Marketing

Muscular Marketing

What is marketing? Why is it important? What is it used for? These are a few questions I found myself asking when diving into my research on this job role. Last week I conducted my research on the importance of customer success in a business. I referred to it as the skeleton holding the body of business together, like a foundation that keeps the other moving parts held together. To stick with that analogy, Ilike to think of marketing as the muscular system. Now I know it’s a strange analogy, but bare with me here. When I think of a well functioning company, there’s hundreds of things that keep it running smoothly, but there's one driving force behind everything, and thats marketing. Now, take a second to think about the human body, the driving force that keeps you on your feet and moving around all day is your muscular system. A system that closely resembles the role of marketing in modern business. With everything being held together by a delicate system of interworking jobs, marketing is that force that gets those pieces moving. 

So what is marketing? Oxford dictionary defines the term as “The action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.” In other words, it’s coming up with creative and unique strategies to build your brand and promote your company. Marketing is based largely on psychological concepts. Because so much of it revolves around getting a message out and making sure it sticks with people, it’s a job that requires a lot of research and a good understanding of the human psyche. Marketing is one of the most powerful things in the business world. You may not realize it, but every commercial that you see on TV, every billboard you come across on your daily commute, every advertisement you hear on the radio, they were all carefully designed by a team of marketing experts. Most likely, hours of research and planning went into that simple McDonalds commercial you saw while watching “The Real Housewives”. Everything from the colors shown throughout the ad, to the annoying background music you can't get out of your head. Each second was meticulously designed to get you thinking about their product and subconsciously wondering how it could improve your life. 

So now we know what marketing is, but the big question is; Why is marketing important? As I said earlier, marketing is the driving force that gets things moving towards that profit goal. Marketing is the most effective way to build a name for your company. With a good marketing campaign, you are able to spread your name throughout millions of people on hundreds of platforms. Effectively building your brand and educating the masses on what your company sells/does. However, without any marketing at all. Your company will be almost unheard of, you’ll never reach that status of being a recognizable brand. Without that recognizability, you’ll reach less possible customers. Without reaching those customers, you won’t see a significant growth in your client base. Without growth in your client base, you’ll hit a plateau in your profits, and before long, you’ll go bankrupt. While that is an extreme example, it helps to show the importance of marketing to the health and success of a business. While conducting my research into this job role, I did an interview with a marketing guru named Michael McMahon. In a phone call preparing to begin the interview, I told him I was looking for examples of the importance of his job. To which he simply replied, “Well that’s an easy one, if you want your company to make money, you need marketing.”

This is why I like to think of marketing as the muscular system in the business world. Without it, you’ll find that your company will sit stagnant, without any movement or growth. Leading to the eventual fall of your small business empire. Marketing always has been, and always will be, one of the most important aspects of commerce. Because without it the economic ecosystem couldn’t function properly.

Braden Schmidt 10/19/2019