Last night, I was watching the Red Sox lose to the Texas Rangers. Sad, really. In fact, I’d go as far as to call it tragic. I’m a massive Sox fan. I’ve been going to games since I was in kindergarten. I know more useless Red Sox trivia than most people have forgotten. But what caught my attention last night was the number of people in the Sox dugout that I couldn’t identify. Who are they? What do they do? Can they even tell you what they do? It reminds me of marketing.
How many times have you heard this exchange:
You: So, what’cha do for work?
Them: Oh, I work in marketing…
You: Really, what type of marketing?
Them: Oh, you know SEO, SMO, lots of boring stuff you wouldn’t be interested in …
I’ve had this conversation time and again. Marketing being the “soft science” leads people to think they can be marketers without actually knowing what they’re talking about. Sometimes it’s easier to assume that they other people don’t know either. As such, the bullshit snowball grows in size and mass. Soon it will kill us all.
There are all kinds of marketing agencies that confuse themselves into thinking that PR equates to marketing. But it doesn’t. There are even more companies that seem to allign marketing and business development. And don’t let anyone fool you, business development is a fancy-pants term for sales. Marketing is not sales. Never was, never shall be.
So what is marketing and how do you explain it without sounding like you pilfered Barron’s, Forbes, or Funk and Wagnells?
I like to speak in metaphors and analogies. Get something people understand and verbally draw them a map. I’ve virtually always explained marketing and sales (ok, business development for you MBAs out there…) thusly:
Marketing makes you want a product. Sales makes you buy it.
Marketing, therefore, is the natural pre-cursor to sales. In fact, if marketing does its job correctly, sales should have no problem at all. Simple, clear, easy to understand, right?
Marketers who only speak in vague notions and acronyms rarely prove their value. Even worse, they perpetuate the myth that you need to hire overpriced consultants and specialists to decode these obfuscated techniques and principles that you don’t understand. If you don’t understand a term, ask for clarification.
If the marketing person can’t explain it to you — run away. Fast.
