Introducing Marketing Mechanics

A newsletter for sharing strategic ideas and practical marketing tips

Feb 5

Every organization approaches marketing differently

A friend contacted me recently about a potential opportunity to teach an Intro to Marketing course. It got me thinking about my career and what I’ve learned.

One of the things I asked myself is, how would I even explain marketing to someone just starting out in university? How do I personally define marketing?

I have a couple of degrees, but neither of them are technically in the field I started working in, somewhat by accident, 19 years ago.

Over the course of my career, I’ve worked with at least 18 different organizations and all of them approached marketing differently. No two were the same.

I’ve worked with colleagues and executives who were excited about marketing. Who believed in its potential and its ability to make an impact on an organization. I’ve also had people tell me directly they don’t believe in marketing, or that they don’t need marketing.

But the truth is that every company operating today has a marketing presence. It’s just a matter of how purposefully and intentionally that presence has been built.

Taking it from the top

Defining marketing seems as good a place as any to start this newsletter. The idea behind Marketing Mechanics is to share strategic ideas as well as practical tips on building successful marketing programs. The newsletters will be brief, and the goal is to publish a couple of times a month.

Besides that, the only other objective of this newsletter is to go beyond the buzzwords and acronyms. I can’t promise I won’t mention the occasional CRO or SEO, but the main goal is to get to the heart of how marketing works. And how to use the mechanics of marketing to provide real value both in business and in society.

So taking it from the top. Below is how I define marketing (for now).

Marketing is a mechanism for presenting an organization and the value it provides to the world. The value could be professional services, solving a social issue, providing useful technology, or physical goods. Successful marketing programs are built from strategies centered around the people who benefit from the value provided in their day-to-day life.

Marketing is a business function for:

Building brand awareness
Establishing company credibility and trustworthiness
Engaging with relevant audiences in real life and online
Establishing collaborative partnerships
Creating demand for products or services
Fueling business development and generating leads
Providing educational and/or entertaining content
Fostering customer loyalty

Marketing is a combination of creative, analytical, and strategic work. Common components of marketing today include:

Marketing technology, or martech
Social media
Email marketing
Search engine marketing
Advertising
Data and analytics
Content and storytelling
Collaboration, among internal teams as well as with key partners
Innovative experiences and offerings
Go-to-market and growth strategies
Customer centricity - understanding buyer personas, ideal client profiles, and the buying journey

Marketing can also be a function for engaging businesses with humanity’s most important issues including social justice, education, environmental sustainability, health, safety, and well-being.

Exploring proven frameworks

That’s all to say, marketing can play a big role in business. It can also be small - many organizations use marketing to tackle only one or a few of the things listed above.

While no two companies approach marketing the same, there are proven frameworks and ideas that any organization can use to level up marketing efforts. That’s part of what we’ll explore with Marketing Mechanics.

In the meantime, what did I miss? How do you define marketing?