What Marketing is and Marketing isn't.

I'm not an expert but I have worked on enough marketing gigs to know what Marketing is and what it isn't. While it sounds like a trivial thing it really makes a difference to understand what Marketing is. I get a lot of business owners and creatives who come in to our office and say "I NEED MARKETING". But without fail, their definition of marketing is actually a combination of the things you do when you've done the Marketing work needed. No fault of their own, they're the business owner, the creator of the project. They have a passion for what it is they've made or what they're offering - not how to spread the word about it.

Marketing IS defining your market. Without knowing the ins and outs of your market you really have no one to market to. So the first step in any business or product launch is gathering as much information as possible on who and what the market is. And when you're spending money on this, you're not just guessing. You're not just saying "well this is who I would like to hit", throwing caution to the wind and hoping that those people you hoped to like your stuff actually like it. When you conduct market research and send reports they are snapshots of the people most likely to respond to your messaging and those who're not based on information that is made available by reputable sources or our own research.

Marketing by its self IS NOT promotions. And let's just get this out the way while we're here, it also isn't advertising, social media and it isn't PR either. I know big shock right? So let's stop calling those things Marketing but let's absolutely recognize that they all feed one another and if you have solid Marketing research and analytics at the ready, it makes your promotions, advertising and PR campaigns more efficient, more sensible and for all intents and purposes, more successful.

More times than not, people come to us and they immediately want campaigns campaigns campaigns and we can do that. We can do some social media, we can do PR strategy, we can handle advertising if that is what is desired. But I always find myself asking "so...who is your market?" "What are their tendencies?" "Have you done any research on market trends?" The answers are usually no, no and no as well as no to every other market related question. So, before we roll out any campaigns, we need to understand who we're campaigning to and what we're up against. It'll save everyone time and resources.