Marketing is often thought of simply as product sales or advertising; however, marketing includes much more. Marketing can be described as the combination of activities (one of which is advertising) required to get a product into the hands of a consumer. Good marketing requires thorough planning and execution.
Marketing has four main goals: 1) identify a target audience and their needs; 2) inform the target audience of the products or services available; 3) meet the needs of the target audience and entice them to purchase the product or service; 4) create a desire in the audience to purchase the product or service again.
While advertising is often an important component of marketing and marketing plans, it meets only one of the four main goals of marketing.
Additional information on marketing, especially for value-added agricultural enterprises is available from the University of Tennessee Extension Center for Profitable Agriculture. One particularly helpful publication is called "Marketing for the Value-Added Agricultural Enterprise". Iowa State's AgMRC contains many useful resources addressing marketing and value-added ventures.
