Marketing: Colin Gordon

COLIN GORDON

marketing expert

A l l I w a n t f o r C h r i s t m a s i s … f o r m a r k e t i n g t o g e t d o w n t o b u s i n e s s !

While social media is a useful form of promotion, there are plenty of other channels worthy of marketers’ attention. Marketing needs to move away from image management and the resulting click-count preoccupation, to get to the heart of making sales easier, writes Colin Gordon

A focus on influencers and social media platforms such as Instagram, “is not business and it’s not marketing,” in Colin Gordon’s opinion. Instead, he writes that it’s “image management and a resulting clickcount preoccupation”

Can I open this piece and end the year with a rant? I wrote Marketing is in Trouble a couple of years back. I wrote it because I saw that too many marketers - here and abroad - were losing sight of what their job is and should be. Marketing is not a separate silo in an organisation - and it’s certainly not meant to be.

The fact that it has become so, gave me reason to use the ‘trouble’ word. Marketers are increasingly focused on communications and have become disengaged with the act of selling or even of business. Maybe I should have used a different title; Marketers are in Trouble. Marketing is not the problem.

It hasn’t changed and its role has remained solidly at the centre of business operations. It’s the practitioners who are causing the problem. The research I conducted at the time of writing my book proved this. In fact, the data points to marketers being less concerned about the long-term, or the sales results; the business of business. All marketers’ purpose and all of marketing, is about sales and repeat sales. The factory, the finance department, the HR folk, the

IT staff etc., are only there to help sales. So too marketing, advertising, promotions and so on. It - all of it, the whole of the business - is about making selling easier. Remove all inhibitors to that objective; enhance all enablers. Simplicity in its complexity. I’ve spent some time since - and with various roles I’ve worked on in the last number of years - trying to push this principle. Maybe in a slightly smug way, I thought I might be getting somewhere. Various educational institutes, organisations and overseas colleagues have shown interest and purpose around what needs to be done. But all this ‘whataboutery’ seems to be for nothing when you see a publication from a large, apparently well-regarded enterprise like HubSpot which highlights the five main things marketers are focused on for 2023. This was based on a study of 1600 ‘practitioners’ and is current, i.e., reflects the feelings of the data base at this point in time. The intent of the survey was to find “all the latest benchmarks, insights and resources you need to build a smarter marketing strategy” and to identify “what does marketing look like in 2023?”. HubSpot (to quote from its online materials) is a “CRM platform that connects everything scaling companies need to deliver a best-in-class customer experience into one place. Our crafted, not cobbled solution helps teams grow with tools that are powerful alone, but better together.” Or elsewhere, “at HubSpot, we offer a full suite of inbound products to help businesses put customers at the center of their growth”. That all sounds just great - strategy, growth, customers at the centre, and all that. But the results highlight once again the preoccupation among marketing people for online communication.

“All marketers’ purpose and all of marketing, is about sales and repeat sales. The factory, the finance department, the HR folk, the IT staff etc., are only there to help sales. So too marketing, advertising, promotions and so on. It - all of it, the whole of the business - is about making selling easier. Remove all inhibitors to that objective; enhance all enablers. Simplicity in its complexity.”

The survey results (for such areas as the top five trends, benchmarks, channel focus, new marketing investments) point to a very strong focus on influencers, YouTube, Instagram, content marketing, short-form video virtual events and so on and on. In my experience and opinion, this is not business and it’s not marketing. It’s image management and (resulting) click-count preoccupation. Marketers around the world seem even less connected to sales and selling, and to long-term profits. The survey report is 52 pages long and has considerable coverage on the likes of LinkedIn and so on. Besides the results being disappointing (in my opinion) of themselves, those same results can be used by readers (marketers et al) as reinforcement of their current, often misguided practices, and so the circle of doom continues with marketing becoming more and more insular and disconnected. Online does work; advertising is a useful tool and so-called social media has a role. But they all are part of the whole. Online is only one possible channel of sales. What about other channels? Advertising is not always appropriate or relevant. Social media is only a form of promotion; there are plenty of other forms. Rather than just tilt at the windmill that faces us, what can we do? Well! Imagine the whole of marketing is a triangle - or an iceberg sitting in water. The top part of say 10% is above the water line, the rest is hidden to view but very much part of the whole. Now imagine the top part is all the visible stuff of marketing - advertising, social media, image development, promotional work, packaging, etc. The bottom 90% is made up of all the parts of marketing that contibute to making the whole work - making all parts of the selling of the product or service as easy as possible. The ‘on time, in full’ piece, the palletisation of the packs, number of units per case, returns policy, the way the call centre works, truck livery, correct invoicing, ease of pack opening, and standout on shelf. All the touchpoints count. Managers of other functions have the dayto-day operational responsibility of completing activities effectively, but marketing is the only part of the business which gets to represent the customer/ consumer in all these activities and processes. Who else would be able to capture the whole lot? Marketing needs to stop being so focused and preoccupied with clickcounting and get back to business! Rant over (for the moment!). ■

‘Marketing is in trouble: How we got here and

10 steps to get us out’ by Colin Gordon is now available to purchase, published by Orpen Press. To get your hands on a copy, visit the following:

www.orpenpress.com UK: www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08M9XY6HF US: www.amazon.com/dp/B08M9XY6HF

Ireland: Marketing is in trouble eBook by Colin Gordon - 9781786051127. Rakuten Kobo Ireland - www.kobo.com/ie/en/ ebook/marketing-is-in-trouble.

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