What is “marketing” and why is it important?
Since the early 1900s, mentions of “marketing” has steadily risen in books (at a 3.2% CAGR). With the advent of new technologies (telegram, radio, TV, internet), topics on marketing have also risen.
So, what is marketing?
The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines marketing as “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.”
Boiled down to a a single notion:
Marketing is the link between the customer and the product or service. It is also the process to serve the customer with the right product or service at the right time with the right message and in the right manner.
Essentially, marketing is everywhere because it is the link between two sides: the brand (this could be a person, company or organization) and their customer (which could also be a person, company or organization).
- For brands, standing out from the crowd is important. Marketing done well can shorten the amount of time a customer goes from considering a product or service to selecting the brand. The quicker a brand can be top-of-mind for a consumer, the cheaper it will be for the brand (because, you know, less in-between products, less educational placements, less advertising spent on driving awareness, etc). Branding is a mechanism of good marketing and through a simple logo (Apple) or jingle (NBC chimes) or tagline (“Just Do It”), customers can immediately understand the value proposition of the brand’s products/services. This builds brand equity, which can translate to tangible dollar value differentiation. For example for similar laptop functions, Apple can charge 1.3x higher than competing brands because it has brand equity.
- For customers, figuring out what product or service best suits their needs and wants is top priority. Marketing helps answer the question of “is this for me?” Customers are exposed to marketing everywhere from the friends who tell them places to check out (word-of-mouth) to the celebrities who endorse certain brands onlline (influencer marketing) to the ads we see in movies (product placement), online (display ads), and TV/video (commercials). All this exposure gives customers a holistic sense of what the brand/product represents and whether to trust and buy into the product/service offered.
Simply put, we can’t escape marketing (it’s inherent in the way we make choices), but we can damn well be sure to do great marketing!
Marketing has widened its scope since the introduction of various technologies.
Nonetheless, great marketing comes from the people who create the strategies and then execute on them. Below is a simple list of marketing types, their roles and associated responsibilities. (Note: this is not an exhaustive list. Just something to get you started.)
Marketing Types
| Marketing Type | Role & Responsibility |
| B2B Marketing | Business-to-Business (B2B) marketers leverage the same strategies and tactics as other marketers but their end-customers are other businesses. Within companies, there may be a B2B division dedicated to building products and solutions for businesses. |
| Brand Marketing | Brand marketers own the strategy and execution of a product or service’s brand identity. This means developing the brand’s architecture, look-and-feel, associated assets and brand guidelines to ensure cohesion across all properties. They often work with creative agencies. |
| Consumer Marketing | Most known form of marketing. Consumer marketers own the strategy and execution of educating, promoting and selling brand, product or services to consumers. Consumers can vary industry to industry and platform to platform. |
| Content Marketing | Content marketers run the strategy and execution of short- and long-form information meant to explain and engage customers. Content can range from social media posts to blogs to podcasts to video series. Content marketers work with content management systems (CMS) to build and schedule content deployments (e.g. new web pages detailing the price differences of a new service or weekly blog posts). |
| Creative | Creatives are usually employed by an agency. Recently, many brands have brought their creative development in-house. Creatives develop the look-and-feel for a particular campaign. This could include developing the color palette of a logo all the way to developing the in-person experience at an arena. |
| Customer Relationship Management (CRM) | CRM specialists work closely with teams and tools that have direct communication paths to customers. For example, Email marketers might fall into this type as they message customers directly through the email channel. Marketers in this function own notifications and sometimes other direct communication channels like customer service chat. |
| Digital Marketing | Digital marketers deal with digital properties like search engines, social media platforms, ad exchanges, etc. Some digital marketers can be Performance marketers, meaning they optimize marketing campaigns for performance, oftentimes leveraging data and digital tools. Some digital marketers might be Channel marketers, meaning they own the strategy and execution of a particular marketing channel (e.g. email, push notifications, social media). |
| Event Marketing | Event marketers consider the full experience at in-person events. This could include trade shows or consumer-facing events like conferences, expos, launch events. They own strategy and execution, which includes defining the type of event, size of audience, level of engagement, and every detail in between. |
| Influencer Marketing | Marketers in this function work with influencers, which can be celebrities, publishers, businesses or organizations. These marketers focus on driving stronger word-of-mouth, meaning the people and and entities marketers leverage have a sphere of “influence” that carries more weight than when a brand says it. Influencer marketers are usually part of Paid and/or Partnership teams. |
| Marketing Operations | Marketers who work in this function build marketing tools and processes for other marketers. Marketing data analysts who build predictive models based on customer signals often report into this team. Other associated teams could include product owners and engineering. |
| Paid Media | Paid media or paid marketing marketers own the strategy and execution of marketing that the brand has to pay for. For example, ads run on TV, radio, or online come from a paid media team. Paid media teams have a budget, of which they allocate according to a media mix. Some paid media teams also own sponsorships and paid partnerships, while other companies keep them separate. |
| Product Marketing | Product marketers work closely with product managers and engineers to build go-to-market strategies for a new product or service. They, along with product managers, manage the lifecycle of a product/service, from development to launch to post-launch engagement. In some companies, the product marketer may double as the product manager. |
Many companies have started to combine functions. For example, you might have marketing strategists that work on both brand and digital with the help of external agencies. You might have product marketers owning product brand and digital strategies. You might even have CMOs owning marketing, communications, customer service, and data.
Now that you have a sense of what marketing is, then go to the next step of understanding marketing. Next post is a few quick and dirty ways of getting started with marketing. (Don’t worry, they’re universal truths and can be used across industries and marketing types.)
Resources:
- Glossary of Marketing Terms
- Google NGram of “marketing,” “digital,” and “brand” from 1800 to 2019
- Marketing 101: Universal Truths Behind Marketing
- ‘Marketing 101″ presented by Rose Jia for Asian Women in Business (AWIB) – Watch | Download pdf
- Future of Marketing | The Economist
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