of trust

Airbnb built a global marketplace on trust between strangers. Its marketing tells stories of experiences and builds trust through reviews, storytelling and community. It is a textbook case of how marketing can become part of the product itself.

The three cases we have presented share one trait: none of them rests on a single campaign. Apple’s positioning, Nike’s mission and Airbnb’s trust are the result of consistent choices sustained over years, across every lever of the marketing mix.

A crucial attribute in 2026.

Bliss Agency Case Studies: marketing that creates real value

Bliss works with brands of different sectors and sizes, applying a method that integrates analysis, strategy and execution. These cases show how marketing becomes a concrete lever for growth, and each one illustrates a principle covered in this guide:

Coca-Cola HBC: multi-market brand governance for one of the leading Coca-Cola bottlers in Europe, ensuring message consistency and oversight of digital and physical touchpoints across the entire customer journey.

Miele: premium positioning and communication to protect the brand equity of a household appliance brand in a highly competitive market.

Würth: integrated B2B marketing, aimed at both the distribution channel and the end customer, with consistency between institutional reputation and commercial activation.

Doreca: segmentation in the beverage sector, with a narrative consistent with the brand’s values and different messages for different consumer segments.

Charles Philip Milano: international marketing in accessible luxury, combining brand advisory, stewardship of identity and digital strategy for an Italian fashion brand.

Behind each of these cases lies a choice made upstream: the partner to work with. Assessing method, expertise, transparency and the ability to measure results avoids confusing visibility with growth.

That is why knowing how to choose a communications agency is now essential. To find out how, read: How to choose a marketing agency: the complete guide.

In summary

Marketing has ancient roots, but its modern form emerged between 1910 and 1960, when it became an academic and professional discipline. From a production-led activity to customer orientation and on to social and digital integration, marketing bears witness to the evolution of society and the economy. Understanding this history is essential for applying strategies today with awareness, a balance between tradition and innovation, and a long-term vision.