What the HELL is Marketing? NO ONE REALLY KNOWS.
I hate the word marketing. I’m serious. It makes me shudder every time I hear someone say “We just need better marketing!” What the hell does that even mean? I’ll tell you. It means EVERYTHING. And frankly, that’s the problem. It’s a copout…and it’s also the root of all of your problems. Congrats, we all suck.
But now that I’ve cleared that up, let’s get into it.
In order to TRULY succeed at “MARKETING” (I just puked a little) you have to break it down and stop calling ALLLLL of it marketing. Cuz it’s not. It’s so many things and I’m only going to scratch the surface. You really have to “Do the Work” (thank you Byron Katie) and dig deeper than just throwing out buzzwords and blanket statementing (not a word, don’t @ me) things.
First, the definition of Marketing from Google: the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.
From AMA (American Marketing Association): 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.
HUH???? What’s happening? Who am I? What am I supposed to do? All of that?? In “One” Marketing Department/Team/Person?
No. It’s impossible. Here we go, we’re gonna kind of Marie Kondo this b*$tch.
To break it down.
You need to start with the issue. What is the primary problem you need/want to solve?
For simplicity’s sake, we’re only going to address/tackle ONE marketing objective today…and I’m going to gloss over a lot of steps because I don’t feel like writing a novel today and to drive my point home that this ish goes DEEP.
Let’s say you want to increase traffic to the home page of your website. What does that entail? For starters, a Venti Iced Cold Brew.
1.Then, let’s talk persona/target demo. Who do you want visiting the home page? Who is the ideal client/customer/fan/listener/viewer? You need to pretty much create a life for this target. How old are they? Where do they work? How much money do they make? Do they have kids? A dog? A Dodge Neon? On and on and on. To do this correctly- this persona building should take you a good 1/2 day.
IF and only IF you already KNOW your target demo and are extremely confident in it, then you would move on to Step 2.
2. Lifestyle & behavior. Where in their daily/weekly/monthly routine will visiting your home page come into their natural behavior? After work? During work? Only when they need your service? This should be a fairly quick (1-2 hour-ish) discussion.
You’re doing great, sweetie!
3. Next up, Messaging.
Now that you’ve determined, who you’re targeting and when, we get to the HOW. There’s a lot under this step because not only do you need to come up with what you want to say to them that will separate you from your competition, but you also want to determine the “voice” of your company which honestly is part of your brand and basically an entirely different discussion but we’re trying to keep this easy for now so we’re not even going to GO THERE!!
How will you speak to them? What tone will align with your company brand and will resonate/stand out from the noise to grab attention?
For the “tone” and “messaging” discussion, I like to start with the culture of the company. Who created the business, who works day in/day out in your company, believes in your mission statement (oh do you have one of those?), ultimately makes up “your team.” The culture of your company stems from the core belief in the product/service and the tone can be found within the walls of the business. This can be a long and substantial conversation but completely worth it. Once you discover the tone of your company, you can move forward with your messaging.
When curating your advertising/marketing message it needs to be short, simple and very easy to understand. Today, everyone I know is that dog off of the movie “Up”….SQUIRREL!!! So keep it brief but digestible. This is hard. You need time to do this. You also need help. It’s not a one person job. I would dedicate a couple of laser focused days on Messaging. And also, come up with 2 main messages that you like to use on almost everything. Then come up with a couple of secondary messages that could be used for fringe audience (meaning the people you attract because they are fringe from your Primary target- UGH….a whole ‘nother convo for a different time).
Guys….I’m getting tired of writing this article, so let’s jump ahead.
You’ve got your target demo, your tone/voice and now you’ve written a couple of great marketing messages. The next step would be 4. Design- creating your visuals for the messaging, your graphics to promote the home page visits, etc. But for time’s sake, we’re skipping over that AND Budget??? and jumping to…..
5. Timing, PlacementSo, your ads are created, everyone is in agreement, they are strong, they resonate… high fives all around. Now…where are you running them? For how long? Only on Social Media? Only Targeted Display? Who is going to watch the stats? Who is going to analyze and report and tweak the run when certain ads aren’t doing as well as others? WHO??? NOT IT!
This piece is necessary but very time consuming and I often see it ignored or delegated to someone so green, they don’t know what they’re reading. If ignored, then all of your hard work is for naught. But again, as you can see, it’s unrealistic to rely on one person or team to do EVERYTHING. To be real, it sets you up for failure and the blame game.The Solution is to:
Break it down: List out each marketing objective. Make a realistic list so everyone can plainly see what needs to be accomplished.
Divide & Conquer: Don’t rely on just your “marketing team”. Find others in the company that may have hidden talents, or want to help out to work on something different. It’s great for differing perspectives within the company as well.
Be Accountable: I often see companies start this process and it gets too taxing or they feel like they can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel so they stop and think “this is unattainable” or “unrealistic.” Stick with it and I’m telling you….it’s so worth it if you get everyone on the same page as to how you are marketing your business. There’s a feeling of progress and everyone begins to move down the same path toward the same goals.
When in doubt, ask for help: A wise Market Manager said to me once, “I don’t DIY my house and I don’t DIY my work.” This is true. If you feel like you don’t have the capability or capacity internally to get all of this done, hire a marketing agency. Contract help. It’s ok to do this but I would recommend you still stay heavily involved in the process. You are the one that knows the company but they can offer their expertise, some additional hands for all of the tasks and an outside perspective. Those two combinations work beautifully together. *I also recommend hiring a company to report your advertising stats to you and helping you understand what all of them mean and working through next steps.
So….there ya have it. What’s Marketing??? (insert maniacal laugh here). I think you know the answer to that. Or…. you’re even more confused than before you starting reading this article.
Either way, Marketing cannot be contained to or defined by one word. So let’s stop calling it all Marketing and call it what it really is……Everything we need to do to make our business successful.