Our jobs as marketers

Smart people can disagree, My friend Mark took exception to Seth Godin’s words.

Seth Godin said

“Marketers make change. We change people from one emotional state to another,” he writes.

Any time change is needed, that is marketing, he said. If we need to change somebody’s opinion, their purchasing habits, their vote … that’s marketing. “Marketing means you need to change someone, or perhaps a group of someones.”

Mark Schaefer responded:

“Instead, why not respect our customers as intelligent people who can make up their own minds on how to vote, where to shop, and what is worthy of their allegiance?

People are using the infinite information and insight in the palm of their hand to make well-informed decisions and then congregate into like-minded islands to spread the word among themselves. You might even call them tribes. : )

Seth is correct that a lot of marketing is still about changing minds. But I believe our profession is moving toward respecting these like-minded tribes by being useful and supportive of their fully-formed individual needs and desires. It’s about earning a place in their pre-existing, organic conversations.”

I  agree with Mark.

“Change” is an output.  I can’t change our customers’ minds if I don’t understand why they want to change, what change they are looking for, how they prefer to change, who is motivating them to change and where they are in their journey to change.

As Jeff Bezos shares “Focusing our energy on the controllable inputs to our business is the most effective way to maximize financial outputs over time."

What are the inputs to controlling “change” in customers? This should help us define what marketers role is. I like to define it as:

Our job as marketers is to understand our customers and help them buy.

We must understand, for each segment:

• why they want to change
• what change they are looking for
• how they prefer to change
• who is motivating them to change
• what is interfering with change
• where they are in their journey to change.

But understanding is not enough.

Understanding how to create massively successful campaigns that drive viral amounts of traffic does nothing if it doesn’t create the experience, enhance confidence and strengthen the bond between our customers and our brand but most importantly help them buy. A company cannot succeed by “traffic” alone. Today our role must include every effort to help customers buy.

The Classic 4Ps of Marketing Should Be 6Ps

Traditional Marketer’s role was defined by being responsible for Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. I would add that there are two Ps missing that provide a more complete picture of Marketer’s roles today.

The 5th P: People

As I mentioned earlier our role is to understand our customers. We need to understand how the “People” our business serves are impacted by the choices we make about Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. We need to spend time and resources understanding our customer segments (using personas), how our people engage in our community and how people influence others.

The 6th P: Purchase (Path to Purchase)

As digital transformation has evolved over the past two decades we have much better insights and control of our customers buying journey. From SEO to the launch of paid search ads we could know to inject our brand and products when the customer was actively taking steps to buy. Customers were in control of when they search for us, what they clicked on and what they browsed. Previously the majority of our media was broadcast media, where we hoped the right people heard our ads and made their way to one of the channels where they could purchase our product.

Now we can collaborate with our customers and influencer to co-create content to influence people on social media and place ads there as well.

Because there is a clear line of sight from our “place” and “promotion” to our “products” and “people” we are seeing a rise of Direct to Consumer Brands and we need now have the responsibility to manage the experience from brand awareness (Product) to final purchase.

The Marketer’s Challenge

The challenge for most marketers is that they must have the support of the whole organization to uncover and remove friction while keeping teams and customers motivated or they will ultimately fail in their role. This is one core reason CMO tenures remain short.

No matter how brilliant an ad a marketer might deliver, if the customer experience is loaded with friction, with in-store associates who are difficult to track down, who don’t possess the appropriate product knowledge to answer customer’s questions and checking out requires waiting on long lines while old technology handicaps the checkout process, we fail if the customer doesn’t buy. Because our marketing spend didn’t deliver revenue. The same happens online in both retail and B2B purchase experiences.

So both Seth and Mark are right. Our definition and role as marketers must evolve if we plan to keep up with our customers’ expectations going forward.