Business Builders Podcast

The Problem With Marketing

March 18, 2023 Brenton Gowland & Ron Tomlian Season 3 Episode 39
Business Builders Podcast
The Problem With Marketing
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Every one of our businesses is engaging in marketing on some level. Companies that perform well have well-managed marketing capabilities, and those that don't can suffer performance issues. So why do so many businesses view marketing as unimportant?

Today, we're launching a new series to address this question and attempt to resolve the problem with marketing. Our hosts, Brenton Gowland and Ron Tomlian are exploring the primary reasons they believe businesses don't prioritise marketing.

The topics covered in this episode are: 

  • The Problem With Marketing
  • The Definition of Marketing
  • How Marketing Creates Value in a Business
  • Even If Your Business Does Not Have A Marketing Function, You Are Still Marketing
  • Where Does Marketing Fit?
  • What Can Marketing Achieve?


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Brenton Gowland:

Today on The Business Builders podcast, we're launching a new series about overcoming the problems with marketing. Every business is in the business of marketing. However, some businesses don't manage their marketing so the performance of their business suffers. So today we're starting by exploring the core reason that businesses don't prioritise marketing. Well, welcome to the Business Builders podcast. We are your hosts. I am Brenton Gowland

Ron Tomlian:

And I'm Ron Tomlian.

Brenton Gowland:

And Ron it's fringe season in Adelaide.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, fringe WOMAD.

Brenton Gowland:

WOMAD this weekend.

Ron Tomlian:

Adelaide Festival writers week. Fabulous time of the year.

Brenton Gowland:

So if you're listening again, internationally, and we've got a number of international listeners, so it's great to have you join us. If you don't know what the Adelaide fringe is. It's I believe, Ron, it's the second biggest arts festival in the world when it comes to performing arts.

Ron Tomlian:

Yes, absolutely.

Brenton Gowland:

Other than Edinburgh in the UK.

Ron Tomlian:

There's one in Marsay as well, but I think we're bigger.

Brenton Gowland:

Oh, I didn't know about that.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, I think it's Marsay,

Brenton Gowland:

But it's a time that Adelaide comes alive. And basically the whole city becomes an arts venue.

Ron Tomlian:

It's fantastic.

Brenton Gowland:

And have you been to many shows Ron?

Ron Tomlian:

I've been to a couple, you know, a bit of light fluff and comedy. Going to a few more coming up. My wife is going to WOMAD this weekend for the entire weekend.

Brenton Gowland:

Just your wife not you?

Ron Tomlian:

No, not me. It's her scene.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay.

Ron Tomlian:

I don't intrude. I just I just act as an Uber driver.

Brenton Gowland:

Very good you fulfilling your duties, then I see?

Ron Tomlian:

Absolutely.

Brenton Gowland:

So I've been to a couple of things. The interesting thing about the Fringe is you can go to an event, or a comedy show, as we said earlier, or some sort of thing. And it's it's hit and miss sometimes.

Ron Tomlian:

Of course.

Brenton Gowland:

You know that some of the shows are really good. But we went to this variety show last night with one of my clients. And there were two really great there was a lineup of five comedians two were really funny. And three of them took a little bit of time to warm up to them. Not quite my cup of tea. But that's the whole point of variety show, I reckon.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, absolutely. It's getting a little bit of entertainment, with a whole bunch of different people putting a little bit into the entertainment.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, yeah. But anyway, we digress. So we just finished our series on effective networking. And now we're going to get into marketing. But I think we can share this, Ron that we've really struggled to put an agenda together to look at marketing.

Ron Tomlian:

It's and in discussing what how we're going to structure our podcasts on marketing, we suddenly realised that the problem is, there is a big problem with marketing.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

And that their biggest problem was marketing is getting a common understanding of what marketing is all about.

Brenton Gowland:

So we're talking to people who run businesses, we're talking to people on the exec, we're talking to business leaders about marketing, because as Ron said, there is a problem with marketing. And it's a perception issue, because there are so many different understandings of marketing in different businesses and from different people. So we've got a series on business strategy, Demystifying Strategic Planning, right, that it was easy to put an agenda together, because there's a process that you follow. And it's a clear process that Ron and I have probably for what, two weeks now, been bandying around just how we could do this and realised that there is no one size fits all with marketing.

