Marketers can be quite annoying in many ways. As a matter of fact, the literal translation of the word “marketer” into Portuguese is of a dirty person who does everything to achieve something, especially in politics.
One of the ways marketers annoy people is by creating hundreds of different terms (a.k.a. marketing jargon) so nobody else outside their networking will understand them without a reasonable explanation. Viral marketing, SEO marketing, war marketing, fax marketing etc.
What people, marketers or not need to understand is that marketing is simple. Marketing is a perfect union of strategy/theory and empirical knowledge. Details are obtained through careful and insistent observation. This should be the first step.
It is true everyone is eligible to understand marketing, but really few can actually apply it. No wonder so many engineers, journalists, and a bunch of other professions currently occupy marketing positions. Marketing welcomes everyone.
I had the great opportunity to work with professional marketers for a while, people who were “raised” in the marketing field and made of marketing their primary area. I also had the chance to see the other side, people who were just doing marketing because they were told so, for lack of options or because they were the real starters of the whole business: economists, anthropologists, teachers, psychologists, fundraisers etc. Both categories definitely do not match, and you can clearly notice the difference.
Real marketers are annoying (this time in a good sense) and go straight to the point when it’s needed. No frills or chit-chat. They are also concerned about strategically thinking about everything. They know for instance that planning research impacts on communication and strategy has effects on database. I remember of a financial director who also assumed the marketing department in a company. He was great on financial controlling and database, but lacked a great deal of communication, skills and strategy regarding consumers.
The opposite came when I met a former ad executive as the head of the marketing department. He spent most of his time in the communication strategy, but had terrible ideas about the general marketing plan. For him, marketing was placing ads on magazines, sending direct mail to the company’s customers and making sure the website was rightly updated. A third segment of these people are those who have the leverage within a company (e.g. sales directors) and think they understand everything about marketing to the point they actually want to make the entire marketing plan themselves.
Marketing at its initial level is simple, anyone can be part of it. Regular salesmen are seen as exceptional marketers because of their capacity for quickly understanding the environment and adjusting themselves to it. However, when the level of demand grows it makes necessary to count on people who are not mere observers but also prove to be experienced and generalists in marketing. Those are the details that will make the whole difference in the end.
One of the ways marketers annoy people is by creating hundreds of different terms (a.k.a. marketing jargon) so nobody else outside their networking will understand them without a reasonable explanation. Viral marketing, SEO marketing, war marketing, fax marketing etc.
What people, marketers or not need to understand is that marketing is simple. Marketing is a perfect union of strategy/theory and empirical knowledge. Details are obtained through careful and insistent observation. This should be the first step.
It is true everyone is eligible to understand marketing, but really few can actually apply it. No wonder so many engineers, journalists, and a bunch of other professions currently occupy marketing positions. Marketing welcomes everyone.
I had the great opportunity to work with professional marketers for a while, people who were “raised” in the marketing field and made of marketing their primary area. I also had the chance to see the other side, people who were just doing marketing because they were told so, for lack of options or because they were the real starters of the whole business: economists, anthropologists, teachers, psychologists, fundraisers etc. Both categories definitely do not match, and you can clearly notice the difference.
Real marketers are annoying (this time in a good sense) and go straight to the point when it’s needed. No frills or chit-chat. They are also concerned about strategically thinking about everything. They know for instance that planning research impacts on communication and strategy has effects on database. I remember of a financial director who also assumed the marketing department in a company. He was great on financial controlling and database, but lacked a great deal of communication, skills and strategy regarding consumers.
The opposite came when I met a former ad executive as the head of the marketing department. He spent most of his time in the communication strategy, but had terrible ideas about the general marketing plan. For him, marketing was placing ads on magazines, sending direct mail to the company’s customers and making sure the website was rightly updated. A third segment of these people are those who have the leverage within a company (e.g. sales directors) and think they understand everything about marketing to the point they actually want to make the entire marketing plan themselves.
Marketing at its initial level is simple, anyone can be part of it. Regular salesmen are seen as exceptional marketers because of their capacity for quickly understanding the environment and adjusting themselves to it. However, when the level of demand grows it makes necessary to count on people who are not mere observers but also prove to be experienced and generalists in marketing. Those are the details that will make the whole difference in the end.
1 comment:
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