So, back to meaningful writing…

The basics of marketing. If you’ve spent any time in Marketing, you immediately get drawn into different tactics and jumping from one to another based on the latest news that something increases your traffic overnight, or this improves your conversion rates with a couple of minor changes, or this does some other whizz bang thing. It seems that online marketers are deliberately left in the dark about the real purpose of what they are trying to do, and so are naturally drawn to shiny new objects rather than filling the void of really knowing what it is they are trying to do.

I’ve never known any marketing team in any offline company jump around from tactic to tactic. or are encouraged to jump around, like an online marketer, yet the offline companies have marketing budgets of millions, and can outsource anything they want, and use any tactic they feel is appropriate. Now I know that’s a very naive statement because I am comparing apples to orchards, but I can’t help feeling that if most online marketers received some real education on Marketing, they could move their planning from the tactical level to the strategic level, and then develop a plan of action involving focused and appropriate tactics, and then simple follow their plan and begin to shut out the noise of the rehashers and opportunists, who benefit from a confused and ignorant consumer base.

Look, lets be honest, there is a whole market making millions selling anything to anyone too stupid to know better, and that market proactively ensures that stupidity is considered acceptable. If I went to most marketers and said “what do you understand Marketing to be?” I’ll bet that less than 5% will be able to actually answer that question correctly. A much larger percentage will have an explanation of Marketing based on their knowledge of tactics and trying to generalize their intents, and probably another group, just as big, will have no clue.

So, let’s start with the basics, and move on from there…

The following definition was approved by the American Marketing Association Board of Directors for Marketing:

“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

(American Marketing Association)

Wikipedia states that:

“Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments. It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships and create value for their customers and for themselves.

Marketing is used to identify the customer, satisfy the customer, and keep the customer. With the customer as the focus of its activities, marketing management is one of the major components of business management.”

(Wikipedia: Marketing)

Arguably, based on my personal experience, Marketing is not the parent of the sales function, therefore it is not directly responsible for satisfying the customer, however it is responsible for identifying what would satisfy customers, and the typical offer content, offer price, and customer expectations, through their marketing research efforts.

So, as a rough summary, Marketing is used to:

1. research markets, market requirements, market trends etc., and identify potential offers that would provide value to prospects (prospects = potential customers)
2. identify strategies and tactics for ensuring that the targeted prospects  are aware of the offer, and encouraged to indicate interest
3. provide input into the sales processes on market norms
4. follow up with new Customers after sale
5. Continue to engage with Customer base to maintain the relationship, identify new offer opportunities, and leverage base for prospect marketing
6. Provide intelligence to sales process, business operations, and other customer facing functions

Now how many online marketers know this range of function, or even if they do, actually perform all the necessary steps? Based on the information I’m seeing from my research, is that Step 2 is the focus of the entire online marketing market sector, and no information, or rarely any information, is shared about Step 1, the foundation step of Marketing. Without this step being completed fully, it’s really like working in the dark.

The problem is, researching a market is hard going when you know which market you want to study, for example where you have an existing business that you are developing on line – for example you have a tennis shop and you’re researching the online tennis equipment market – but imagine how tricky, unrewarding, boring, and tedious it is when you have no business, other than the desire to find a way to make money online.

The trouble is, not only is Market Research critical to the success of any business and one not to be skipped, but the skills of how to meaningfully and skillfully research markets are not necessarily learnt successfully just by reading a few books on how to use Google, and here comes the crunch…

Without understanding a market in terms of target prospect and what they are looking for, then the marketer really knows nothing, and I believe it is this lack of real knowledge and lack of skills, or chance to learn these skills, is what keeps the majority of marketers running around in circles, and diving for each tactic as the new answer to the problem.