Ron Tomlian:

I think the same is probably true for strategic planning the problem, the difficulty is that with strategic planning, as you say, there's a process. And while there are variations of that process, they all lead to the same type of thing. Yeah, with marketing, when you when you start to tackle the word marketing, and the concept of marketing. It means completely different things to different people. You're not talking about apples and apples, you're talking about apples and oranges. And I used to lecture in marketing with the MBA programme here at UNI SA. And we would start off with what what is marketing all about? And I'd get the people in the class, most of whom weren't marketers to give their definition of marketing and words that came up with advertising, promotions, selling branding, and I'd get them in the groups and talking about, Come on. They're all activities associated with marketing. Number one is marketing really all about? And this is what came up. Marketing is about getting people to buy stuff, they don't really need to work at it. So there's a huge cynicism associated with marketing because there's a belief that marketers cleverly manipulate people into buying stuff they don't need or want. I gotta tell you, it's not that easy.

Brenton Gowland:

So that's one of the problems is a perception of what marketing actually is. We'll get on to the definition in a minute. But then there's other problems like what's the first thing people cut from their business when things get tough?

Ron Tomlian:

Um Yeah, marketing.

Brenton Gowland:

Why?

Ron Tomlian:

Because They think it's a discretionary activity that they don't really need to do unless things are going well.

Brenton Gowland:

So that says there's no real value in marketing, because it's this nebulous thing, right?

Ron Tomlian:

Oh, look, one of the things that would often almost invariably come up is marketing is all is a waste of time and money. That's one definition of marketing. I know what marketing is, it's a waste of time and money more. And this is what I like to promote. But marketing is about business lunches. Yeah. You know. So marketing is about selling. Marketing is about networking, and therefore not working. You know, you get all sorts of different things, but huge cynicism about it. And yet, there's a recognition at at that MBA level that we need to do it. But I don't really want to understand it that much. Because it's like a black heart.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

And you're you're it's evil.

Brenton Gowland:

A black art. Well, that's really interesting, because it's a creative art. And I think the big problem, I say, because we're obviously talking about the problem with marketing at the moment, and we'll ask you who are listening, bear with us, because this is going to be a fairly organic series, we're going to interview people about their perceptions of marketing, we're going to, we're going to interview people who've gone through big marketing changes in their organisation. And we're really going to try and bring this conversation to a point where you can see in your business and your situation and where you are as leader, how you can use marketing to grow your business. But the problem I was going to say you were talking about that there's this perception out there that marketing is not working all these kinds of things. But

Ron Tomlian:

In fact, one of the things I used to show in my lectures was a videotape blood found in the university library. It was made for social workers. And it was to show social workers how their clients were being manipulated by marketing tricks. And therefore there were techniques they could use to get people to identify those tricks that were being used on them. And not to be a victim of that. Yeah. And it was a half hour tape about how marketers manipulate people's minds. And it's evil and black. Ah, yeah, I was I was blown away by that perception of marketing, but it was being taught as a university, I had the university level that this is what marketing was all about. Well, to be perfectly frank, because there are people out there using these techniques are using techniques that people perceive as manipulation. People see a lot of bad marketing around the place a lot of bad promotions, where there is a lot of bad marketing around, you know, the the latest thing that we're seeing is scams. Oh, yeah. Now people say, Well, that's a type of marketing. It's not a type of marketing. It's deception. Yes, same thing. So you get this automatic marketing is a bad thing.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, you were talking earlier about marketing being a black art. And I think, when anything's mentioned to be a black art, it's because it's unknown, right. And that, right there, to me speaks to the heart of the problem with marketing. And I think one of the biggest problems with marketing, it speaks a different language to the rest of the business. It's a creative endeavour, and creative endeavours have all sorts of different outcomes, which is what we were talking about earlier. But remember that book, The Five Love Languages, where it talks about relationships, and it talks about you got to work out what your partner's love language is? Well, it's almost like to me, the business speaks a language, let's call it the language of numbers. Because numbers roll in a business. Let's have KPIs. Let's have numbers. The CFO wants to know, the CEO wants to know that marketing speaks almost like the language of feelings and perceptions. And, and,

Ron Tomlian:

And why is that? Because it's because customers have feelings, and perceptions. And that's what we, as a business, are trying to understand and influence in terms of their behaviours. So this comes down to what is the purpose of any business, I used to work for a business, it was a energy utility. And I can tell you from the general manager down to the people at the coalface this is what they thought, if it wasn't for the customer, we could do a good job.

