We think about marketing reasonably often in business, not often enough, but reasonably often.
However, our thinking is usually muddled, and wrong.
Let me explain.
We think about marketing as if it was a discreet set of actions that can change the fortunes of a business.
The ‘marketing function’ sits alongside sales, production, finance, IT, and the other functional units in a business, that collectively build the success of the business.
Problem is we all see the whole as the sum of its parts, not as an interdependent and related system that is more than the sum of its parts.
Take an engine out of a car, and leave it on the ground. No matter how good the engine, it cannot move itself. It is utterly dependent on the interaction of the other parts of the car to be mobile.
Take the best bits of a range of cars, the BMW engine, Mercedes gearbox, Lotus suspension, Ferrari body shape, the best of the best, and put them together. Logically with all the best bits you will get a superior end result.
Rubbish.
The bits do not fit together in any coherent manner. Individually they may be the best of the best, but together they are little more than a box of parts.
The whole system is what counts, designing the system from the outside in, not from the inside out.
For some years now I have been referring to the marketing and sales functions together as one function: ‘Revenue Generation’.
While this is better than the artificial separation into sales and marketing, it is still way short of a system necessary to generate a profit, as that requires the processes that develop, produce and deliver the product to be a part of the system.
We all solve problems from within our own disciplines, that is the way we are trained. We are trained to see a situation from within the confines of the discipline, not from the outside from where we can touch, feel, and see the context.
Outsiders are always better able to see the size and shape of a building than those sitting inside it. Exactly the same as having a knowledgeable and constructively critical thought leader who sits outside your business, looking at the competitive, regulatory and strategic context in which the business competes for a living.
This was supposed to be the function of a board, outside experts reflecting on the sum of the parts rather than the individual parts, developing strategy to build success for the long term, and seeking optimisation of the assets deployed. Often we seem to fail at that as well, as the outsiders get caught up in the complication and protection of the status quo, and their own position in it, forgetting why they are there in the first place. You only have to observe a little bit of the current Financial Services Royal Commission to see plenty of evidence of that.
