I’d like to disagree with the common notion that marketing as a practice is somewhat dislodged from the business applications and enterprise2.0  challenges that companies and the people that work in them face as they jockey for relevancy and influence. Frankly I get a bit concerned when I don’t see enough mention of marketing as what it truly is:

…a problem solving practice of a creative nature.

I’m not a traditional marketer but marketing its a big part of my business. Here is what I’ve noticed,  not because I’m “savvy”  but because it’s kind of obvious:

fact 1: Companies need to sell their products and services or they go out of business. What could be more impending?

fact 2: If you don’t market properly you wont cover costs of being in business.

fact 3: Established Companies need to innovate in order to stay competitive and on the edge, accessible to early adopters first, then mainstream. For that they need to attract the right talent pool and foster creativity.

fact 4: Innovation without value amplification is worthless. How many smaller creative start ups and their star players get swallowed by bigger cats? Google is very active in this practice.

If you think about it, all these issues overlap each other in a way that can not be ignored when thinking strategy, especially nowadays.

So what role does marketing play relative to these challenges?

A start up and a well establish company have very congruent and similar challenges, some range on the technical, some range on scalability, logistics, branding, communication… I can go on down a long and very specific list.

The differences are however a matter of degree and scope not category.

Company founders, innovators and enterprise visionaries understand one thing, where their product fits the need. Their challenge lies in letting potential clients know that!    How do they create awareness about what they’ve just created?  The right marketer can help.

Sometimes consumers don’t even realize that they need a particular product or service until its presented, yes that is true!  On the other hand sometimes the crowd voices its need or whim and its our responsibility to listen and to do so well. So, that’s the [ WHAT] do we offer.

Shortly after and as I briefly mentioned, the [ HOW ] do we offer quickly becomes a central point. But in reality and prior to both the WHAT and the HOW, a good marketer will always address the  [ WHY ]  first. We must address our reason for being in the first place, and ask ourselves:  Why should anyone care about our services or products?  The right marketer can help you strategize a plan around your reason for being.

Marketing at its core requires a more creative process than it does technical, it demands intuition and improvisation, which means you must be prepared to fail fast or you just won’t come up with anything unique, ever!

When working on your next campaign, look at it from this perspective, let loose and take down the mental barriers of previous experiences and see what happens!  Approach the challenge as a problem to solve using the tools you have at your disposal and engage your imagination as the main engine fueling this effort.

Create a new idea or model for a specific campaign instead of using old recipes. Don’t just think outside the box, come up with your own box and then think outside of it! …a phrase I recently read in Jonathan Fields best seller, The Career Renegade

How does this sound to you, could it work in your case?