#1 What I Have Learned: The Point of Marketing
I am a data-driven marketer. That means I do data mining/data analytics and share the insights with leadership and marketers about 1) What has worked (or sucked), 2) Does this matter, 3) How to better spend marketing $$$.
Though I didn’t plan to get into marketing when I was younger, I really like what I do. And now, I feel like I start to know a little bit about marketing.
I am by no means an expert, but in this blog I want to share the five stages that my perception of marketing have gone through.
Stage 1: The Magical
In 2009, while I was exchange in University Maastricht in Netherlands, I came across the book Marketing Management by Philip Kotler. It is such a fascinating book that I would stay in the library until closing just to continue reading it. I wrote pages of notes and almost copied a good portion of the book.
Marketing, in Mr. Kotler’s words, are those creative ideas, exciting movements, and magical powers that are the engine of businesses — that can make people love things.
Stage 2: The Melt-down
Then there is real life.
After college, I became a management consultant. In consulting firm, marketing is a supporting function. I observed that what the marketing team does, are publishing articles in magazines, and organizing networking events for clients, maybe something else that I didn’t know.
This is only my version of real life. If I had joined a consumer goods company, an advertising agency, or a luxury car company, my perception about marketing would have been quite different.
The magic of marketing melted in me.
Stage 3: The Measurable
In 2015, I came to MBA at Booth School of Business in the University of Chicago, where I took data-driven marketing, consumer behavior, and some other marketing classes. The data-driven approach in marketing is fascinating.
Being able to decide the pricing, packaging, and bottle size of a lemon juice based on the purchasing data of all the competing brands makes me feel that marketing can make actual, measurable business impact.
Stage 4: The Misgivings
After graduating from Booth, I joined a big tech company and become a data-driven marketer. What that means is that I analyze data, and share with marketing program owners and leaders, “What has worked”: What programs have worked in attracting customers; What has worked in influencing product purchasing and consumption, etc.
As CMO.com has mentioned in 5 Marketing Trends to Pay Attention to in 2019, data is now one of the biggest themes of marketing. The most common tools are SQL (obtain and structure data), Python (do correlation analysis, build prediction model, etc.), and R (data visualization, etc.). I have used Azure Machine Learning Studio — a very good tool if you are not interested in writing code. If you are interested in data-driven marketing, I will be happy to write more about that.
However (there are so many howevers in life), working directly in data-driven marketing also got me think more critically, sometimes negatively. There have been times that no matter which angle I look into, all the data suggests that marketing doesn’t make a difference to whether a B2B customer will buy. Or the correlation is very low.
These stats and charts are kinda depressing to read, especially when all other marketers around me are positive, confident, and enthusiastic about our products and marketing programs. (P.s. those are the qualities that great marketers gotta have.)
When I am in these analysis, I often question, “Do I do it (the data analysis) right?”“Does what we do matter at all?” “Does marketing really matter at all?”
It feels like: When you were thirteen, there was this misgiving, that you feel that you don’t believe in God, and everybody around you is super religious.
Stage 5: The Mix, the Making sense of Marketing
Until I talked to a senior marketing leader of Cloud products, G, my perception of marketing got re-adjusted. G goes, “What do you think is the difference between Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus? If you just walk inside, can you really differentiate these two malls?”
“They sell very comparable products, offer comparable experiences, and provide comparable services.”
“So what makes you decide which one to go?”
I said, “The perception of the brand.” I perceive that Nordstrom offer better customer service, and they may offer more choices of affordable products than Neiman Marcus. Whether these perceptions are true, I don’t know!
G, “See? That’s the point of marketing. Data is a great tool. It is just a tool. Don’t be obsessed with the tool and miss why it’s used.
What marketing does in this era of cloud, is to create positive perception in customers’ mind. So that when they need to make a decision where to shop, they will think, ‘Sure. Nordstrom sounds good. I heard good things about them.’ ”
After all of these years of constantly questioning “what’s the point”, my perception of have evolved. I learned a lot on this journey, and look forward to more stages!
So far, here is how Marketing starts to coming together for me:
It is not all Magical.
It is not all Measurable.
It is a Myth sometimes.
It is a Mix of all of the above.
What we can do is this: to measure what we can and leave space for the unmeasurable.
The magical.
Other blogs in the 52-week-of-writing project:
Why do I do this: New Year’s Resolution and How that’s made
What I Have Learned: The Danger of Being Goal-Oriented
What I Have Learned: From Buying a House with Him