What does the term marketing mean?

It staggers me the amount of business professionals that think of marketing only as selling and advertising. Then again, no wonder – every day we are inundated with people telling us how to market our business via television programs, newspapers, books, magazines, blogs, podcasts and sales calls. Someone is always trying to sell us the next big marketing fix.

It seems the marketing profession is dominated not by marketers, but with very loud advertising & pr people, graphic & web designers, copywriters, salespeople, tv & radio presenters, journalists, life & business coaches  and the scariest group, cardigan wearing accountants.

Therefore, it may be a surprised to these people that selling and advertising are only the tip of the marketing iceberg. Although these functions of marketing are important, they are only two of numerous other marketing functions and they are generally not the most important ones.

So, reading Craig Pearce’s post published on Mumbrella arguing that PR should lead marketing, rather than the other way round made me a little miffed. Not with him – but with the state of the marketing industry. An industry that is overshadowed by people who focus on communication, but not the message, people who focus on the sell, but not the customer’s needs.

Public relations is a superior business discipline to marketing and it makes sense for the latter discipline to report to the former within organisations.

The main reason for this is that public relations is dedicated to the entire, holistic relationship between an organisation and its stakeholders. It is sensitive to all the factors that impact on the nature of that relationship.

Marketing, on the other hand, is focused on developing and selling products and services to make a profit for organisations. Its remit is much narrower and is less concerned with the bigger reputational picture.” Said Craig Pearce.

And I thought PR professionals were just out of work journalists or failed media people. Cheap generalised shot I know and I’m sorry to all those good hardworking pr people who do amazing work. But, PR is not a superior business discipline, it’s a marketing tactic.

At best, PR is an effective communication tool for marketers to use to engage people. At worst, as we see with political spin doctors; it manipulates customer perceptions with empty promises eventually destroying a brands trust with the customer.

Marketing is so basic to the success of business that it cannot be considered a separate function. Marketing is the whole business seen from the point of view of customer needs and wants and the financial success of the business. It is the customer that drives marketing, not pr or advertising or sales.

I’ll finish with a joke:

What does the wife of a public relations expert do when she has insomnia? She rolls over and says, “Tell me again, darling, just what is it that you do for a living?”

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