The biggest universities do it. The practitioners – even modern-day marketers – get paid to teach it.
But why?
What can we possibly achieve by teaching conventional marketing? Choosing permission versus invasive, electronic versus direct mail; for sure, these have a place in developing a sound commercial strategies.
But these are conventions, norms. The market is expectant upon the sound-minded making decisions like this as part of the bread and butter of dealing with products and services.
Degrees and diplomas in marketing are pieces of paper that hold little kudos in determining for an employer whether one individual has the smarts to succeed in creating business growth over another.
Instinct, integrity, infusion: these three Is replace the five Ps.
Instinct for the market; instinct for what your audience wants. Tallied with empirical evidence (feedback from customer interactions aka CRM intelligence and competitor analysis), instinct is the most powerful asset in your marketing arsenal.
Integrity in everything you do. Trust creation through honesty and openness. Transparency of product development – even considering customer-gathering to inspire, create, develop and enhance your suite of offerings. Integrity means everyone, everywhere, knows what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and why you, rather than your opposite number, deserves their custom, loyalty and friendship.
Infusion of marketing in every area of business. Marketing is business – it’s not a silo behaviour. Marketing is as important as the bucks in the bank. Marketing is you, your customer, your boss and your whole marketplace, combined. Every action you take is untold marketing. From going to work in the morning with a head full of dreams and new and exciting ways to invigorate your customer and their wallet, to every goddamn meeting, it’s all an intricate weave of marketing techniques, principles, strategies and avatars. You simply have to stop thinking of marketing as a side dish to the main course of doing business. Marketing is business…
There was a hint back there – in the integrity pile. Take a look. The word is friendship. Because friendship, at a deep level, is what defines today’s customer-supplier relationship.
The minute universities and other course suppliers evolve and start understanding the value of friendship over conventional marketing is the day we can truly have faith and measure the effectiveness of business developers and entrepreneur creators the world over.
