Marketing isn’t just Advertising
Marketers must cringe when they read business blog posts because the word marketing is used as a synonym for advertising. And if it’s not a direct synonym the emphasis is close enough to create a cultural perception in society that the synonym exists.
Marketing is a Cradle to Grave Operation
Instead of thinking of marketing as the broadcast of a true or false advertising spiel it’s worthwhile defining it properly.
Marketing begins where your product is created, the materials that it includes and the fabric of its emergence into being. Which makes sense because when you’re designing your product it’s an act of marketing… you make choices in how the product looks and what it does and how those factory workers are treated.
Marketing ends with the discarded packaging and the thrown-away or worn-out product. Which also makes sense because that packaging, the longevity of the product and the environmental release of the product’s ingredients back into the landscape are all significant.
So under this model you can see that marketing includes the design and manufacturing of the product, the packaging, the storage and distribution, the promotion and advertising, the point-of-purchase, the life that it shares with the purchaser and everybody that comes into contact with it AND the impact that it has after the rainbow of consumerism has left the building.
What Marketing Is and What Marketing Is Not
Marketing is an approach to product creation and lifecycle that impacts on consumer perception of the product and the organisation underpinning the product. Marketing also includes your intended customers, the need that your product fills in their lives and the perceived value within the customer’s mind.
Marketing is not an add-on feature where you throw a campaign at a product in a disconnected way because it’s sitting on your office desk and the boss tells you to sell it to an unsuspecting and easily manipulated public. That is an unsophisticated and probably unsuccessful approach in modern times.
What marketing is would be everything to do with the product. How it gets put together. How it gets stored. How long it lasts and whether it degrades between point A and B. Look at Coca-Cola and you’ll see what I’m driving at.
Coca-Cola’s marketing effort goes way beyond a few billboards and the shape of the bottle.
That is why you need a Marketing Strategy
Using this simple crade-to-grave model you should now understand why every product or service should have an overarching marketing strategy tied into the business strategy. The simple reason is that everything your organisation does impacts on customer perception.
I cringe whenever I hear marketing and advertising used as synonyms. And I hate the idea that so many people still think of marketing as a band-aid you stick on at the end of a project with a few posters and a website.