Brenton Gowland:

I've heard that many times in many different businesses. Absolutely. Remember, when I was a kid, I worked in Woolworths. And you'd set up these gondola brands, you know, the displays, that's what they called. And then customers would come in and take product. And we I remember having this manager who go, we'd have a perfect story if it wasn't for customers, because we'd have to fix up these ends every day.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. And as a young I was an engineer at the time as a young engineer. I was first into this organisation. I didn't know anything. I knew a little bit about engineering. And I had to listen to people saying this all the time. I thought, well, they must know what they're talking but it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me. And until somebody came in, it was actually the professor of marketing from unius egg I called David cork and Dale in those days, until he came in and talked to us about what marketing was about, I had no idea that there was another way of thinking. And the other way of thinking is, is, and I know it sounds jargony. But it's about saying the purpose the organisation has at its core, doing something useful for the customer. And if you're not doing that, you don't have a reason for existing.

Brenton Gowland:

I want to take a punt, I want to actually define just, this is going to be an organic discussion, and it's going to be organic over the next few weeks, because we'll interview people about their perceptions of marketing, I think this is really important folks. Marketing is is something that and Ron and I are going to get into some definitions at the moment. And both of us have heard so many varying definitions about what marketing is, but I want to take a real shot at nailing the problem, because it just occurred to me while we were talking, marketing speaks a different language, a completely different language to the rest of the organisation. So it's not understood, when you don't understand something, sometimes you fear it, when you don't understand something you don't know where it fits. When you don't understand something, sometimes you just want it to go away and squash it like a bug or something because it might scare you. But just think about it, like everything we've talked about is there's a lack of understanding what marketing is, I don't understand it, I don't want to deal with it, I don't want to get my head around it because I can't, because it speaks a different language to me. And I want to say I think that's the problem with marketing in a lot of organisations, people just don't get it, or they think, here's the classic, we'll just hire a marketing person, and they'll take care of it. And that marketing person will do everything, they'll do a bit of graphic design a bit of social media, a bit of whatever else, and that's the marketing done, they don't understand it, but they know they need something. So they'll get a marketing person who has no authority in the business and, and just is there to put some imagery or some messaging out into the universe.

Ron Tomlian:

It used to be that, you know, you had salespeople, and I go sales managers, I worked for an organisation and went to an organisation. And previously they had a public relations department. That was the buzzword for a while there back. Yeah, back in the 80s. And in the 90s, it started to become well, you need to think more about it's not just about public relations, it's about marketing. Yes. So a whole bunch of people were either, or we're going to call you the marketing manager now, because or we need a marketing person here. Oh, and I don't understand what that is. But we've got to have one of those. And this is your hired one, you got to put a tick in the box and said we got a marketing person now. So and that's it. I don't actually want to know what this is about. But we've got one.

Brenton Gowland:

Since I was 22. I was a graphic designer, worked in agencies, worked at papers, then worked in advertising agencies for a number of years started my own. And over that time, I reckon have been into the 1000s of clients, a lot of those companies, we deal with the marketing manager, how many of them, do you reckon that I've met, that have not come from a background where they've studied or understood marketing, but they've come from exactly what you've said, they've been in another role in the company. And they've been promoted to marketing manager, or sales and marketing manager, they often lumped them together I, I read, give me a percentage, what percentage do you reckon.

Ron Tomlian:

I think it's changed since marketing became an activity that universities got interested in, and it was seen as the legitimate profession. There's a lot of marketing people out there who have never studied in the university environment. And don't get me wrong. I'm not saying the university environment, or the university training is necessary to be able to do marketing. It's a path towards understanding marketing. But it's not the only path. But I think there were a lot of people way back in the 90s, it was almost impossible to do a course in marketing. That's all changed. And yes, people can get qualifications in marketing, they get Master's American, they have PhDs in marketing, but a lot of those people don't ever permeate into the workforce. So there's I was an engineer working to a marketer. Yeah, working in an engineering organisation. And I happen to enjoy in relating to people, they say, oh, Ron, you can be you can take over advertising. Do that for a while. Yeah, I took over advertising and take over the whole promotions area. Fantastic. Do that for a while now your marketing manager. I happened to do some study to help me understand what this was all about. But at the end of the day, yeah. The first guy who was the marketing manager actually knew nothing about it, but they needed somebody who would take that moniker on.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, okay.

