Marketers are navigating an increasingly complex industry, overwhelmed by constant talk of disrupters, programmatic buying, channel issues, and digital versus traditional issues – just to name a few.
It’s easy to assume, looking at how crowded the conversation is, that marketing is in a state of constant change and chaos, with no signs of this stopping. But may I suggest that marketing hasn’t changed?
To me, marketing is still about understanding and executing on the product, price, promotion and positioning of your offer in the market, in order to meet the long terms goals of the company.
By ditching the buzzwords, and getting back to basics, we can simplify marketing into three fundamental questions we need to answer and three fundamental things we need to action.
Three questions every marketer needs to answer:
- Who are my current customers, what do they want and how well am I doing in meeting those needs versus my current and potential competitors?
- Who are my potential customers, what do they want and how well am I doing in potentially meeting those needs versus my current and potential competitors?
- What is likely to change in the future in terms of my customers and potential customers needs and how well am I placed to meet that versus my competitors and potential competitors?
Three actions every marketer needs to make:
- How can I meet my current customers’ needs better than my competitors using my product, price, promotion and positioning with a strategic, not tactical, focus on meeting the goals that are set?
- How do I meet my potential customers’ needs better than my competitors using my product, price, promotion and positioning with a strategic, not tactical, focus on meeting the goals that are set?
- Where should I be innovating or changing in order to ensure that I am more relevant to my customers and potential customers in the future than my competitors and potential competitors?
Stripping back to the fundamentals of marketing can help guide us all through this increasingly complex territory. Do not be deterred by short term uplifts and falls, but ensure any short term tactics fit with the larger strategic goals.
Rinse and repeat – but not once a quarter.
The Leading Edge MD Lee Naylor