Marketing tends to be the function in your business that you address when you need sales. It usually starts off with “we need to do this,” to “how do we do this”, and finally “who can help us do this”…bang marketing agency.
Typically an agency will listen to what you think needs to happen and then they go and execute on that thing. That thing tends to be a website, social media, a poster, a youtube video – tactics that you can tangible see being done.
You launch your “campaign” and crickets. You or your agency determines that process was worth it because you learned about designing beautiful stuff or content, but sales are the same. No new customers or you can’t really tell they came in because of a referral or that poster.
You then move to the next step, which is to come up with a bigger and better idea than the last. You repeat that cycle until you realize something needs to change, or you determine marketing doesn’t work and word of mouth is the only thing that works.
What if marketing is only approximately 12% of what think it is? What if you could avoid this cycle by thinking about marketing a little differently? Or think about marketing in how it was first designed?
“Marketing is simply the art and science of creating value by developing successful exchanges.”
Marketing is the art and science of creating value by developing successful exchanges.
Let’s break it down:
Marketing is an art and science.
Marketing requires some testing, but also some innovative and creative ideas. Not just in how you say things but when, where, and why you do the things you do.
Marketing is about creating value.
Value for who? Your customer. But in order to do that, you must understand your customer. Why do they buy? How do they buy? Where do they buy?
How do you create value? Some do it through product, price, place of exchange, brand etc. It is your job to figure out as the business owner the value you can offer consistently day in and day out.
A great strategic exercise that will take you out of the mundane cycle to higher-level thinking is to answer these 3 simple questions:
- How do people perceive your market?
- Where is the gap within that space?
- How can your business fill that gap?
Marketing is about developing successful exchanges.
Finally, marketing is about developing successful exchanges. Marketing in Latin is mercatus, meaning – market-place or merchant. It is your job as the merchant of your business to bring your product/service to the marketplace in a cost-effective way. There are a whole host of ways one could do this, but again, in order to be effective, one needs a system.
A marketing system ensures consistent and predictable results. Ultimately, giving you the freedom to choose how involved – or uninvolved – you want to be.
“A business only has two functions – marketing and innovation” – Peter Drucker.