Ron Tomlian:

Interesting.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, I'm going to answer the question I gave you and that is I recommend at least 60 to 70% of people I met had no qualification in marketing. And were made marketing managers of companies through the means you're talking about them being promoted. I can tell you, companies now that are multi multimillionaire Like companies with hundreds of staff like I'm talking about the hundreds of millions that I know right now, with marketing managers that have never studied marketing that have been promoted from an Accounts Manager of some such thing, because I've literally worked with him within the last year or two.

Ron Tomlian:

And don't Don't, don't discount the fact that you can learn a lot about marketing with ever, not ever having opened a textbook or done a course. That's not necessarily the only way to learn about and stuff. But by the same token, there are a lot of people out there purporting to be marketing, marketing people who are actually marketing promotions people.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, the funny thing is, I never studied marketing, right? There's a big thing for you, I studied to be a graphic designer. But I learned everything I knew about marketing, from working with marketing people from all these companies, I talked to you about starting my own business, running my business, getting mentors, and then working out to promote my business being that I'd been promoting other people's businesses for 1520 years. So I learned on the job through working with market tours. So there are different pathways. And that's really interesting. Boy, we could get caught up in this because what my brain saying is, I wonder why those people were promoted. Because the people who were promoted didn't speak the language of a marketer, they spoke the language of the rest of the business, they might not have understood marketing properly. But I'm just taking a guess you're putting someone you're very comfortable with, and that you understand into the marketing role. I'm just putting that out there as a what if, but it makes sense to me why you would promote an engineer to a marketing role, because an engineer would come at it from a numbers and logic perspective, unless there could be a million reasons.

Ron Tomlian:

Well in that particular organisation, everyone was a freaking engineer.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep. Fair enough. I know you're talking about.

Ron Tomlian:

But look, let's, we'll leave that what would you say?

Brenton Gowland:

Everyone who's listening, there is a problem with the perception of marketing and the understanding of it. And I want to, I want to put that peg in the ground. And I want to say I believe it's because marketing speaks a different language to the rest of the company. And it's misunderstood because it's not understood. And what we want to do is we want to help. In this episode, we want to help look at a definition of what marketing is, and in other episodes, we'll look at how to apply that. So without further ado, Ron, let's talk about the definition of marketing.

Ron Tomlian:

And look it up on the internet. And I know you and you'll get as many different definitions of marketing as there are potential websites on the internet, and deal with marketing. And it's a it's a problem in itself. Because if you can't define it, you can't say that other people are wrong. But I, I like to use a particular definition of marketing that I think covers all the bases. But it emphasises some things and doesn't emphasise others. My definition of marketing is that it's a process of identifying and anticipating the needs and wants of customers, and satisfying those needs and wants in a commercially viable way better than the competition. That's what marketing is about. So it introduces a whole number of concepts in there. I also liked the process, the discussion of a matching process, between the needs and wants of the customers, and the capabilities of the organisation. I also liked definitions that include the concept of value, because satisfying customers is about providing value. So anyone as long as those concepts come in to your definition of marketing, I don't care what words you use. And this, as I said, this is a difficulty because there's no one thing. Yep. And are the American Marketing associated heifer have a definition or think.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, I want to look at that, because that that really floats my boat. Because I guess, I think your definition is good, and you've got a needs and wants of the customer. But I think it goes a little bit beyond that. For me, the definition that you were talking about is, I could read it to you in full, it says marketing is the activity, or set of instructions and processes for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, society and society at large. I like that it's good. But I want to narrow that down a bit. And for me, marketing is about in very simple terms, creating value, right? Really, really simple. But creating a value. Let's go a step further creating a value exchange between the business and its customers. But it's a value exchange, because that goes in both directions source writers. And so I read this book recently, and if you are a marketer, I highly recommend this book. It's called the 12 powers of a marketing leader and currently but who it's by just look it up, because it's the only book called that that I can think of. I came across this in a podcast, I think Have a Christmas and the way it defined marketing. In fact, we're marketing lived in an organisation. And when I say lived, if you look at a business and how it operates, you know, logistics, there's management, there's staff, there's operations, there's, there's customer service, there's all these different things that live in different places. But where marketing lives, it suggests is in the intersection between the company needs, and the customer needs, there's an overlap. And that's where they call in this book, it's called the value zone. And it to me it made perfect sense, because you said earlier in your definition, that it's about the needs and wants of the customer. So that's where the value comes into the business, you know, can this business deliver my needs and wants? Well, where's that value for the business? It's a being able to sell those products, but also to be able to create happy clients that are satisfied and become advocates. And that then has a whole list of ramifications, what do we have to do to do that? So there's this overlap area. And there's all these things that live in there, like customer feedback, we'll talk about the four P's of marketing later, you know, product, price, place, promotion, all of those things, but they all live in this area. That is like the value zone for marketing, the intersection, customer needs and company needs. And so the other thing about that is you were talking about value, if you want to think what is value, you know, when creating a product, do you want to give us a definition for value?

