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Serving Up Some Satisfaction

Marketing has less to do with getting customers to pay for a product than with developing a demand for the product and fulfilling customers’ needs. Marketers serve up what people often don’t even realize they want.

Marketing encompasses everything a company does in the process of getting consumers interested in a product or service. The function includes product development, market research, product distribution, sales strategy, public relations, and customer support—interacting with every stage of the business. Marketers determine and create the demand for a product, establish a price based on the competition and acceptable margins, decide where and how a product will be sold, and finally, provide guidance on how and where it will be advertised.

People who are good at marketing think about business in terms of customer needs and satisfaction—they really know what makes people tick. Effective marketing is equal parts innate creativity and curiosity and strong skills in analytics and data science. So not only are they creative writers, but they also know their way around an Excel spreadsheet and how to draw insights from data. It’s a great place for people who can use both sides of their brain and connect the dots between them.