Marketing is Too Important to be Left to the Marketing Department

Discover the truth about Marketing behind the phrase pronounced by the co founder of one of the biggest companies in the world, the HP, that could save your company from the creatives of Marketing.

Would you like to get wind of something? Well, maybe you are in the wrong place. Yes, because today I’m talking about a fairly trite concept – even if perhaps underestimated. Today I analyse well – without getting bored even for a minute – a phrase that is a real must in the world of marketing.

If you know at least a little about the topic, I don’t rule out that you have already heard and read it several times.

About the Importance of Marketing

The author in question, as I anticipated, is David Packard, and the phrase is Marketing is too important to be left to the Marketing Department. Question number one – don’t worry, it’s not an interrogation: do you agree? Do you also believe that Marketing is such an important topic that it cannot be caged in the marketing department like a captive animal?

Question number two: how many times have you stopped to reflect on the power of this simple message? Well, you will have found this phrase stuck even on the walls of the bathrooms of marketing agencies, perhaps for this reason you thought it was not necessary to think about it too much. Perhaps you believed that this sentence deserved a quick read and a space in your brain just the seconds that allowed you to walk down the hall from the bathroom to your office. Well, a decidedly alternative way to have your head in the clouds, to free your mind for a few seconds and repeat those few precise words.

Now I give you a revelation: every dog has his day, so today I decided to give this sentence a chance and I ask you to do it too. Ready? Then follow my reasoning carefully.

David Packard had said this to stop the creatives in his marketing department from being the last defender in a football game. Why? Because these people had completely lost sight of the marketing goal of his company, which should be the goal of any company’s marketing: to sell. The purpose of his business was to sell computers and then convert potential customers (prospects) into real clients and then to invoice. I want to make it clear: in business, time is money and you have to run like the wind in order not to miss the chance to put the ball in your court.
This happens all the time today and it’s plain for all, yours too, without you fully realizing it. There are clouds on the horizon.

I’d like to tell you: we see eye to eye. But I don’t know if that’s the case and I’m here on purpose to open your eyes, to show you things you would not see, for the simple fact that they want you to believe that there is nothing wrong with certain choices made at your company’s expense. You pay dearly, they earn, and what do you get in return? I’ll tell you: nothing.

Focus on Marketing’s Goals

Losing sight of the focus of marketing is like scoring an own goal, it’s like shattering a life’s work in a second without even having the time to realise what you’re doing.

Do you know what the real problem is with all this? The problem is that the professionals who are supposed to make sure this doesn’t happen, who are supposed to prepare your company for the decisive game at the best, turn their backs on you. This is what the web agencies continue to do today, boasting specializations that they do not have to be able to help you, who entrust the fate of your company to chance.

This is what social networks offer us, which want you to believe that with impressions and likes you go far, but that they are not synonymous with new customers and therefore save money in the pockets of your company.

You Don’t Have to Hit your Face to Learn More About Marketing

Have you already hit your face? You know it’s bad for you and also for your business. We have all learned something like riding a bicycle. You get on it for the first time thinking of the bicycle as a new, beautiful, electrifying experience. Then you realise that not falling, when you have never cycled and you don’t know how to do it, is not so simple.

You end up peeling your knees one, two, three, ten times until you either learn to ride or decide you’ll never get on a bike again.

In business, you can’t afford to leave your bike in the garage and you can’t afford to bang your nose on the ground all the time: you’ll end up getting hurt. You will end up having to close the company. There is a saying as old as the world that says: did you want a bicycle? Now ride!

Ride, I add with the awareness that there is a way not to fall and you have to do everything to stand up. To do this you need to have a good bike and you need to find a solution to the problems you may encounter along the way. You don’t have to find someone who, instead of relieving you from problems, creates problems for you.

In addition to the incompetence of those who make you believe you are an experienced and skilled professional, there is often the entrepreneurial incompetence of those who do not know how marketing works.

It is precisely the entrepreneur, who should lead his company, who risks making it skid like a car that loses grip when cornering if the asphalt is not completely dry. Are you this businessman?
Yes, the businessman is fascinated and duped by vanity metrics. Looks like you’ve been barking up the wrong tree. So many good numbers, zero facts.

So it ends as all those who fail to know which way the wind is blowing end. Beautiful graphics, great promises, you have the future in your hands: and so you end up throwing thousands of euros of business as you throw firewood into the fireplace. What’s left of it? Only ash.

Why do you spend money but get no results?

A lot of money invested, which turns out to be wasted because no conversion comes out of it. A huge investment is done wrong, which does not bring new customers to the company. We are at the starting point, indeed, even further back: if now your competitors start from the blocks, you stand still and look at them, helpless, to serve your penalty and blame yourself for how superficial you have been in the choices you have made.

On the practical side, what does it mean to invest money by making a literal hole in the water? I’ll explain it right now.

How many times have you heard of advertising? Communication agencies eat bread and ADV for breakfast, don’t you know?

The ADV factor often and unfortunately arises from the desire to shoot in the pile, to select an approximate target to aim for. The result is an advertisement driven by the desire to excite, to impress, to strike; but what remains of an ADV if it is unable to convert users into customers and therefore to sell your products or services?

Of course, don’t get me wrong: the emotional part is essential for a message to hit your target. But if the Call To Action is missing, then the ADV will not do its duty, remaining a half communication. A beautiful, exciting, funny, catalyst message, but that will not lead to any conversion.

And this is precisely the crux of the matter, this is where the difference between MiM and those who make so many promises without keeping half of them comes into play.

The gap is between those who know all the marketing tools and can use them and those who don’t, like a locksmith who knows his job well and a boy who tries to learn it.

But here those who try to learn do it on your skin and on that of your company. Some can offer a solid marketing strategy thanks to all the tools necessary to do it (website, social network, and even the ADV), tools that arise from a method and that are not based on creativity, but that shape the same creativity to obtain an effective and performing product.

Some can implement concrete actions, with numbers in hand. Nothing less.