Marketing with Moxie

Lyn Chasteen, the engaging publisher of the Austin Business Journal, asked attendees at a recent "Smart Series" breakfast the paper sponsors, to briefly introduce themselves before the morning's talk began. The topic was marketing, and I was the guest speaker. I sipped my coffee and nodded in affirmation as people stood up to give their 30-second intros. Many of them expectantly mentioned that they came to pick up some marketing tips. "Yes," I thought to myself, "I've heard these kinds of expectations expressed many times at events like this"  

I was surprised at one small business owner's blunt introduction. "I hate marketing," he said as the crowd chuckled. Yet surprisingly, he went on to describe how he had been growing his small business with some success since he started it several years ago. He obviously knows something about marketing, but if you pressed him to tell you what, he'd probably shrug his shoulders.

Why is "marketing" a dirty word for many small business owners or their staff members who are in charge of marketing? I believe it starts with what we think, assume or fear marketing is -- or isn't.  To digress on that line of thinking -- marketing as a dirty word -- I'm reminded of the phrase Supreme Court Just Potter Stewart penned in his opinion about obscenity in 1964:  "I know it when it see it."

As consumers or business owners, we intuitively know good marketing (or bad marketing) when we see it.  But we don't know how to define it.  Even for those schooled in the ways of marketing, it sometimes seems like a mystery.

CFO's think it's too expensive and doesn't help the bottom line. Sales people think it sucks and invent their own marketing materials. And the frustrated marketing manager is confounded when asked to demonstrate marketing's ROI.

So, what is marketing, exactly? As I shared with the group that morning, it might not be what you think it is. In part, that's because traditional definitions of marketing are wishy washy. Textbooks discuss the Four P's: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Webster's defines marketing as, "the act or process of selling or purchasing in a market." Yeah, that helps. The American Marketing Association, a really smart group, says marketing is "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large." Now that sounds more like a Supreme Court opinion!

I like this definition, invented by Duct Tape Marketing founder John Jantsch:

"Marketing is getting people with a problem or need to know, like and trust you."

Simple and intuitive. Most people nod in agreement when I share that definition with them. It makes sense, and jibes with our experiences of businesses we admire and refer.

In my next post, we'll dig a little deeper on that definition and how to apply it to your business. In the meantime, I'd love to know what you think marketing is. Do you know it when you see it?