feature article

What Really is Marketing?
By Todd Senne, President

Last month our newsletter staff received a lot of positive – and some negative – feedback on our article regarding marketing a community. The comments we received on the definition of marketing caught our attention. So we thought this would be the perfect time to tackle the question of “what exactly is marketing?”

Let’s revisit…last month’s topic was about promoting communities and how different entities and tools can be used to get the message out about a location. It was the following line that jumped out at some of our readers.

“Once a community identifies who they are, what makes them unique and their goals; it’s time to get the word out. This is what the average person knows as “marketing” - newsletters; logos; direct mail; print, broadcast and cyber advertising; web sites; tradeshows; bus tours; and state advertising coops ….”

Carole Custer, Director of University Marketing at Iowa State University pointed out that

“… marketing is what occurs to bring about an exchange and is made up of 4 P's - product, price, place (distribution) and promotion. What you are describing as marketing are really tactics in the 4th P - promotion. We call such a category marketing communications. Only when all 4 P's are aligned correctly is marketing successful.”

This is absolutely correct. And, therein lies the problem. The average person – including more and more marketing professionals – thinks only of the communication piece (promotion) as marketing. I can’t tell you how many times people have walked into our offices and declared they need a brochure or a commercial. Why, we ask. Because that is what they think of as marketing.

Marketing is so much more than that. I believe our educational institutions are still teaching the role and impact of marketing across the entire discipline. Why is it then that when they get into the “real world” that marketing has been condensed to promotion only in so many companies?

I have a theory. In large companies, CEO’s promoted from the finance ranks greatly outpace those from the marketing departments. In smaller companies, the owner usually drives marketing activity and has not had formal training in marketing. They think of it as sales or sales support and not the foundation upon which to build a business model. This is why marketing is always the first budget cut when things go bad financially; they just don’t understand that strategic marketing is the very thing that can save them.

The other problem I see is that of professional designation and monitoring. Anyone can call themselves a marketer without the slightest bit of education or background. Other professionals, such as lawyers or accountants, must pass the bar exam or CPA exam to prove their knowledge. Marketers need only hang a shingle and say they are professionals. Luckily the American Marketing Association has recently instituted the Professional Certified Marketer program to begin to transform our industry. It will take time, but we need to begin to separate the marketers from the pretenders.

Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of companies, big and small, which value marketing and what it brings to the table, but there are many that don’t and it appears that number is climbing.

At Trilix, much of the work we deliver for our clients falls under that tip-of-the-iceberg, marketing-communications type of work. But, it is always based on a solid underpinning of strategy, research and other marketing initiatives. This is the only way to create break-through communication that delivers results.

While this article may not have solved the mystery of exactly what marketing is, I hope it will at least start a dialogue amongst those in our profession on how to deliver greater value to our companies and to our clients.

Bottom line – No matter how narrowly or broadly you define the term, marketing’s reach finds its way into every nook and cranny of your organization. As Regis McKenna, author of “Relationship Marketing,” says, “marketing is everything and everything is marketing.”

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