Ramblings of a Marketer

“Marketing is rear-end gas”, said one of the leaders of a large country recently. Let me not write down his name here and get my life jeopardized.

Actually he is right. His perception and experiences of marketing are real. He sells what he has. Markets what he has, exactly the way he believes is right to sell. He is a producer marketer.

Marketing has evolved from the older days. My old grocery store who knows what soap I use will always have two pieces of the same – I don’t get to see this brand in very many places. Your granny’s corner jeweler. She keeps going there and every time she is treated as the only customer of the store (or should I call it outlet?).

These two examples are where customers were limited. Every person in these outlets behaved as if there were owners – not by holding control, not by taking decisions on business, not by leading a team and of course not by looking down upon other co-workers. They behaved similar to customers by being sensitive to them. By understanding their needs. By giving personal attention to them. By moving customer loyalty to a whole new level – customer engagement (guess this is a new term of the 90s but it existed way before that).

Yes, marketing has evolved. Across industries, consumers and geographies. Some for good and some not so good. In every technology company, marketing is evolving. Slowly but surely.

I remember someone asking me as to what is the size of the marketing team today and I replied, “3500”! Yes, at that point I believed it was 3500 as that was what I knew was the size of the company. I was wrong. But yes there are companies in technology, manufacturing, services, entertainment and various other industries that are truly marketing companies. Take Microsoft for example, what do you think their core business is? I would say marketing. Marketing and only marketing. Yes, they do not have all satisfied customers. They have enemies as well. But who cares, they rule.

The point is, marketing is not a set of activities that is done by a set of people. It is a culture. What is it that they do that distinguishes them from other companies? What distinguishes Microsoft from other large B2C and B2B technology companies?

One, they are customer focused and two, they were forward looking. The traditional four Ps of marketing are clearly driven by their customers rather than them. They allow their customers to determine what should be their next release. How often have all of felt the need for a cable to connect our iPods or mobiles to our laptops? How often we hate our gadgets as they do not interact with one another? How often does one feel the need of a touch pad or joy stick that never malfunctions? Microsoft has taken this to the next level – with Microsoft Surface. This article is not to promote MS but to show an example of how consumers wants/needs are converted into solutions for them.

At the top of this is just one question in each employees mind – ‘How do I give the best experience to my customer?’ Believing this delivering this is the true form of marketing.

Customer is the King (or Queen in many cases). The truly marketing companies should believe in this more than talking about it.
A question at the end. How many of you believe that you are marketing magnets and why? Drop in your responses here at this blog. I will keep adding more blogs to this section and in a month’s time take a deep dive into technology marketing.