But the marketing channels and processes keep evolving with the emergence of new technologies. Sometimes these changes create confusion. Fundamentally, the role of marketing is to create awareness of an enterprise’s products and services, to convince its audiences that its offerings are better than competitors, and to persuade its prospects to buy it's products. Marketing is communication, and successful communication happens only from a deep understanding of customers and their needs. Therefore, success in Marketing depends on knowing:

• Who are our customers and prospects?      
• How precisely we can define them with distinct data based characteristics?
• What are their needs relative to our products? and,
• How well our products satisfy those needs?

The Internet revolution and new marketing channels such as eMail and Web have made information based marketing even more critical. In this new environment, marketing success also depends on:

• Developing rich and robust Marketing Databases
• Keeping customer and prospect data up-to-date
• Using appropriate data mining tools to gain insights into customer behavior
• Implementing marketing technologies – appropriately and judiciously, and,
• Maintaining a healthy balance between old and new channels such as Direct Mail, eMail, and Web

Ultimately, marketing success depends on understanding customer needs, meeting their requirements by delivering superior products, communicating with them on a regular basis, driving prospects in to the sales cycle, and building long term relationships with target audiences.