What is Marketing?
I come from the product development side of things, which means that generally speaking I’ve spent my professional career surrounded by people who don’t have a lot of respect for “the idiots in marketing”. As you, my loyal readers know, I have outgrown that mindset.
If I were to describe the job of marketing it is to find efficient ways to get the product in front of people who will actually pay. So, that implies three tasks, none of which are easy. Let’s break them down.
People who will actually pay — maybe the hardest of the three for a startup, and this is the question I always ask entrepreneurs: Who is going to buy your product? I have a friend who has built a great product, but his startup doesn’t really know anybody who will pay for it. (Actually, that’s only partially true…it would be an excellent acquisition for one of about 3-5 companies in the entire world. If they can get one of those firms to bite, then they’re golden.)
In front of people — this is what most people thing of marketing as…getting stuff in front of people, i.e. buying advertising. But, the thing is, just buying advertising basically doesn’t work unless you’re selling something to a mass/mainstream market which most startups are not. Most startups are targeting a niche, and finding those people is really tricky. See the previous point: finding just one of them is tricky…try finding many, many, many.
Efficient ways — now, here’s the real trick: in theory, you could just buy SuperBowl ads, but that would be inefficient. In other words, you’d probably spend a lot more than you make. So, not only does the marketer have to find customers, and figure out how to sell to them, they also have to do it for less money than they make on a sale. Some companies can’t do that, so they trick themselves into “lifetime value”. (I suppose that’s not a trick if can retain your customers and have enough money to hang around for a lifetime.)
So, there you have it, the three-bladed gauntlet of marketing. Now, think about your job for a minute…would you want to trade it for that? Sure, maybe at a well-established company that has many customers, that’s not so tricky. But, what about at that brand new company with the brand new product that nobody has ever heard of before?
Be interesting to hear your thoughts on marketing strategy. Are you more inclined to test the waters and just try things out for size or do a lot of up front research?
Lyndi
26 May 10 at 9:21 am
I’ve also outgrown that mentality. I wince at the number of times I proudly said, “Marketing is the tax you pay for being unremarkable” (that’s a quote, but I can’t recall who initially said it). I now believe that the degree to which you are remarkable is a multiplier on your ability to succeed at sales/marketing.
Regarding your definition… What about the part of marketing that overlaps product? Who’s in charge of understanding the market and what sort of influence do they have on product?
Interesting perspective by Seth Godin: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/05/good-at-talking-vs-good-at-doing.html
p.s. Get Disqus plz!
Tony Wright
26 May 10 at 9:26 am
Great post Scott. It brings the essence of marketing and entrepreneurship to its core fundamentals. Agree that this kind of evaluation is essential and should be one of the first things people do as they consider starting a business. To build on that, I also suggest that people try a little asset-based thinking introspection and spend quality time visioning the business and living it their mind, body and soul.
Most start-ups are the end product of peoples’ dreams, aspirations and convictions. That’s why this is such an important and fundamental step that is all too often glossed over. The good news is that it doesn’t cost anything and all it takes is spending your time thinking, questioning and giving honest answers to yourself. At times it may feel like a tough love session with yourself and it’s worth every second you spend doing it.
Really get in touch with why you are doing this. It’s the foundation for everything.
As always, Scott, keep the great advice coming.
Hank Wasiak
Hank Wasiak
26 May 10 at 9:37 am
Lyndi–
Based on my experience as a product developer, my inclination is to do both. In other words, to do some research, then develop a hypothesis and test it. If the test succeeds, then push ahead.
In general, my view is that everything should be an experiment…even the big marketing campaigns. An experimentation mindset results in learning…learning results in improvement.
Scott
scottporad
27 May 10 at 9:42 am
Tony–
You ask a good question:
> What about the part of marketing that overlaps
> product? Who’s in charge of understanding the market
> and what sort of influence do they have on product?
In my experience, that’s the role of Product Management. In other words, there’s a team of people who are constantly gathering input from all stakeholders in order to develop and design a better product.
In my view, Marketing is the team that is responsible for driving demand into the sales channel by…see definition above.
Now, a question: does Marketing have essential feedback and input to provide Product Management based on their experience attempting to drive demand? Absolutely! Some very valuable data.
But, in my experience, having Marketing own the product development process has been ineffective. This is because the skills to [see definition above] are different than the skills to design and develop a product.
Scott
scottporad
27 May 10 at 9:47 am
Key tenets of marketing and product need to be ingrained into the minds of every employee at a startup. Sure, there’s a point where you have teams and ownership of responsibilities, but getting everyone aligned and empowered to fill in the gaps, because there are product insights to be gathered, and marketing opportunities to be found, everywhere from customer support to engineering.
Also, +1 for installing disqus.
Daryn
28 May 10 at 9:55 am
It looks like you’ve clarified it in the comments, but I don’t agree with your definition of marketing. Your post if referring more to the aspects of advertising (and more directly, performance-driven advertising).
