Competition and What Does Marketing Do?

Seth Godin has a daily blog that raises interesting questions. Here are two of my favorites.

Do you want competition? I smile when a marketing person tells me they have no competition.

No competition

There's no competition for cookbooks on making food out of soccer balls and hockey pucks.

There's no competition for software that charges you to find out the temperature on Mars.

There's no competition for a service that counts how many pairs of shoes you own.

In fact, in every market that's worth entering, there's competition. That's what you're looking for. It's a sign that people have a problem that they're trying to solve through commerce.

The goal isn't to find no competition. It's to find a better way to solve the problem.

Does the marketing department do more than develop websites and select places to advertise?

The chief hype officer

The chief marketing officer at a big company has an impossible job. The typical duration of a CMO is 18 months because once the CEO realizes that hype for money can't solve their problems, they get restless.

The problem lies in what people think "marketing" is.

Marketing isn't paying for ads, changing the logo or building a social media presence.

Marketing is product design, customer service, pricing, customer delight and creating and living a remarkable story. Marketing is creating the conditions for the network effect.

And yet, the typical CMO isn't in charge of ANY of those things.

No wonder it's frustrating. You thought you were getting a marketer, but all you did was hire someone to make a commotion on social media.

The words matter. If you are hiring someone to be in charge of promotion, say so. But if you want someone to be in charge of marketing, have them be in charge of all of it. If it touches the market, it's marketing.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Prosperous and Happy New Year.

Contact me if you have any questions or suggestions.

Colin

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Colin Gilboy
Publisher - 4specs
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