Why There's More to Marketing than Advertising

Marketing is not all about promotion. If you are an advertising specialist, it does not make you an expert in marketing.

What’s more to marketing than that?

One of my first blog posts was stating that thefirst step in marketing is HR. Your employees are your best spokesmen.

In some odd way everything can come under the big title of marketing. Anything that entails some creative thinking or choice in an organization is subject to the way you decide to present it to your stakeholders, i.e. to market it.

This leaves only a few tasks that do not fall under marketing, and I say “tasks”, as even the most rigid of positions can be subject to “presentation” bias.  Let’s consider accounting for instance: true, there are some very basic entries that you cannot “edit” creatively, but as your role gets more managerial, you handle more responsibility, and you are given more power to influence the company’s overall image.

For instance, in accounting, you may be put in charge to present your company’s profit to the world. You will have to do it right; yet you will also have to do it in the most subtle and attractive way. Whether you look at the income statement and state “we got ourselves in a debt of 2 million dollars this year” or “we have invested in 3 new venues, and expect to generate 10 million dollars in the coming 3 years” makes all the difference in the world! It is all about marketing.  

Needless to say, you may conduct flawless advertising campaigns, yet… if its cost is not set based on the ROI in terms of profits, if your product’s price is not right, if your salespeople are not polite, if your venue is not welcoming, if your operations are not timely in delivery, if your secretary never picks up the phone, if you fall behind your competition in quality control (and the list goes on)… then you have utterly failed in marketing.

The 1st phase of Marketing: HR

No matter how hard you try to satisfy a customer, if your employee is not satisfied, you're throwing your money away. Yes, I know you've figured out and implemented thousands of ways to sustain control. But trust me, they'll turn your world around, upside down and about if you do not quench their thirst. They know how to make themselves heard. Deep down inside you know it; and admit it, you fear it!

In my last job, one of the first steps I discovered I needed to implement to respond to the company's MARKETING needs was to establish an employee of the month program ...and I thought I had moved away from my field.

But no.

What's the use of promoting your company to the world if at some point in time you'll have an "insider", one of your own, or so you'd think, disconfirm your image? When the employee no longer associates himself with the company, when it becomes a "they" instead of a "we" ring the alarms, you have a problem.

Isn't Human Resources all about marketing the company to the employees at the end of the day? Marketing functions are rarely ever in the hands of the marketing department.

Isn't the general manager's job in some way strategic marketing? ...and the salesman's duty operational marketing? If even accounting can become creative in order to better market to the investors... one might wonder how much further can marketing go.