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, the whole concept of value when you enter it, and it is a vexed issue. Because, unfortunately, in the English language, when people talk about value, there are two different myth things they mean, one is personal values, what I find important, and what I, what I used to live my life, and there's value like value for customers. And that value is a simple equation. It's without using jargon, it's what did I get out of that exchange versus what I had to put in to make that exchange? So what are the benefits to me minus the costs. And if there's more benefit than there is cost in my, in my perception than I have extracted value.

Brenton Gowland:

Now let's talk about that for a second. Right. So I'm going to use an example. We're all everyone's heard this a million times, Apple, Steve Jobs. Yeah, there was a product that was a fighter brand that had really not a lot of value to anyone else. But creatives. And then Steve Jobs is famous for really spending all of his time with their agencies and marketing department to really start to get the ball rolling. And we know where Apple is today. It's one of the biggest brands on the planet, but they created value in the eyes of the consumer. By the way, they spoke about this. And by the way, they promoted this as a beautiful example of marketing advertising. Not everyone can do this. It's a very well, when I say not everyone can do this. Everyone can do that. But in their own scale and own way. Does that make better sense?

Ron Tomlian:

Absolutely. Because I think everyone could do it.

Brenton Gowland:

It doesn't have to look like Apple.

Ron Tomlian:

But it's hard to do. And it takes a lot of effort. And most organisations are, in my experience, most organisations don't see the value to them in going down this path.

Brenton Gowland:

Interesting point that so one, let's go back to the problem. The problem is that people don't understand marketing. So marketing gets lost, we've just said that marketing is creating value because your business has no value in the eyes of a client, unless you're delivering something they need.

Ron Tomlian:

Absolutely. To represent an organisation. Yep, any organisation, even governments, funnily enough, and the value is to do something useful for the people you're doing it for. Yeah. And we call them customers. Yeah. So people say, well, the purpose of an organisation is to make money, it's to profit. Now that's an outcome of it. That's our in a capitalist society. We say we want you to keep doing this. Now, how can we incentivize you to do it? Well, I'd like to have more money as a result of doing this than I had beforehand. Fantastic. You keep doing it. We'll keep making sure that you if you run your business, well, you keep you can do that.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep. So the problem we were talking about earlier is people don't back to the problem speaking a different language. People don't understand the let's say they don't have marketing in a company. There's no marketing department no function. Okay? Are they marketing?

Ron Tomlian:

Of course they are. How well by the fact that they're offering a product or service that people are buying. They are providing in the marketing equation they are providing value to the customer, doesn't mean that they have to have a marketing department. They are Marketing by accident by default.

Brenton Gowland:

So that the CEO goes out and talks about the company that's marketing, the salespeople go out and talk about the company. They're trying to develop that value proposition.

Ron Tomlian:

And we use it to stand to use jargon here by using things like value.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay, we're using the marketing language, but I'll get away from that. So we try and convince customers that this product has value to them. When we do that about our company, we are marketing.

