Today, Tom Asacker digs deep in his sandbox for fundamental truths.
What’s your understanding of marketing? How do you define it? Here’s the latest definition from the American Marketing Association:
“Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.”
Thankfully, Asakcer offers us simpler definition: “Marketing is any attempt to influence a current, and/or future, exchange.” He then goes on to explain what to do with this finely honed definition.
If your goal is to be successful at influencing others in the marketplace for products, services, entertainment, ideas, etc., know this and it will be a very good time indeed: It doesn’t matter what people think about you or your organization. What matters is how you make them feel about themselves – and their decisions – in your presence.
It’s utterly simple and elegant on the page. In real life clients and agency types have a hard time focusing on the needs of the customer, or end user. It’s not only counterintuitive, it often conflicts with clients’ wishes and the marketing plan on the table.
