What Is Marketing? Definition and Types

What is marketing?

As we can see, marketing is a broad concept: it encompasses a range of activities whose ultimate outcome is a sale. This means the definition alone tells us relatively little. After all, every business has its own path to achieving that goal.

To choose the right activities, we therefore need to understand the types of marketing suited to different situations.

Types of marketing

There are many forms of marketing, and new ones continue to emerge. Wikipedia listed 19 types in 2017, 23 in 2021 and 29 in 2026. This growth is largely driven by increasing digitalisation.

The simplest distinction is between online and traditional marketing.

Online marketing

Inbound marketing involves creating value that audiences discover for themselves.

Examples include informative blog articles, infographics and webinars. Potential customers discover these useful materials while also getting to know the brand and its products or services.

This is an effective way to reach people who are more likely to make a purchase.

Outbound marketing

By contrast, outbound marketing relies on showing people advertisements they have not actively sought out.

Examples include TV commercials, banner ads and Google Ads campaigns. This approach lets businesses reach a specific audience quickly, although often at the cost of lower conversion rates.

Marketing can also be classified by its underlying framework. One of the most popular is the marketing mix, which consists of four pillars, known as the 4Ps: product, price, place and promotion. Its popularity stems from the clear way it explains how a business influences the market. The concept has also evolved into frameworks such as the 8Ps and 4Cs.

Which type of marketing is best?

There is no simple answer to the question of which type of marketing to use. The right choice depends on four factors:

• Industry
• Target audience
• Company resources, such as brand recognition and website size
• Available budget

Each of these has a significant influence on the most suitable marketing strategy.

The definition of online marketing is straightforward: it uses the internet as its medium. Its various forms include:

• Content marketing – activities that use engaging, useful content to establish a brand’s expertise and improve its website’s search rankings.
• Remarketing – a type of marketing that shows advertisements to people who have previously visited a website and are already familiar with the brand.
• Buzz marketing – encouraging relevant discussions on online forums to create opportunities to promote products or services.
• Social media marketing – activities on social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn that engage users and encourage them to explore a company’s products or services.
• SEM – search engine marketing, comprising two elements: SEO and PPC. The first involves optimising a website for search engines to increase its visibility and generate organic traffic. The second involves displaying ads through Google Ads to attract customers and generate paid traffic.

Traditional marketing

Traditional marketing, sometimes called conventional marketing, is also easy to understand. It includes offline techniques used before the internet was invented, such as distributing leaflets and advertising in newspapers, as well as:

• Sports marketing – using sports-related sponsorship, for example by displaying advertisements during event broadcasts or placing a brand on a banner.
• Sensory marketing – engaging the senses to create associations with a brand. Its most popular forms include audio marketing, which appeals to hearing, and scent marketing, which appeals to smell.
• Shopper marketing – taking place directly in a store, with the aim of persuading potential customers at the point of sale to make a purchase.

Inbound marketing

We have listed types of marketing according to the medium they use, but they can also be classified by how they reach their target audience.

We can now clearly see what marketing means in practice: using sales-driving methods that suit a business’s circumstances and capabilities.