Skip to main content

What is Marketing (and why most people do not know)?

Someone once quipped that you can learn everything you need to know about marketing in a day, but it will take you a lifetime to master. I could not agree with this statement more. Most people see a portion of what they think marketing entails, and conclude that they understand how to market their product or service.

Most people erroneously see marketing as either public relations, advertising, or product packaging or a combination of all of these. What they fail to realize is that marketing is some much more than anyone of this tactical objectives. Marketing’s real objectives include reducing the friction in sales, improving brand awareness, and maximize your return on effort of promoting your products or services. (look for another blog on what return on effort means).

Marketing’s ultimate goal is to create a plan of action and to ACT on that plan. If conducting business is very much like warfare (see Sun Tzu's “The Art of War”), then marketing is responsible for development of the battle plan. And that plan needs to take into account both the long and short view of the battlefield. That means it needs a listing of objectives, needed resources, terrain, enemy strength, positioning and desired outcomes. This plan needs to formulate both the strategic and tactic actions that will ultimately lead to the capitulation of the enemy (gaining market share). 
 
Unlike warfare, business is not a zero-sum action. While a battle plan’s success is measured in victory, a successful market plan uses a variety of metrics to measure success. Success to the marketing plan can be measured in new clients, increased profit, customer retention, margin dollar increases, etc. In order to do any of these effectively, you will need to research your market, customers, pricing, competition, and placement. You will need to determine the best delivery channels (i.e.: retail, direct to market, distribution, etc.) to maximize your margin dollars, and at the same time determine what is the best product mix to minimize your costs.

Marketing is as much a science as an art, and sometimes the objective in a good marketing plan is not to be the biggest, just the best. Still, to go back to why people get marketing wrong. Mostly because they try to make marketing more understandable, they just focus on advertising, or communications, or pricing, or product placement, and not on the whole gestalt of what marketing encompasses.

One thing is certain; the more you know about how to market, the more your realize there is more to know.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Moldy Middle

While taking statistics during my quest to get an MBA and while earning my engineering degree, the professors always emphasized the importance of finding the statistical mean of any population by using the Central Mean Theorem (a.k.a the highest point of the Bell Curve). As an engineer, this was essential in order to maximize throughput, minimize cost and waste, and ultimately make a better, faster, cheaper widget. A funny thing happened on the way to the dark side of marketing. I discovered that the only thing in the middle of the road was quite literally dead road kill. I do not know if you remember stores like Bradlees, Ames and Service Merchandise (just to name a few), but they all folded because the environment changed and they were caught trying to service the mythological “average customer.” Part of that change came when Wal-Mart began its juggernaut with the discount department store. Wal-Mart did two things right: 1) Focused on “mobile” consumers, and 2) Fo...
21 comments
Read more

Fortune Cookie of Persistence

There are many things or factors that can determine a person’s success or failure, but one thing that cuts across EVERY successful person I have met or read about or studied is perseverance, persistence, stick-to-itiveness, and determination. As I say, "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. The desire and ability to press on has and always will solve the problems of the human race and divide those who achieve from those who might have been." Incredibly, this ONE characteristic is really what makes a true entrepreneur as testimony to these little factoids: Coca-Cola only sold twenty five (25) bottles in its first year of business! They grossed $50.0 and spent $73.96 on merchandising. But they kept on going and never gave up, and nowadays the sell more than one billion bottles per day! Apple Computer co-founder offered the computer design to Hewlett-Packard five times and was rejected by both HP and Atari (the giant at the time) for acquisition. A...
3 comments
Read more

Chance and the Cosmos

What if we are alone?  With the recent breathtaking Venus in Transit pictures happening yesterday, I was amazed at the size and scope of this cosmic happening. What struck me was how everyone was talking about how rare an event this was, and it got me thinking about space, and probabilities, and are we alone? I remember as a kid hearing Carl Sagan talk about the billion upon billion of stars in the universe and the probability that somewhere out there, there has to be life around one of those other stars. According to the European Space Agency’s scientists, there are 1 times 10 to the 12 (a 1 with 12 zeros trailing) stars in our galaxy, and perhaps 1 times 10 to the 11 or 12 galaxies in the universe.  That means there are 1 times 10 to the 23 or 24 (1 with 24 zeros trailing) stars in our universe. That is a vast amount of places that could have a planet like ours.  But now we have to think small, like in chance and probabilities, and this got me postulating. Ea...
2 comments
Read more