This is the first of a series of posts about marketing fundamentals. And what is more fundamental than considering why marketing matters.

Today’s marketing textbooks are dominated by an arcane language which loses sight of the critical nature of marketing practice — a practice key to ANY and ALL company success. In this academic language, theoretical discussions tell readers marketing’s job is to create “value.” While there is truth in this idea (it’s not entirely wrong), the idea of value obscures marketing’s truly practical role in company success.

The reason marketing exists is creating conditions where a company’s products and services sell well today — and in the future. Without marketing, finance won’t have money to manage, engineers won’t be able make new things, factories won’t run profitably, executives won’t have jobs, and far more. Thus, Regis McKenna’s now- famous 1980s HBR article was  headlined “Marketing is Everything.”

Three fundamentals are required for a company to benefit from strong marketing.

• The purpose of marketing
• The three roles of marketers
• The four levers marketers can use to make things happen (what are called the 4P’s).

Where many might want to start with the 4Ps, any understanding of marketing starts with the first two. Let’s look at each.

THE PURPOSE OF MARKETING — WHY MARKETING MATTERS 

Marketing has two operational purposes:

• Act so that demand for product in today’s markets exists and turns into sales and profit.
• Act today so that profitable demand exists in the future for the products and services a company offers at that time (1, 5, or 10 years in the future and sometimes longer) and also turns into sales and profit.

This is the only reason a company needs marketing. It is also the reason marketing touches every part of doing business. Note that efficiency is not a marketer’s purpose. Efficiency is not unimportant. But despite company obsessions with efficiency, it does not and cannot ensure a company is healthy. Companies are only healthy when their marketing does what matters for there to be profits from demand today and profit from future demand for the products at that time.

THE THREE ROLES OF MARKETING

Observing marketers in a healthy company reveals three roles:

1. Know the market and how profit arrives from the market. In this role, marketers must learn about, at least, (a) customers and potential customers, (b) influences on the customer, (c) distribution outlets, (d) communication outlets, (e) competitors as well as all possible competitors for customer monies, and (f) the physical (or virtual) locations at which products are bought. Nothing matters more to company success than a useful, actionable understanding of the market — whether startup, entrepreneur, or Fortune 100.
2. Help every area of the company know what is needed from their work for there to be profit in the market. For there to be demand, products and serviced must perceived by customers to deliver value so much that they will pay more than what it costs to make the product or deliver the service, to put it onto the market, and to run the company. Marketers, then, communicate strategically with the company to guide tactical work needed for there to be excellent whole demand. Note: Those activities marketers influence are not often the primary responsibility of marketing yet marketers must influence this work anyway.
3. Execute specific functions — primarily the Placement and Promotion parts of the 4Ps.There are functions where marketers initiate and manage execution. There are most often placement (distribution) and promotion (communication and advertising). These areas are also where marketers look busiest. Too often, others in company think this busy-ness means this work is most important. It’s not.

It is not possible to prioritize these three roles — all three are critical and all at once. That said, omitting any one of the three damages a company. Unfortunately, many companies mistakenly believe marketing is only communication. Reading job listing, then, we discover that many companies believe “marketing” is social media management and nothing more. This belief creates market failure as success depends heavily on the first two — being experts and bringing that to all company efforts.

MARKETING’S FOUR PS

Historically marketing work has been described by the four Ps. The Purpose and the Three Roles are a much clearer starting point. With those in place, the Four Ps are the tools marketers have at the ready which they can use to make things happen — they are the levers marketers use leading to sales and profits. We must not, though, consider each “P” on its own. All marketing success is a result of a “marketing mix” — a mix of the four Ps leading to that gestalt where a product is considered more valuable than a sum of its parts.

Every new concept, then, must be considered for how it affects, and is affected by, the 4Ps. Single minded focus on the mix of 4Ps is the path by which marketers improve business success.

WHO DOES THE MARKETING?

Not all marketing work is done by the marketing department as, studying companies, we find each allocates marketing roles and influence on the 4Ps in different ways. In a few companies, then, the CEO carries key marketing responsibilities. In a few other companies, there might be engineers with tremendous customer sensitivity who lead the marketing connection to product. In certain services companies — law firms for example — there is rarely important value from an isolated “marketing” role as each lawyer (for example) carries at least some responsibility for marketing and sales within their role while more senior lawyers are key rain-makers benefitting the whole firm.

Such dispersed marketing needs to be approached with tremendous care, though, to ensure a company effectively covers the whole of marketing. Apart from such service firms, many of the companies who need a traditional marketing department re-assign marketing roles without thought — as when finance is made responsible for pricing. No finance department, though, has the full market knowledge needed for smart pricing so this assignment ensures market mistakes which will diminish profits. Effective pricing requires that marketers and finance working together (preferably with marketing leading the effort). In other cases, engineers take on full responsibility for product design. Engineers, though, are trained to focus on what can be made and rarely have enough market knowledge so know what it takes to create the gestalt where customers perceive value in a product more than the cost to make it, put it on the market, and run the company. All design efforts should be heavily informed by marketers through joint teams of marketers and engineers.

Companies, then, must take care that (a) they execute all three roles with exceptional savvy and (b) that any non-marketer assigned a marketing role is capable of the work. Only marketing training perceives the whole of the market issues the company faces (including the unusual realities of human behavior and understanding) then leverages that expertise for better results.

THE CRITICAL NEED TO UNDERSTAND HUMAN CUSTOMERS

A critical part of marketing training teaches students to understand, and work within, the fundamental humanity of customers. A company’s products, after all, are ALWAYS purchased by human beings — even when a company is selling to other companies. All purchases, then, involve irrational realities rather than the fully rational mythology loved by economists, engineers, and executives. Author Rory Sutherland suggests companies must respect how fully sensible customer choices can appear “non-sense-ical” to executives and that companies need to respect customer psycho-logic — purchase choices driven by customer values outside rigid logic. This is just as true selling to business customers as selling in consumer markets.

Human beings, after all, do not fit easily within the context of business. Marketers must be trained to think of these humans and how their company can succeed within the market’s inherent irrationality. Companies must take care that decision makers understand human beings — otherwise will only succeed by accident. While many companies end up succeeding by accident, they will always claim they knew what they were doing. What they cannot understand is the added success they would have had were they to rely on sophisticated, savvy marketing.

GO FORTH AND EMBRACE THE WHOLE OF MARKETING

Marketing failure is the most common reason new or innovative products fail. This failure is primarily a result of believing markets are rational and that all purchases are by rational actors (we can blame economists for this mythology). Hence, without critical marketing influence, products fail.

For companies to succeed within the vagaries of market complexity, then, marketers need to have an influential role. To do this, though, marketers must also be thoroughly business minded — comprehending the whole realities of business and capable of engaging deeply and professionally with the whole company including finance. It also requires that marketers accept that the second of their three roles is primarily one of influence — affecting the output of other departments without directing what happens.

©2026 Doug Garnett — All Rights Reserved

Doug’s book about the value of complexity science and business success will be published by Columbia Business Press later in 2026. Through his company, Protonik LLC, Doug Garnett consults with companies as they design and bring to market new and innovative products. He has taught marketing, consumer behavior, and advertising at Portland State University since 2001.

You can read more about Doug’s unusual background (math, aerospace, supercomputers, consumer goods & national TV ads) at www.Protonik.net. Doug is a member of the RetailWire.com braintrust where he engages discussions of retail challenges. And, together with his podcast partner Shahin Khan, current issues in marketing and business are discussed on The Marketing (And Everything Else) Podcast — available on Google, Spotify, the OrionX website, and Apple Podcast.