The perception about marketing isn't just skewed but plain wrong. Vitriolic articles spawn on the intertubes about this so called abomination to human mental safety. A weasel colony full of scammers and two faced criminals. Murderers! Well, you get my point…
Marketing is much more than that. Only seeing it from the promotion side of view(advertising, public relations, word of mouth and point of sale) is overlooking methods to plan, organize and ship a better, more successful product. The Chartered Institute of Marketing defines marketing as "The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably". I don't see puppy killing anywhere, and neither do some of the high-profile anti-marketing shops. 37Signals started to watch conversion numbers and Joel Spolsky wants to hire more "salespeople". Are they getting infected with a strange virus? No. They are not starting to apply more marketing techniques because they want to cheat their customers, but because they want to better know them and meet their needs/desires.
In the next months I'll be writing about marketing, in a web context of course. The plan is to cover the basics of marketing and its traditional form. I will go deeper into market segmentation, the 4P's, the 4C's and the marketing mix. I will not leave out bits about market research and marketing management. These articles are targeted at small shops and freelancers who want to better understand marketing.