Helen Gemmell, Schueco UK
I have been a marketer for over 25 years now and studied business and finance for four years followed by my chartered institute of marketing qualifications. I absolutely love marketing, it is all about understanding the behaviour of people, what people want or need and how your product or service meets those needs.
So, when I hear those words ‘oh I’ve done a bit of marketing’ it sets my blood boiling! So many times, I have heard those words from people in so many different departments, particularly sales, training, finance, HR and I find it simply rude and disrespectful to my profession. I don’t say to finance oh I’ve done some accounting because I manage a budget and measure marketing campaigns! Somehow, people in other professional disciplines feel like they can say they’ve done marketing because they may have designed a poster, or a leaflet and they think that’s marketing.
If you ask someone not in marketing to explain what marketing is, you will get a variety of answers but few I doubt that are accurate. Marketing is the process of promoting, selling and distributing a product or service. As stated above, you need an intimate knowledge and understanding what people need and want and how your product or service fulfils those needs.
The classic AIDA model depicts marketing:
- Attract attention
- Interest – gain attention so people want to know more
- Desire – make your product desirable so people want it
- Action – make it easy for people to purchase and interact with you
To do those things you need to understand the market, competition, target audience, how your product / service meets customer requirements, and you need to understand the customer journey and user experience.
From a business perspective, marketing has to demonstrate the value it adds. Marketing is an investment not a cost to the business as it is about proactively attracting and retaining customers. Each marketing activity or campaign must have clear objectives and measures to demonstrate the value of its activity. In today’s world where we are bombarded with so many messages daily, it is vital to stay visible and relevant to your audience.
Marketing has changed so much during my career, digital marketing barely existed at the start, so keeping up to date and current about new technology and its part of the marketing mix is vital. There have been many ‘latest things’ come and go in marketing over the years with the very latest being AI technology, how people consume information evolving constantly and understanding this is critical to being a great marketer.
I could rant all day about it, but I genuinely feel in some organisations and by some professional disciplines, marketing is not respected as a profession, it is bundled with sales and for me any company that has a sales and marketing director – avoid! This is a clear indication of a lack of understanding and value put on marketing.