Don’t worry, everything is fine

Marketing isn’t broken. It isn’t a gazillion times more complicated than this time last year. It hasn’t turned itself on its head and made life a confusing misery for CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers), SME owner-operators and all those in between.
But you could be forgiven for feeling as if that is exactly what’s happened.
The dominant contributing factor in this is the arrival of social media (now supplemented by social marketing, social commerce and a whole other bunch of social thingies).
At times it seems as if the developed world is overrun by thousands of self-proclaimed social media ‘gurus’ seeking to convince anyone who will listen that social media is the beginning, middle and end of all things marketing. What a load of old bunkum!
The result is that, in businesses around the world confusion reigns and marketing is being watered down on an almost daily basis as practitioners try to work out just what they are now supposed to be doing and how they are supposed to be doing it.
I can help. Go sit somewhere comfortable, look out at a clear blue sky, take a few deep breaths, and remind yourself of this simple, compelling and important reality: marketing hasn’t changed one jot. The tools, techniques and channels available to marketers have certainly grown and fragmented exponentially but marketing itself remains precisely what it was last week and last century.
And at its core, a business or organisation must remind itself of the following vital components of business and organisational performance and success (which you can still do without a social media guru anywhere near you):
• The marketing concept.
• Marketing planning.
• Marketing communications planning.

Marketing concept
Marketing remains at the centre of the business and organisational universe.
Marketing is still the concept and philosophy that recognises and responds to the reality that there is only one place the money comes from – customers.
Marketing is as much a state of mind as it is anything else and any business needs to have that state of mind prevalent throughout their very being.
Marketing recognises and responds to the reality that a business will only achieve its goals by identifying and/or creating needs and wants amongst its chosen target markets and fulfilling them, at a profit, time after time after time. And for public sector and not-for-profit organisations, simply remove the word profit and replace with “cost efficiently”.
So, in this increasingly complex and confusing world of marketing communications channels, never forget that the core concept has not changed. Also never forget that, in order to fully exploit the marketing concept, it means you need to give proper attention to establishing the answers to the following key questions:
• What business am I in?
• What am I selling?
• Who am I selling it to?
• Why the heck should they want to buy it anyway?

Marketing planning
And let’s never forget that whoever we are and whatever our business is doing, to do it without a plan is to fly blind and ultimately risk crashing and burning. US president Dwight D. Eisenhower famously remarked, “Plans are nothing. Planning is everything.” Make sure you have a plan that is a record of some excellent planning (i.e. thinking).
Such a planning process is, in effect, a navigational process seeking to answer the following key questions:
• Where are we?
• Where do we want/need to be?
• What do we need to do to get there?
• How will we know if we are on course?
So, we are refreshing our understanding of the marketing concept. We are clarifying our thinking around ‘Marketing’s four Key Questions’. And we are setting out on a navigational process designed to take us where we want to go. And not a social media guru in sight yet!

Marketing communications
Once we have our plan, then we are ready to begin to think about (plan) what we want to communicate, with whom and how. This is often called the Marketing Communications (Marcoms) Plan and has the following headings:
• Determine the problem or opportunity.
• Determine the objectives.
• Select the target audience.
• Select the marketing communications mix.
• Select the message strategy.
• Select the message delivery system or media.
• Determine a budget.
• Implement the strategy.
• Measure the results.
The above elements of marketing thinking and practice haven’t changed and won’t change and need to continue to dominate the thinking and practice of successful businesses, notwithstanding how the future of communications and communications channels and methodologies may develop.
So don’t worry. Everything’s fine. Really.

Brian Meredith is CEO of The Marketing Bureau (www.themarketingbureau.co.nz).