What Is Marketing? Digital vs Traditional, Evolution, and the Holistic Approach
- Alberto Carniel
- Dec 23, 2019
- 8 min read
Updated: Dec 29, 2025
What does marketing mean?
What’s the difference between digital and traditional marketing?
Why is marketing important—and how has it changed over time?
In this article, you’ll learn the fundamentals to run and manage a marketing campaign.
I’ll show you definitions, examples, and real-world cases across different types of marketing.
Consider this the “base layer” for understanding a #MarketingPlan.
Now, don’t be shy. Dig in.
Table of contents
WHAT MARKETING MEANS
According to Marketing Management by Kotler and Keller, marketing is about identifying and meeting human and social needs—one of the shortest good definitions is simply: meeting needs profitably.
Definition of traditional marketing
Marketing is a process made of two main players: marketers and prospects.
Marketers look for a response from prospects.
Their job is to understand needs and wants, stimulate demand, and offer a solution that creates value for both sides.
A well-known definition comes from the American Marketing Association (AMA).
In plain terms: marketing is the set of activities and processes used to create, communicate, deliver, and exchange offerings that provide value to customers and society.
Everything starts from the consumer and their demand for goods and services.
In marketing, you’ll run into different demand scenarios:
Negative demand: people dislike the product/service and may even pay to avoid it.
Non-existent demand: people aren’t interested or don’t know it exists.
Latent demand: people strongly want a solution, but it doesn’t exist (yet).
Declining demand: demand is shrinking—time to innovate or reposition.
Irregular demand: seasonal buying creates unstable cash flow.
Full demand: steady, predictable demand.
Overfull demand: demand exceeds availability.
Unwholesome demand: demand exists, but the product has harmful social implications (e.g., cigarettes, drugs, alcohol).
Marketers should understand why a certain demand exists, then increase the desirability of their offering (or reshape the offer entirely).
Demand isn’t just “marketing theory.” It’s survival.
CB Insights famously found that a top reason startups fail is building something the market doesn’t need—often cited as 42%.
So we’ve clarified demand.
But what about the market?
Difference between market and industry
Defining a market as a physical place where supply and demand meet is not enough.
A market is a group of consumers expressing a specific demand.
Sellers belong to the industry.
Buyers belong to the market.
When marketers target a distinct audience, they’re targeting a specific market.
Five types of markets in a modern economy
Kotler and Keller describe an exchange economy where value, money, and information flow across multiple players (consumers, producers, intermediaries, government, and financial markets).
Manufacturers buy resources (raw materials, labor, money…) and convert them into products and services.
Then they sell to intermediaries (companies or individuals), which sell to final consumers.
Consumers sell their labor in exchange for money, which they use to purchase products and services.
Government collects taxes and uses them to buy products/services from the other markets to provide public services.
This is a simplified model, and real-life flows change case by case.
For example, a direct-to-consumer e-commerce brand can reach buyers without traditional retail intermediaries… but digital platforms still act as intermediaries.
Think about it:
Ads platforms distribute attention.
A website/CMS enables the conversation at scale.
Payment processors move the money.
Logistics partners move the product.
Even in traditional publishing, the “chain” can include multiple intermediaries: agent → publisher → retailer → reader (and sometimes film/TV rights buyers in the mix).
Example of marketing system
A marketing process can be represented as a stream of mutual interactions between a market and an industry.
Kotler and Keller illustrate it as an exchange of:
Goods/services/communications (from sellers)for
Money and information (from buyers).
The internal loop is the flow between money and products/services.
The external loop is the stream of information (behavior, preferences, sales data… the stuff that makes marketers obsessive in spreadsheets).
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRADITIONAL
AND DIGITAL MARKETING
A lot of people think traditional and digital marketing are two different planets.
They’re not.
Digital marketing is simply a marketing system applied online.
The method is the same: you still identify a market, shape an offer, communicate value, and exchange value.
The differences are mostly in the rules, tools, and execution mechanics that the internet forces you to master.
That’s why pros specialize.
I chose to specialize in digital marketing and help organizations grow online.
Example of digital marketing system
Practically speaking, digital marketing is a system that facilitates (and accelerates) the transactional relationship between online businesses and consumers.
It aims to generate revenue from a specific target audience.
A business starts advertising to its target audience.
The users who respond enter a funnel: a sequence of content and touchpoints designed to drive actions.
This is part of lead generation.
A lead is a prospect who has publicly and clearly expressed interest in a product/service (think: form fill, quiz completion, demo request, email opt-in, etc.).
From there:
Users consume content that educates them on features, benefits, value proposition.
If they drop off, automation and retargeting try to bring them back.
If they complete the journey and hit the final CTA, they’re ready for the first offer.
If they buy, they become customers.
Then you can use:
Upsell: sell an upgraded version (bigger fries).
Cross-sell: sell a complementary product (fries + sandwich).
If they don’t buy the first offer, it’s usually smarter to go with:
Downsell: a cheaper/simpler version (smaller fries).
This is where a value ladder matters: a structured set of offers that lets you increase customer value over time.
The worst 3 mistakes in digital (and traditional) marketing
The three most common traps entrepreneurs fall into are building a business based on:
Passion
Skills
Interests
Yes, I know the internet loves the “follow your passion” speech.
But passions, skills, and interests start from you—and they don’t automatically map to a demand people will actually pay for.
Marketing starts from the market.
If you want to avoid these mistakes, I recommend reading my guide on how to find and select the right target audience.
THE EVOLUTION OF MARKETING
Marketing is not an exact science.
The only real way to know whether a strategy works is to test it in the field.
