Marketing Matters

From Techdirt:

There seems to be something of a knee-jerk dislike for “marketing,” as if it’s something to be shunned and has little to do with anything useful in the marketplace. While it’s true that there’s plenty of bad marketing out there, good marketing actually serves a really important function — helping companies determine what the market actually demands, and then delivering products to fill that need (note that, contrary to popular opinion, marketing shouldn’t be about convincing people to buy what they don’t need).

Related, as someone in the comments pointed out: “Marketing is NOT advertising”.

While it’s true that it all starts with a good product – no marketer enjoys trying to put lipstick on a pig after all – what often makes or breaks a company is good, quality marketing. “Marketing” is everything from product management (determining what the market wants/needs and translating that into product requirements) to PR (getting the right story told) to picking the right business model (partnerships, bundles, pricing, etc.) to awareness and demand generation (one example of which is advertising).

Good marketing isn’t just spamming out ads, it’s about the proper mixture of all of the above. In the Techdirt article there is a reference to Microsoft’s success in the ’80s and ’90s – was their technology the best? Debatable. Did they have outstanding marketing, using the broad definition above? Absolutely. They cut the right business deals, picked the right distribution channels, bundled the right things (sell a word processor AND spreadsheet for one price? no WAY!), and complimented it with some smart awareness and demand generation. In short, the executed their marketing plan in all the right ways, based on a core of good-enough technology.

Even think of Apple, at least the modern Jobsian post-NeXT incarnation. Good technology in OSX, the iPod/iTunes combo, etc? Absolutely. Even smarter marketing? Damn right. Good positioning, right branding, fantastic management of the stories and the hype, smart business development and models (though contrary to the conventional wisdom at the time, and contrary to what made Microsoft such a success), spot on packaging and pricing, and so on. The technology was good, but not radically better IMO than other OS’s or MP3 players. It was how they took that technology to market – marketing – that really made the company the icon it is today.

Writing this in part as it chafes when I hear “so what’s the marketing plan” and I know people are thinking “where are we going to put some ads” as well as the general write-off of good marketing as noted in Techdirt’s post today.

Did I mention I work in marketing? (disclaimer for my massive bias :))