Why Don't People "Get" Marketing?

It's the classic scenario for companies selling products or services to other companies: We need marketing to improve our sales and get the word out. Marketing spends money to do just that. Sales does not close all their deals. Now Marketing is blamed for not doing their job.

It always amazes me that people think marketing just "happens". I think it's because everyone is a target for marketing in their everyday life and they all have opinions as consumers. They think design, development, and writing all happen in a few minutes time by a bunch of slick ad execs wielding cocktails and taking long lunches. They think, "Why is marketing spending money on this, that, or the other thing? They are spending, spending, spending!" Few people realize that marketing is a cost of doing business, emphasis on the word COST. Marketing spends money so Sales can close business and make money. It doesn't take an MBA. You have to buy media, sponsorships, website design, email creation, copywriting, direct mail, etc. Even those one-sheets mean someone has to be paid to write and design them. True, someone who runs their own company can be creative on a shoestring by writing their own copy, coding their own HTML, designing their own collateral in Illustrator, but they get a shoestring's worth of marketing. Which is okay for certain targets but not when you're playing in the big leagues. And I'd also like to meet such a person that can do all aspects of marketing - I mean, create the tactics, not oversee the department - really well. Do you really think a multi-billion dollar company like Oracle or SAP is really going to have one guy creating all their high-end materials because he "dabbles" in design? Please.....there's a certain league you're playing in that has expectations attached. Joe CEO from Company X is not going to spend millions of dollars on your software to drive the mission critical aspects of his business if it looks like work is done by interns in a garage who could abandon ship at a moment's notice. The product has to work but you have to look and act like a grown up company, which is where presentation, brand, and image come in.

This does not mean marketers don't care about return on investment. On the contrary, we are constantly measuring success to see what we get for our money, what worked, what didn't. What resonated with the target audience, and what attracted the wrong audience. What vehicles got us the most lift, and most importantly, what COMBINATION of tactics produced the desired result. In addition, the combination itself will differ greatly depending on the budget. You can't simply "remove" items from a plan when the budget gets cut midstream. You would create an entirely new plan of tactics from the start if you only had so much to work with to get the best bang for your buck.

Where do otherwise smart, experienced, and visionary business executives get the idea that one tactic = one sale? People are not coin-operated: you can't toss a nickel into the slot once and - poof - out comes a nice shiny purchase order for $1 million dollars. You have to consistently reach them in different ways with different messages until you find what works and get them during the decision cycle. You have to present your value propositions from several angles before they absorb the message and are ready to act. You have to integrate your tactics. Does anyone really think one ad, or one event, or one email blast is really going to get someone to say, "Wow! I never knew this company existed before in my life, never knew what they did, never knew I needed that, never evaluated such a product before, but DAMN! I'm going to call them up and buy from them today with a budget I happen to already have approved for an initiative I happen to have ready right now!!" I wish....

Maybe direct cause and effect makes more sense for consumer items based on pure psychological needs or where cost is so low there is minimal risk or consideration time - like Kit Kats at the checkout line. But not for hundreds or thousands of dollars of enterprise software and months or years of implementation time, people. If it were so easy, everyone in Silicon Valley would be blowing out their sales numbers with half the people in their marketing team.

When companies hit their sales numbers, they simply say they have a great product and salesforce. When they don't, they say marketing didn't do enough. Classic. Then when the marketing budgets get cut, and the department is doing whatever they can, just to keep the website updated, the company complains they don't have enough programs, leads, golf-tees, pens, brochures - pick your poison.

Money does not grow on trees, and neither does good marketing.