Good marketing usually looks like a chain of experiments: small iterations, frequent learning, constant adjustments (yes, this is where “growth hacking” became trendy).
Over time, marketing evolved into what Kotler and Keller call holistic marketing—a philosophy where marketing is not “a department,” but a cross-functional force that influences everything.
So how did we get there?
The production approach
Historically, some managers believed consumers preferred cheap and widely available products.
The production concept pushes companies to optimize manufacturing and distribution through scale and standardization.
This is still visible in many industries today, especially when companies chase efficiency through global supply chains.
The product approach
This concept assumes consumers prefer the best quality and the most innovative features.
The trap: falling in love with your product and assuming “better” automatically sells.
A product’s success rarely comes from features alone—price, distribution, positioning, and communication still decide who wins.
The selling approach
The selling concept assumes consumers must be pushed to buy, because they won’t make the first move.
This is another mousetrap.
Aggressive selling can create short-term wins and long-term damage: negative reviews, bad word-of-mouth, and brand distrust.
The marketing approach
In the mid-20th century, businesses started shifting toward a customer-first orientation.
Robert J. Keith described this shift in The Marketing Revolution (1960), explaining the move toward finding the right product for customers instead of forcing customers to fit the product.
Theodore Levitt’s Marketing Myopia (originally 1960; later republished) captured a core idea that still hits hard today:
Selling focuses on the needs of the seller; marketing on the needs of the buyer.
THE HOLISTIC MARKETING APPROACH
Today, marketing affects all business processes.
That’s why managers design marketing programs that recognize interdependencies and make activities reinforce each other.
Kotler and Keller describe holistic marketing as four broad dimensions:
Relationship marketing
Integrated marketing
Internal marketing
Performance marketing
Relationship marketing
Relationship marketing focuses on building long-term, mutually satisfying relationships with stakeholders.
Key stakeholders often include:
Customers
Employees
Partners (suppliers, distributors, agencies…)
Financial entities (shareholders, investors, analysts…)
The idea of the “marketing network” is also discussed in academic literature as a valuable asset created by relationships across a business ecosystem.
Relationship marketing is also about retention.
Kotler and Keller note that acquiring new customers can cost five times more than satisfying and retaining current ones.
Retention gets easier when you actually know your audience (behavior, preferences, purchase patterns) and manage customer lifetime value intentionally.
A practical way to support this is a strong CRM setup (Customer Relationship Management).
Integrated marketing
Integrated marketing is based on two principles:
Marketing activities can create and deliver value better together.
You should design each activity with the others in mind.
A step-by-step example (e-commerce):
Your site sells products.
Email marketing drives repeat purchases.
A blog attracts organic traffic.
Retargeting brings readers back and converts them.
Analytics ties it together so you know what’s working.
The second principle is where many businesses suffer.
You don’t choose tools just because they’re “the best.”
You choose them because they work together without turning your company into a circus of logins, subscriptions, and broken integrations.
A messy stack can slow down operations, increase costs, and expand security risk.
A simpler approach is consolidating where possible (for example: using a platform that bundles commerce + CRM + email + payments, and connecting accounting tools through supported integrations).
Wix, for instance, offers built-in CRM and email marketing capabilities inside its ecosystem.
A well-known integrated-campaign example often discussed in advertising circles is MINI’s “Let’s Motor” era—designed with non-traditional choices and a strong brand voice, supported across multiple channels.
Internal marketing
Attracting customers is only half the work.
Finding, training, motivating, and retaining great people is also a marketing activity.
Internal marketing makes sure employees and partners are aligned with mission, vision, and strategy—so customers experience one coherent brand at every touchpoint.
Performance marketing
Performance marketing measures both monetary and non-monetary returns.
Not just sales, but also:
Brand awareness
Engagement
Customer satisfaction
Product quality
Reputation
It includes:
Financial accountability: proving marketing profitability through KPIs and attribution logic.
Social responsibility marketing: aligning strategy with ethical, environmental, legal, and social context.
On the social responsibility side, Hollender and Fenichell discuss how some companies operationalize broader “impact” thinking—not just profit, but also how business practices affect society.
CONCLUSIONS
Now that you’ve learned what marketing means, how a digital marketing system works, and how marketing evolved into a holistic approach…
Would you change anything in your organization?
Drop your thoughts in the comments below and let’s connect.
References
Anderson, J. C., Håkansson, H., & Johanson, J. (1994). Dyadic Business Relationships within a Business Network Context. Journal of Marketing, 58(4), 1–15.
American Marketing Association. What is Marketing? — The Definition of Marketing.
CB Insights. The Top Reasons Startups Fail (commonly cited: “no market need” as a leading cause).
Gartner. (2018). Worldwide PC Shipments (press releases and shipment tables referencing vendor positions, incl. Lenovo among top vendors).
Hollender, J., & Fenichell, S. (2005). What Matters Most: How a Small Group of Pioneers Is Teaching Social Responsibility to Big Business, and Why Big Business Is Listening. Basic Books.
Keith, R. J. (1960). The Marketing Revolution. Journal of Marketing, 24(3), 35–38.
Kotler, P., & Keller, K. L. (2012). Marketing Management (14th ed.). Pearson.
Levitt, T. (1960; republished 2004). Marketing Myopia. Harvard Business Review.
MINI USA Newsroom. (2025). Background and historical notes referencing the “Let’s Motor” positioning and launch narrative.
Adweek (2003). Coverage discussing MINI’s early brand/agency work and tagline development in the early 2000s.
Wix. Email Marketing features and CRM features (platform capabilities referenced in the integrated marketing section).
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