I prefer the Investopedia definition of Marketing –> “Many people believe that marketing is just about advertising or sales. However, marketing is everything a company does to acquire customers and maintain a relationship with them. Even the small tasks like writing thank-you letters, playing golf with a prospective client, returning calls promptly and meeting with a past client for coffee can be thought of as marketing. The ultimate goal of marketing is to match a company’s products and services to the people who need and want them, thereby ensure profitability”
Thus, Daryn’s view of marketing is much more in line with mine — every employee owns aspects of marketing (i.e. getting customer feedback, listing to CS inquiries, developing ideas and getting market validation, participating in public conversations, being good community members in-person and online …)
It’s pretty bad practice to continue to equate advertising and marketing, especially in the web/startup world.
Dave
Dave Schappell
28 May 10 at 10:04 am
And, of course, there’s customer service, which is “the new marketing”.
What about the @comcastcares twitter effort? Is that marketing? Hard to say that something like that directly drives new business… But retention efforts are oftentimes more cost-effective than acquisition efforts.
What about a rewards program for existing customers? Product or marketing?
Tony Wright
28 May 10 at 10:21 am
It’s fascinating that the common response between these comments and those on Hacker News basically boil down to “product development is marketing too” and “every activity with the customer is marketing”.
If that’s the case, then let’s throw out the word marketing and talk about the real issue because debating what that word means misses the point.
At some point, after your developers have built your shiznit you have to find some customers. You have to take your widget and get it in front of a person who will pay for it. You have to get customers.
Call this marketing, call it sales, call it advertising…call it whatever you want to call it. The point is…it’s not easy. All of us jerks in product development think that the idiots in marketing just spend money and ads and the magic happens, but it’s not so simple.
We could sit around the campfire for hours and tell stories of great products that didn’t make it because they couldn’t get enough customers. Not because the product was bad, but because there was a failure of the to connect with the customers.
scottporad
28 May 10 at 10:51 am
Maybe I’ve had the benefit of never having had to work with a formal marketing department or maybe I’ve always worn a little bit of a marketer hat in my product management roles, but I have to agree with some of the dissent above regarding marketing.
Products that don’t have marketing baked into them from the get go, are going to have difficulty in the marketplace. Fundamentally, getting the right message to the right people efficiently is going to make or break your product. That said, I’m a hammer, so marketing through product development is the nail to me.
Thankfully, it seems the world of traditional marketing is changing and the best marketers (or at least the easiest for product guys like me to work with) are data driven product people wearing marketer hats.
@tony effective loyalty programs need to be well integrated into the product which, IMHO are the province of product.
Randy Stewart
28 May 10 at 11:21 am
I work for a startup (www.eggzack.com) that helps small businesses market themselves using the internet. We’re trying to provide a cheap and easy way for them to achieve your three points above.
It’s amazing how many companies, both tech startups and small businesses, have great products and/or services but are unable to market themselves effectively. In your comment you mention: “You have to take your widget and get it in front of a person who will pay for it. You have to get customers.” That is our focus.
Thanks for the thoughts.
Rick Morrison
28 May 10 at 11:21 am
What you describe is marketing communications (or in narrower sense: advertising), which is a small subset of marketing. Marketing starts from understanding customer needs and designing products that customers need & love. Marketing also includes distribution and customer service.
Philip Kotler defines marketing as ‘satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process.’ or “Marketing is the set of human activities directed at facilitating and consummating exchanges.”
Jüri Kaljundi
28 May 10 at 12:40 pm
You people are stupid. Marketing is thespecific approach to making actual sales. Sales are revenue in fist.
kevin
26 Jul 10 at 6:40 pm
From the perspective of someone new to the marketing game, and who is currently undergoing a crash-course in marketing while managing all marketing efforts for a rapidly growing startup:
The original post is great, because it offers a clear and concise way of thinking about marketing and the high level objectives of it – which primarily include driving sales.
The comments are also helpful and insightful (with the exception of @Kevin’s useless name-calling). Of course, anyone can define marketing in their own, unique way; there are always emerging concepts that change the way we look at things – eg, ‘customer service = the new marketing’; and there are always holes in any argument – eg, you can’t say advertising = marketing. I agree with Scott in that the argument over the definition of the word is a moot point.
As a sign of my appreciation for everyone’s thoughts, my contribution is this:
Marketing in an academic setting is much different than marketing in a practical setting. I just finished graduate school, where I studied marketing from many different angles. But it wasn’t until I started practicing with real tasks for a real company (and doing lots of experimentation), that I finally gained tangible lessons that can be applied to future challenges.
From a startup perspective, I can attest to the comfort that exists within a startup that is well-funded and generating significant revenue. Experimentation is much easier in this case, and mistakes (which are inevitable) are much less devastating.
One tip I have that provides a “cheap” way of “testing the waters” is this: before deciding to pay for display ads on TechCrunch, Mashable, etc., do whatever you can to get your company covered in a story on that network. From here you can measure the success of that coverage and extrapolate those results into the expected results from a display ad.
Ultimately, I think the marketing/product debate can be settled with this line of thinking: a) if your product/service solves a *real* pain, b) that pain is felt by a significant number of people, and c) you solve that pain as well or better than anyone else, then d) if you can create awareness among the people feeling the pain, e) they will pay you to take the pain away.
Thanks,
Tim
tim falls
10 Nov 10 at 2:03 pm
I just started my little company too, and I must say I have benefitted immensely from you guys. Thanks.
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