Ron Tomlian:

But sometimes we don't even need to convince them. If we're providing value to customers. They come to us. Yeah. Now, the he think about somebody who comes up with either product or service. And it just goes off. Yes. How do they develop that they had a great idea. And they thought people will find this useful to them. And it goes off, fantastic. And they don't do any marketing. In their mind. They don't tell people abandon. They just provide a product or service. And people seem to like it. So they do more of it. And they and people can't get enough of it. Fantastic. And they get lazy, because somebody down the road said, that's a good idea. Yeah, I can do that, too. Yeah. So he sets up shop and does whatever they do. And they go, oh, wait a second. Now we've got to this gets into the whole idea of the maturity of organisations, and the fact that organisations, whether they're small organisations, they go through stages, right? of marketing maturity in the first instance. It's all about demand. Yes. Can't How can I keep up with demand? I don't need to sell this stuff. I, you know, convince people that are just coming into my door and buying more of it. Yeah. It's when competition enters that those have to start thinking, Well, why should people buy mine? Yes, instead of theirs? Yeah. And then they have to think about, well, what will convince people to look at me, as opposed to looking at them you get into then that was called a selling phase? Or the selling level of maturity? And then, okay, well, whatever I'm providing and whatever they're providing, seems to be waning, everybody's going down. Yeah. Something else is providing that utility, then they have to start thinking about, Well, okay, I need to get something new into my life. Yeah. You know, I need to be over offering something different than I'm offering at the moment. That's when the looking at developing new products and services. Yeah. And what's the inspiration for that? Well, oftentimes, unfortunately, it's what I'm good at. Yeah. And it failed.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, so there's four things we want to do in this podcast, we wanted to identify what the problem was. So the problem is, marketing is not understood, it speaks a different language, we've gone to definition and the definition really comes down to creating value, or a value exchange between the business and the customers. So you were talking about the needs and wants. And now we're talking about really the role of marketing where it fits in. And we're saying that even if you don't have a marketing function in your business, you are marketing. So the idea is that marketing can grow that value of your business to your customer.

Ron Tomlian:

I would, I would put it frame it like this attention to the marketing capability of your organisation, will help you grow your business more effectively, then not attending to the marketing.

Brenton Gowland:

So considering that we're not speaking to native marketers, what is the role of marketing in the business? Where does it fit? We know that it fits in that place where we create value for the customer and potentially value for the business from the customer. Right? It's a value exchange. But what is the role of marketing in that zone? The value zone.

Ron Tomlian:

To my way of thinking, I like what Jack Welch from GE said right? Marketing is far too important to leave in the hands of the marketing department a great what he meant by that is marketing is central to the concept of doing business of being an organisation doing something useful for customers. It's a central core concept. It's a central core concept. And unfortunately, most marketing departments who are a will abrogate responsibility and give it all to them. They're not actually doing the full marketing bit, right. It's not a full marketing function. What most 99% of organisations have as their marketing department is the marketing promotions department that covers one of the four peaks.

Brenton Gowland:

Oh, it's one of the definitions I read earlier, I write it down. This is from HubSpot. Marketing is the process of getting people interested in your company's product or service. That's very singularly focused. And then Shopify marketing is the practice of creating interest in a product or service and convincing potential customers to buy it. That's all just speaking to that promotion. But you might you might want to define the four P's because you're you're talking about this so

Ron Tomlian:

So a little history lesson here back in 1960, Theodore Levitt, a professor at Harvard University, wrote an article called marketing myopia, regardless of why he called it that it's in its in its great still a great article, I've got to say, in that he defined the levers that organisations can use Yes, to provide value to their customers. And he identified four. First one was product product, what you're doing the utility that you provide, and that product is now morphed into, you're offering a service. So it could be product service, and the distinction between those is the thing. Yep, let's call it that. You're doing? Yeah. The second is price. Right? So because in our society, we have this concept of currency. Where for me to do something for you. A reasonable exchange is you give me some quantum of currency? Yes, that's what price is all about. And it's saying it just facilitates easier transactions in the old bartering system. Yep. Because I can then take that currency and go and use it for something that I need is an organisation. So product price promotion, this is telling people about it, getting people to look in your direction, convincing them that what they're looking at you is more effective than looking at other people. That's promotion. And now we've got multiple media that are available to organisations to promote their product for different reasons. Some of it is awareness building, some of it is convincing and influencing, etc. Yes, that's all way down in the the depths of marketing. And the final one is place. And he called it place because he was the four P's after all, what he's really talking about is distribution or axis axis, how easy is it to get my product or service?

