Have you noticed that everyone seems to know marketing? The world is full of marketing gurus. We all talk about it with remarkable ease and confidence, even though most of the time we are not marketing professionals and are not even close to it. What are the most common mistakes in understanding marketing practices and theories?
1. Defining marketing
There is a general tendency to use the concept of marketing in a confusing mix of public relations, advertising, or media planning. No matter how far marketing has evolved and grown, many of us still do not understand what marketing really is and only see its extreme manifestations. Many believe that marketing is a useless and fanciful field that gobbles up budgets and gives little in return. Others see marketing as an artistic field, where all you need is creativity to develop memorable advertising.
2. Marketing is still confused with communication.
This common mistake is, once again, the result of a sufficient understanding of marketing. It is often thought that marketing professionals are responsible for the creation of advertisements, logos, advertising slogans. What people usually see is just the tip of the iceberg, forgetting that there is a product, a price and a distribution strategy to be developed before even thinking about advertising.
3. Under or overestimate the role of the marketer
On the one hand, the marketer is often seen as an indispensable part of a company, but has an undefined role and ends up taking care of a little bit of everything (marketing, advertising, public relations, customer service, account management, etc.).
4. Segmentation
Despite the abundance of resources and consulting services to study the consumer base, segmentation is still done intuitively, at least at the small business level. Larger companies may have entire departments working on segmentation research and strategy, but they are not yet completely immune to failure.
5. Marketing for fun
It is an attitude that I have encountered on too many occasions not to mention. People (and again, small business owners are the usual culprits) do marketing because everyone does it and they've heard they have to and it's fashionable.
The above list is certainly not exhaustive, and it only highlights several attitudes that lead nowhere on the marketing battlefield.
Marketing is certainly not art, even if it requires a certain flair and creativity. Marketing is not a science either, but it does work with precise instruments. Marketing is not for everyone and should not be practiced independently of the company's situation.