The twilight of marketing communications

Marketers. I count myself among them -- it's one of my roles in the company. A significant portion of the population thinks of us as hot water vendors. And we can blame ourselves for this because we are not marketing enough.

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Marketing is the act of connecting customers to products.

-- Jeremiah Owyang

Most of the companies with which We meet, today he has an internal person who is in charge of performance marketing, content marketing, photographs other employees for instance, revises the right color on the pen according to the uniform visual style manual or orders the printing of leaflets. It also has a website underneath it. This is not marketing, but marketing communication.

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Marketing is not communication

According to Mark Ritson, marketing communications make up about 15% of a marketer's work. My opinion is that the marketer first of all sets it up and periodically revises its relevance, since the very implementation of marketing communication is a commodity.

For marketing communication, the company does not need a specialist. Part of the work will be handled by a more experienced secretary, the rest by an external agency. Having PPCs or flyers in-house only makes sense for a small number of companies. And with the incoming automation, it will be even less so.

Smarter marketers should start wondering what makes up the remaining 85% of marketing and whether they can be outsourced as well. The good news is that marketing cannot be outsourced. The bad news is that if you have only dealt with marketing communications so far, then you have little competence in marketing.

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A marketer is a strategic role that has two tasks

1. They understand customers very well
2. Incorporates a customer's perspective into a brand, product or service

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The marketer positions the company in the market against the competition, helps the company reach the right customers and causes the company to really help them through fine-tuned products and services.

The marketer systematically and for a long time brings the customer's perspective into decision-making. How many marketers do you know? I don't much... and this despite the fact that understanding customers is absolutely key for companies and by definition cannot be outsourced. Companies need marketers, but I don't meet the real ones very often. Perhaps that is why customer advocates in firms become designers, which breeds further complications.

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A marketer cannot be replaced by a designer

Companies sometimes hire designers or consultants instead of marketers, who then literally hire them force them to understand customers. The company sometimes succumbs, does user research on a specific project and stores it in a drawer, so there is no one to use the outputs further.

In addition, the designer cannot replace the marketer because he does not have insight into the broader context of the business, cannot effectively influence the company's strategy in the long term, and does not even have the necessary know-how to do so. On the other hand, it has a lot of tools that marketers should use — from workshop facilitation to user research methods themselves.

I am also a designer, consultant and marketer, and in the first two roles I perceive a huge helplessness — you want to help the company, but you do not have the right levers and your work will be lost without a partner on a strategic level.

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Not having a marketer is terribly expensive

Why does a business need a marketer who understands customers and has the power to apply their perspective to the rest of the company? First of all, it is about money!

1. Developing products that no one wants is expensive
2. Selling something people don't need is expensive
3. Being indistinguishable from the competition is expensive
4. Having the wrong pricing is expensive
5. Being invisible to customers is expensive, too.

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The first rule of marketing is that you are not the customer.

-- Mark Ritson

Companies need real marketers because marketing means money. Marketers need expertise, not opinion. Expertise on former, current and future customers of the company. And about people who didn't become customers, though they could. So they have to wield the tools through which they understand the people out there... otherwise they will be replaced.

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Now what about it?

My view is simple. We need to start talking more about real marketing and not about marketing communication, which is not happening much in the Czech Republic yet (credit for me is certainly Jindra Fáborský with Marketing Festival or Karel Novotný with his trainings). I'm trying to contribute through Newton College and the Digital Marketing major.

Then I'm still training. The fundamental difference between a real marketer and a pen holder is the knowledge of the principles of user research and the ability to apply them. And it is for people who want to move forward in this very underappreciated discipline that I have prepared trainings Strategic Research.