Love Marketing School

    What Is Marketing? A Plain-English Guide for Business Owners

    Marketing is everything a business does to be found, chosen and chosen again. It covers figuring out who your customers are, shaping an offer they want, telling them about it, making it easy to buy, and keeping them coming back.

    By John Frazee, Founder of Love.Marketing · Updated October 26, 2026

    What is marketing?

    The American Marketing Association's official definition says much the same thing in academic terms: marketing is the work of creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging things of value for customers, partners and society (American Marketing Association).

    The short version I give business owners: marketing is how the right people find out you exist, decide to trust you, and take the next step.

    Marketing, advertising and sales are not the same thing

    • Marketing is the whole system: research, brand, website, channels, follow-up and measurement.
    • Advertising is one part of it: paying for space or attention (a Google ad, a billboard, a radio spot).
    • Sales is the conversation that closes the deal once someone raises their hand.

    A business can run ads and still have no marketing. That is usually where the money disappears.

    Why this guide exists

    I have been building websites and marketing businesses in San Antonio since 1999. The owners who get the most from marketing are not the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones who understand the big picture well enough to ask good questions. These pages are that big picture, simple first, with the detail one click deeper.

    The guide, section by section

    1. The types of marketingPrint, radio, TV, billboards, websites, SEO, ads, social, email and AI search, and how you can tell if each one works.Read 2. What Love.Marketing coversA checklist of what we run and measure, and the marketing we refer out: printing, mailers, PR, door to door.Read 3. The right orderResearch, brand and website come first. Billboards do not.Read 4. What moves the needleA priority scorecard: logo, website, UI, Google Ads, photography, video, YouTube and social, ranked by stage.Read 5. Psychology and pioneersEdward Bernays, Claude Hopkins, David Ogilvy, Robert Cialdini and the science of why people buy.Read 6. The timelineFrom painted walls in Pompeii to ads inside ChatGPT.Read 7. Types of agenciesDesign studios, ad agencies, PR firms, consultants and growth agencies, and how to tell them apart.Read 8. The agency journeyHow agencies start, grow and get run today, and the questions an educated client asks.Read

    The order, at a glance

    Build the foundation before you buy reachSeven steps, in the order we build themKnow yourmarketStep 1Brand andlookStep 2Website +trackingStep 3Get foundmaps + SEOStep 4PaidsearchStep 5Video, socialthen billboards,radio, TVStep 6Measureand adjustStep 7FoundationCapture demandCreate demandProve it
    Steps 1 to 3 are the foundation. Billboards, radio and TV sit at step 6, after your site and search can catch the interest they create.

    The full reasoning, with sources, is in The Right Order to Market a Business.

    Digital marketing, in one paragraph

    Digital marketing is marketing through screens: your website, search engines, maps, social apps, video and email. Its biggest advantage is proof. Google handled about 85% of U.S. searches in September 2026 (StatCounter), YouTube reaches 84% of U.S. adults (Pew Research Center), and every click, call and form can be tracked back to what produced it. Now AI is changing search again: in Pew's 2025 study, people clicked a regular result on 8% of Google searches that showed an AI summary, versus 15% without one (Pew Research Center).

    Where Love.Marketing fits

    A printed brochure is marketing, and it can help you get started. What we do is different. We are an analytical growth agency: we build and run the channels that move the needle (website, search, maps, ads, social, video, follow-up) as one system, track them to calls, forms and sales, and report the return in plain numbers. That is what marketing means now.

    An educated client hires an educated agency. Start anywhere above.

    Want a second set of eyes on your marketing? Talk to a strategist, or see our plans on the pricing page.

    Book a consultation

    Sources

    1. American Marketing Association · ama.org/the-definition-of-marketing-what-is-marketing
    2. StatCounter · gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/united-states-of-...
    3. Pew Research Center · pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/social-media
    4. Pew Research Center · pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely...