The new world of marketing

"All marketers are liars" is not nearly as inaccurate as numbers don’t lie- numbers look you straight in the eyes and lie. But this is not what this blog is about- it is about marketing as I understand it and succinctly phrased by Dr. Kotler " the science and art of exploring, creating and delivering value". Having spent almost a decade doing just this, let me address the science of marketing.

As a marketer, you have to simply pick a complex environment and scientifically break it down into a simple actionable system. Contrary to  much of what I have heard in the business world, the new millennium has not changed marketing, its just the mechanics.

Value

 Value needs a pain or a problem or a cost, there can be no value without some pain that hurts someone. That someone is now a target and the job of the marketer begins. Let us break down the complex experience of the target that a marketer has to:

1. Have the pain or problem.
2. Acknowledge the pain
3. Be able to quantify the pain
4. Know there is a solution to the pain
5. Be able to compare the various alternatives
6. Choose the right solution
7.  Try, Buy Use the solution
8. Confirm the pain in #3 is reduced or eliminated
9. Talk about how the solution changed his/her life

These are a long list of steps but broken down individually, each step can take anywhere from nano seconds to months but the process remains the same.  There are various frameworks that reduce the number of steps- but you do so at the risk of neglecting or rushing through the process. Both of these scenarios hurt your chances of success.

Providing value

This formula has not changed- works for clothes, raincoats, uniforms, software, apps, learning, services, solutions, storage, servers and even powerpoint decks that looks very pretty; everything i have personally marketed throughout my life. The key is to keep it simple and you have a customer and the customers daughter-in-law as a customer for life.

Next.

 These set of blogs are my attempt to elaborate on my personal learnings from the software industry both at large corporations and startups.