What every business manager should know about marketing
Marketing is a universally employed and necessary business practice. It’s also one of the least understood
By John Hebert
As businesspeople, each of us has a lot riding on the decisions we make every day. And most of those business decisions back up to marketing in some manner, shape or form.

Astonishingly, many businesspeople — and even some managers responsible for the marketing function — act on intuitive hunches rather than carefully conceived plans. It’s like shooting in the dark, and sometimes at the wrong target.

Don’t get me wrong: many businesspeople have become wealthy acting on hunches drawn from deep experience with a familiar subject. Billionaire investor George Soros used back pain as an indicator in financial decision-making. When the market acted a different way than he expected, he’d get a backache. When the spasms became unbearable, Soros knew it was time to change course.

But there was more method in Soros’ seeming madness than meets the eye. With millions at stake on each trade, he carefully investigated the business fundamentals of every company he invested in and applied sound technical analysis before he bought or sold. His aching back merely added an intuitive edge in preempting the unpredictable psychology of a reflexive market.

Unless what you’re selling doesn’t have any competition, which, I assure you, is not possible (see sidebar) and customers are flocking to buy your product in droves, it makes sense to approach your business and marketing decision-making by applying fundamentals first, and using your intuition to fine-tune.

Managers of enterprises large and small have a lot riding on their business decisions — time, money, reputation, their future and the livelihoods of others — so it’s important to invest it wisely. Disciplined marketing is the key.

What marketing is, and isn’t
Marketing is easily and often confused with various forms of communication. Ask business managers in or outside the printing industry how they market their company, and they’ll usually describe their latest ad program, direct marketing campaign, or press release.

In effect, they’re saying, “We market our product with ads, PR and direct response mailings.” While not untrue, a more accurate statement would be, “We use ads, PR and direct response to communicate our marketing messages.” Each of those communications tactics may be guided by some very thoughtful marketing principles and analyses, but placing an ad or issuing a press release doesn’t mean they are engaged in marketing.

Marketing is not synonymous with advertising or any other form of communication.

As extreme examples, consider advertising the latest 54G broadband network router to a group without Internet access; or trying to sell $170,000 Bentleys door-to-door to freshly minted college graduates.

Anybody could intuitively predict those efforts would fail dramatically. A disciplined approach to marketing would provide the reasons why each of those schemes would fail; such as a failure to match products with the appropriate prospects; a need to first identify what will motivate those prospects to buy; and a need to uncover objections likely to surface are just a few examples of disciplined marketing strategies. Use of any or all of these will help indicate what communication strategies and tactics to employ, and much more.

Which brings us to the question, “What is marketing?”
At it’s most basic level, marketing is a system of facilitating the exchange between sellers and buyers to satisfy consumer wants and needs. You have products (goods or services) that you believe a certain critical number of consumers will want or need to buy from you at a price you both think represents fair value.

That seems easy enough. And it’s true; some aspects of marketing are sufficiently transparent that many business managers adequately satisfy their customers’ wants and needs largely by using common sense and intuition. But finding prospects and converting them to customers is sufficiently complex that even seasoned managers often have trouble because they don’t stick to the basics. They lead their companies into battle for the consumer’s dollar unarmed, without clear objectives, and frequently without knowing enemy positions or capabilities.

Marketing, in a very real sense, is combat. As a marketer, your job is to get your company’s products into consumers’ willing hands and win a valuable exchange at the expense of the competition. Marketing requires data gathering, analysis, training, testing, and discipline — repeatedly if you want loyal customers and repeat sales.

Sometimes you get lucky. But it’s risky business to leave something as important as your company’s livelihood to chance.

The mind of the consumer
So, where does one start marketing? Or, better put, “Where does good marketing start?” The starting point popularized by Al Ries & Jack Trout in their 1981 marketing classic, “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind,” suggest that marketing starts in the minds of the consumer. And they’re still absolutely right.

To affect an exchange, we need a product and a prospective consumer. From a marketing standpoint, product attributes (features, benefits, advantages) are the easy part: once the product is developed, they’re a given. Matching the product to consumer wants and needs is the hard part.

You’ve probably heard of the “4 Ps”: Product, Place, Price and Promotion. Although their alliteration makes them more memorable, the 4 Ps concept suggests an inward-looking approach that tends to oversimplify the marketing task.

In my first academic exposure to marketing some 22 years ago, I learned of an approach adapted by University of Massachusetts Marketing Professor Charles Schewe and then-Business Week Marketing Editor Reuben Smith that embraced and exceeded the 4-Ps model.

The approach, involving seven managerial marketing functions, is as relevant today as it was then. Each of the seven functions is critical, and they’re also sequential. You can’t start at Function 4 and move to 3 then 6 and call it a day. Yet many try.

The seven marketing functions
Marketing starts by identifying and describing the likely audience for the product, and then uncovering what motivates them to buy. In Schewe and Smith’s framework, these first two managerial functions are Market Delineation and Purchasing Motivation, and both fall outside the 4-Ps paradigm.

Once you know and understand consumer purchasing behavior, you’ll be able to better assess whether your product — and everything about it — needs to be modified to satisfy consumers’ requirements. Case studies of products that consumers rejected because of seemingly insignificant but critically important design flaws, pricing problems, or lack of toll-free “800” numbers fill the shelves of marketing libraries. A little testing coupled with any needed Product Adjustment, Step 3, can avoid big problems long before any lasting impressions are mistakenly made in public.

Step 4, Physical Distribution, concerns all of the issues, steps, and agents involved in physically bringing the product to market — which exceeds “Place” in 4Ps parlance, especially in the relatively new world of online marketing.

Once you’ve got a handle on steps 1–4, you can engage in the fun part of marketing — Communication — which is far more encompassing than mere “Promotion,” the 4th “P.” The goal here is to select the right tools for the job from a marketing standpoint, not because the publisher is giving a discount on ad space, “publicity is free,” or junk mail is held in low regard. It’s not “junk” mail if it’s of interest to the consumer.

Communications tools and tactics should be guided by strategies that support the marketing strategy and plan. Each has its place in creating awareness, interest or desire, and in spurring the consumer to act the way we want them to. Knowing which tactics to use and how to implement them has a direct bearing on campaign efficiency and effectiveness.

The sixth marketing function, Transaction, concerns under what circumstances — how, when, where the actual exchange takes place, how many and what steps are required, how many people are involved, and so on. Buying a pack of gum, for example, is completely different from buying collaborative soft proofing, color management or printing services.

At the dawn of the marketing era, only the most savvy business managers practiced post-transaction, the seventh function. It remains the step that’s often forgotten, but less so today owing to new digital technologies that enable methods like enterprise marketing management to track and hold onto customers and prospects better than super glue.

The seven managerial functions are not the sum total of marketing thought, but they do provide a logical series of steps to make smart decisions.

In the final analysis, taking a disciplined approach to marketing ultimately promotes business efficiency by increasing the chances that actions guided by sound decisions will produce desired results and deliver a handsome return on time and money invested.

And what businessperson doesn’t want that?

About the author: John Hebert, principal of Hebert Communications, is an expert in strategic marketing communications and public relations who specializes working with local, national and international companies in the graphic communications industry and related fields. He can be reached at 617-232-1161 or .