Sep 10
14
What is Marketing?
In an effort to purge my bookshelf to make room for more stuff, I ran across a marketing book from a few years ago. I find that often, depending on the title, business and marketing books can easily become outdated very quickly. That was the case with several books I pulled out; but this particular one, I decided to peruse. It’s called: The End of Marketing as we Know It, by Sergio Zyman.
With a copyright date of 1999, I didn’t think this would take too long to evaluate and put in the discard pile, but I was surprised as I started to re-read it. Zyman talks about how marketers and their companies sometimes lose sight of what marketing is. He explained that people get all caught up in an idea and lose that focus. Marketing is getting people to buy your product, and if what you are doing isn’t working, stop doing it.
For example, the author was responsible for pulling the old Coca-Cola commercial from the late 70’s with Mean Joe Greene and a kid
drinking a Coke. Everybody loved the commercial, but it wasn’t generating sales. Why spend the money on something that isn’t generating a return?
Marketing is a fact of doing business and if you don’t do it, your competition will. Zyman explains, “… if you don’t take the initiative and market your own brand or product, by default the competitor will position you (poorly I bet) by marketing theirs.”
Zyman says that marketing is what you do to sell stuff, and the money you lay out to do that is an investment in growing your business, not an expense. Once companies understand that, spending money on marketing tools like packaging, advertising, promotional items and apparel, etc. will be a little easier.
So, what are you doing to market your business? How are you positioning yourself better or differently than your competitor?
-Ashley
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