What is the purpose of marketing?

The purpose always seems to start with gaining more sales. To gain more market share, to get your name out there even more and to get more customers. The process seems to have a disposition towards the selling part rather than the customer part of the equation.

As Peter Drucker once said: the point of a business is not to create a profit - it's to create a customer.

The same holds true for the purpose of marketing. Profit is a byproduct of what happens when a customer decides to engage with your business but it is not the cause. They bought the thing because they felt that it would help them in someway not because it made you money.

Now, it's important to make money - but if we really want to make a lot of money, we have to be really clear about what we are focusing on.

Are we focusing on byproducts (profit) or the cause (the customer)?