Marketing Meaning and the 4Ps: Differences and First Steps

Marketing is the whole set of activities that create, communicate, deliver and exchange products and services that have value for customers. This is the definition given by the American Marketing Association (AMA) on its official page, and advertising covers only one part of it: the communicating. Below we cover how marketing differs from advertising and sales, the 4Ps marketing mix, the order for choosing a goal and channel when you start, and where to check results in GA4 (as of October 12, 2026).

What is marketing? The AMA definition

The AMA defines marketing as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large." In this definition, an offering is anything the customer sees value in, so it is not limited to a product. Applied to daily work, writing ad copy falls under communicating. Product planning, pricing and choosing where to sell fall under creating, delivering and exchanging.

In plain working terms, marketing means deciding and carrying out "who we sell what to, at what price, where, and how we tell them." Doing one part well is not enough if the others do not fit. For example, even a great ad produces clicks but no purchases if the price differs from what the customer expected.

Marketing, advertising and sales are different jobs

The three words are often mixed up, but each covers a different scope. The AMA definition does not separate advertising from sales, so the table below is the working distinction MCPY uses in practice.

Term	What it does	Example
Marketing	Looks at customers and the market, and designs product, price, distribution and promotion together	Deciding who to sell to, then choosing price, sales channel and ad channel
Advertising	The part of marketing where you pay to get the word out	Google Search ads, Instagram ads, Naver Powerlink (paid search ads on Naver, Korea's largest search engine)
Sales	Meeting interested customers directly to close a contract or purchase	Consultation calls, quote proposals, in-store service

You can do marketing without running ads. Writing content that shows up in search, collecting reviews and changing a price list are all marketing. On the other hand, if you only run ads and leave the product page or price untouched, the ad spend does not turn into conversions. For the ad side, continue with our performance marketing overview and our search ads comparison.

The 4Ps marketing mix: product, price, place, promotion

The marketing mix is a framework that splits marketing activity into four elements and adjusts them together. According to the 4P explanation on the AMA page, Product is a bundle of features, functions, benefits and uses, and Price is the amount of money or goods needed to obtain the product. Distribution is labeled Place in the 4Ps, and Promotion means the methods that encourage short-term purchase and influence trial and purchase volume.

Element	Question it asks	What you decide in online marketing
Product	What do you sell?	Product lineup, options, benefit copy on the product detail page
Price	At what price?	Selling price, discounts, free shipping threshold
Place	Where do you meet customers?	Sales channels such as your own online shop, Naver Smart Store (a marketplace on Naver), and offline stores
Promotion	How do you tell people and make them buy?	Search ads, social ads, events, coupons

Online ad managers touch promotion first, but when ad results are poor, the cause may be the price or the sales channel. Before you rewrite ad copy, check whether the price and purchase path on the product page match what the ad promised.

How to choose a marketing goal and channel

The channel follows from the goal. The campaign goals in Google Ads Help are five: Sales, Leads, Website traffic, YouTube reach, views and engagement, and App promotion. When you pick a goal, the matching recommendations and settings appear, and you can also create a campaign without a goal. Note that Performance Max, Demand Gen and Video campaigns cannot change their marketing goal after creation.

What you want to do	Google Ads goal	Read next
Sell products	Sales	How to start Google Ads
Get inquiries, consultations or sign-ups	Leads	What to check on your landing page
Increase site visits	Website traffic	Search ads comparison
Build brand awareness	YouTube reach, views, engagement	Branding meaning and measurement

If you are just starting out, pick one goal and begin with one or two channels. On platforms that do not use Google Ads goals, such as Naver, Kakao, Daangn and Meta, follow the same order: first decide which of sales, inquiries, visits or awareness is most urgent right now. If you are weighing social channels, also see how to choose social media marketing channels.

What to check when choosing marketing channels in Korea

Channels a Korean advertiser can start with include Naver search ads, Daangn ads (Daangn is a Korean neighborhood marketplace app) and Kakao Moment (the ad platform of Kakao, which runs KakaoTalk, Korea's main messenger). Each channel has different start conditions and cost rules, so pick one channel and then check the minimum bid, budget and review criteria in its guide. The goal mapping below is the working standard MCPY uses in practice.

Channel	Best-fit goal	Read before you start
Naver Powerlink	Inquiries and purchases from customers who are searching	Naver Powerlink ads guide
Kakao Moment	Interest and behavior-based exposure, visits and conversions	How to start Kakao Moment ads
Daangn ads	Neighborhood-level visits and inquiries	Daangn ad costs and types

The 4 steps to start marketing and where to check results in GA4

The starting order is: set a goal, choose a channel, run the ads or content, and check the results. Decide in advance which numbers you will check, using marketing KPIs. If you start without deciding what number counts as success, you have no standard for judging results.

Check performance by traffic source in GA4. Open the GA4 traffic acquisition report from the left menu by going to Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition. The default dimension, Session default channel group, splits traffic into groups such as Direct, Organic Search, Paid Social and Email. If you switch to Session source / medium, you get finer detail such as 'google / organic'. If you have not installed GA4 yet, finish GA4 sign-up and installation first.

Judge success not by whether traffic from a channel grew, but by whether the target action you set at the start happened. If the goal was sales, set purchase as the key event. If the goal was leads, set inquiry submission as the key event. Then see how those counts split across channel groups. If the traffic acquisition report shows a channel with lots of traffic but few target actions, check the landing page and price information before touching ad bids.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a marketing certification?

A certification is not required to do marketing. If you run search ads yourself, the Search Ad Marketer exam (a Korean search ads certification) can help structure your learning. If you handle measurement, the free GA4 certification can do the same.

Can I do marketing with a small ad budget?

Yes. You can start with reviews and search-friendly content without any ads. If you do use ads, begin with channels that work with small budgets, such as location-based ads. Our Daangn ad cost article explains that Daangn ads can start from a daily budget of 5,000 KRW.

Today's task is to write down one goal and one number to check. Decide whether it is sales, inquiries or visits, then open the place in the GA4 traffic acquisition report where you will see that number. Then you are ready to start your first marketing work.