Sometimes, it feels like marketing is the hype of the millenium.\u00a0 Or a decade at least.\u00a0 There are marketeers, marketing divisions, online marketing, marketing this and marketing that.\u00a0 But what the heck is this marketing thing after all?\u00a0 Can we have it in simple terms?<\/p>\n
Well, either I don’t understand a lot (and I don’t claim that I do), or I haven’t met with the right marketing people, or both, or something else, but what I am thinking is that marketing on its own is nothing.\u00a0 Nada.\u00a0 Not at all.<\/p>\n
Before you eat me and my old shoes, let me explain.\u00a0 Marketing is that thing that supposedely helps the product (or service for that matter) reach the customer.\u00a0 Or the other way around.\u00a0 And then maybe even convince the customer that he is actually satisfied by what he got.\u00a0 Or maybe I am way off already.<\/p>\n
Anyway.\u00a0 To do that (connect the customer with the product or service), marketing people need to know three things.\u00a0 First is the product or service – the destination.\u00a0 Second is the customer – the source.\u00a0 And third is, well, marketing – the path or possible pathes between the two.\u00a0 Am I even remotely right ono this?\u00a0 If I am, then let me tell you something – this doesn’t work.\u00a0 How about that, eh?<\/p>\n
Marketing on its own doesn’t work for exactly the same reasons that MIS doesn’t work<\/strong>.\u00a0 MIS is this gray area between Information Technology and Business Administration.\u00a0 It’s supposed to help them communicate with each other.\u00a0 But because MIS never (or almost never, or extremely rarely) truly understands both the business side and the technical side, it only makes things worse.\u00a0 Instead of having two languages – one very technical with lots of terminology and precise definitions, and another one business – with lots of money and people-related processes – the company now has to speak three languages, with the third one being a weird dialect combined and distored from the other two.<\/p>\n The product and the customer are like two magnets.\u00a0 When connecting them, they will either be of opposite polarity and will hurry towards each other and live happily ever after, or they will resist each other as much as they can.\u00a0 Is it possible to bring two magnets of the same polarity to each other?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 If the magnets are small and you hands are strong, you can pull them together.\u00a0 That’s marketing for you.\u00a0 Let it go and both magnets would be much happier.\u00a0 And if they were of the different polarity?\u00a0 Guess what?\u00a0 You don’t need much force to put them together.<\/p>\n Back from the abstract world.\u00a0 I think marketing makes sense on the secondary level.\u00a0 That is, everyone should have a bit of marketing knowledge – from sysadmins and programmers to accountants and managers.\u00a0 But marketing shouldn’t stand on its own.\u00a0 In fact, if marketing is taught to everyone, then it can be that common language for everyone to help to understand each other.\u00a0 The one that MIS so miserably failed to be.<\/p>\n Those who are at the top, they want to grow, increase, make more and better.\u00a0 Those are down below, actually doing things, really know how to make things better or faster.\u00a0 The problem is that they can’t communicate with each other usually.\u00a0 So what they need is a little help in this area.\u00a0 Not someone else who neither understands what is possible or not or how big or fast things can go.<\/p>\n That’s about it, minus a few disclaimers.<\/p>\n