Listen carefully the next time “marketing” comes up in communication.
It’s often thought of as a function, department, or sometimes just a person. Once I was the sole marketing person for a business and a colleague from over the cubical wall would audibly say “go ask marketing.” I often wondered: who is this Mark Etting fellow anyway?
Field marketing, product marketing, digital marketing, demand gen, lead gen, brand, inbound, outbound, content marketing, oh my!
Some insist these are distinctly different. Most can’t tell one from the other and many still think marketing is no more than “advertising.” In larger organizations, these marketing “functions” are often kept separate and we wonder why we have disjointed experiences as a consumer.
Did you know the AMA’s (American Marketing Association) definitions of marketing and marketing research are “reviewed and reapproved/modified every three years by a panel of five scholars who are active researchers?” We’re evidently dealing with a moving target established by academic consensus. This might be why alignment is so difficult.
The 2017 version reads “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.” That sounds like the entire business! Editorial note: great marketing SHOULD involve the entire business.
Worry about labels, titles, and jargon later. Stick to the three key questions that will unlock commercial operations for your organization: