simplified marketing

One of the most entertaining things you can do in business is attend a meeting where a group of top executives start pontificating on the subject of marketing. It amuses me more to see people try to distinguish between marketing, advertising, branding, media, channels, markets, verticals, sectors, business development, sales, communications, public relations, etc. It never ceases to amaze me how something so simple can become so complicated, and how people can take a completely ridiculous stance with such passion and want to defend that position to the death. In this blog post, I’ll try to demystify the topic of marketing and give you some actionable items that can be implemented right away to drive better results.

Let’s take a moment and have some fun with the definitions. The following two definitions of marketing come from the American Marketing Association. The first was a definition that was used from 1985 until 2004, when the AMA published the “revised” edition.

Old definition of AMA: “Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of goods, ideas, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals.”

Current definition of AMA: “Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.”

Well… a quick scan of the two aforementioned definitions shows that the mistake of leaving out the customer from the original definition was corrected by the clear and emphasized inclusion of the customer in the revised definition (I guess I won’t be relinquishing my AMA membership just yet). ). Let me make it clear that I do not mean to scoff at academic theory or best practice, but I have little use for generic, omnibus, or blanket statements, as they tend to accomplish nothing of value, but simply create confusion between the ranks.

Let’s take a look at some more definitions… Most of you know how much I like “druckerisms” and in good conscience I must quote him one more time… Peter Drucker’s definition of marketing is: “Marketing and the “Innovation are the two main functions of business. You get paid to create a customer, which is marketing. And you get paid to create a new dimension of performance, which is innovation. Everything else is a cost center.” Now we’re getting a bit closer, but this is still too ambiguous for my liking…

From my perspective, the problem with marketing as a discipline is that the desired result is often lost in the vast expanse of its multidisciplinary nature. The reality is that marketing is really the aggregation of any activity that touches the customer and that is too much for most organizations, let alone manage and run.

So at the end of the day, I think marketing is “any activity that catalyzes a sales opportunity” (my definition). Simply put, I want marketing activities to ring my phone! I don’t care what the medium, the market, or the message, if you don’t put a qualified prospect in a sales situation, it’s a waste of time, money, and effort. Before the Myatt attackers come out of the shadows, I’m not diminishing the value of brand equity, market share, mindset, etc., but simply trying to take a complex issue and make it real and actionable. .

If you’re running branding campaigns or mind-sharing initiatives, that’s fine, but keep in mind that in most circumstances, while these can be classically defined as marketing activities, these efforts don’t catalyze short-term sales leads. The litmus test of any good “gorilla marketing” effort is measuring the return on cost of sales. A great marketing campaign generates a high velocity of leads at the lowest possible cost during the shortest possible sales cycle. If you juxtapose this with the typical brand initiative, you’ll see that these two efforts are really diametrically opposed.

So the goal of marketing is not to get caught up in theoretical debates and academic exercises, but to realize that the main thing is to keep the main thing. If you can’t put all marketing initiatives under the microscope and tie them to acceptable performance based on lead generation, then you may want to rethink what you’re doing.