Marketing is an essential part of conducting a continuing education program, but marketing consists of more than just promotion. According to Kotler, exchange is the central concept underlying marketing. Marketing involves understanding, planning, implementing, and controlling this exchange. The exchange situation contains all the elements of the "marketing mix": program design, pricing, promotion, position with regard to competitors, and program distribution. All of these potentially can be varied to improve the performance of a continuing education agency in its market. Effective marketing requires information, which can be acquired through internal sources (program faculty or employees, students) or externally through such techniques as mail surveys, personal interviews, telephone interviews, sampling, and focus groups. Such research can lead continuing education programs to determine market populations and their needs, to create programs to meet these needs, and to promote programs to the target population. Several figures are included. (KC)