Brenton Gowland:

So those four P's all live in that value zone? Right?

Ron Tomlian:

And they are nothing more than Levers as an organisation that I can manipulate? Yep. To provide value to the customer.

Brenton Gowland:

But the question is how many businesses see any of those other than promotion, which is what you've talked about? Because you were telling me about another definition earlier. That was from someone you heard, that was literally just all about the promotion part, because even marketers themselves, a lot of them only see themselves as doing that promotion piece. But your marketing is responsible for product in the that definition that we're talking about place being the shop where you sell it, whether it's online, whether it's a sub setting up a new store in Rundle Mall, or another place around the world, at a place that has an online nowadays that has life, all of it has an influence of the value of your offering. And those are the things that make up the marketing mix.

Ron Tomlian:

And And again, if you walk into most organisations, and you say who's responsible, who's in charge of pricing, rarely the marketing department, they might influence it, but they're not in charge of it, who's responsible for product development and product execution, and getting the product in the hands of never the marketing department, they might influence it? Who's in charge of making sure that it's accessible to the customer? Rarely the marketing department, but the only thing the marketing department is given responsibility for is how do we tell people about it? How do we tell people about our promotion. And that's where the difficulty lies in this whole definition of marketing is actually marketing is core to the entire organisation. And the chief marketing officer really should be the chief executive officer, and the entire executive team should understand. Here's an example the four P's Yes, when Theodore Levitt came up with it, everyone, everyone in the marketing community in the academic community said, I've come up with the fifth P, the fifth P. And for a while that was positioning, but then it became about people. And then it became about processes. And then it became about physical evidence. And now there are seven PS 10 PS. So, if you look at all of those other Ps, they really sit in the marketing department either.

Brenton Gowland:

But what that says to me, remember where we've got the intersection of customer name, business name, that's the value zone, there's more in the value zone than just the four P's but I want to give a little bit of clarity to those peas. So people might sit there and go, How is the marketing department responsible for product? Well, where do you get your feedback from? Where do you get your product improvement information from I was just sitting with a client the other day, and we were talking about the actual product and we were going, let's create a conduit between the innovation department and the customer. Because the marketing department remember they become A glue between business need and customer need. So it might not be that the marketing department is actually developing those products. They're not the engineers. But they're the ones who are finding the insights from customers to actually improve the product. I'm gonna give you one example, coffee pods. Do you know anything about the history of how coffee pods came about?

Ron Tomlian:

No, I don't tell me more.

Brenton Gowland:

It was a marketing idea. Right? So what this particular company did, and no, I cannot remember who it was. I just remember the story from a conference I went to, they set up cameras in a number of people's homes, that they got permission to film them in the kitchen with their coffee machine. So they put cameras in these kitchens to watch what happened. And what they discovered was that the biggest problem was coffee machines was the grounds afterwards, cleaning up was a nightmare. And no one told them, there was no dispute, there was discussions, but I picked it up from watching the videos about people trying to deal with the grounds because they got everywhere. And they said, Write the marketing department, which was based on research, because research fits on the marketing went back and said, We need to create a product where the coffee grounds are contained within a pod, so that when you make your coffee, when you put it in the machine and spits it out, there is no mess. And that's where pods came from. And of course, it was massively successful. But that's an example of how the marketing department is involved with product, and creating products that create value for customers in all those four pays, the marketing department forms the bridge between the customer and the business to provide insights and future directions. And a good marketing department works with the rest of the business in conjunction to be able to have those discussions present that evidence have robust conversations where they end up creating products, services, places, offerings that have more value to the customer. I hope this is really coming through.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, but I would argue that it is a lot of organisations don't have a marketing department. It's still a my I'd like to use the term marketing capability. Oh, yeah, good. Because at the end of the day, and this is what I saw, working for an organisation, everyone was involved in customer service. Yes, fantastic. We all were customer service representatives of some form or another. And that concept was starting to be embraced by the organisation. And then some bright spikes said, Let's form a customer service department. And what happened, actual service levels from the customer's perspective went down. Because what people were able to say is, is not my job anymore. It's the customer service departments job. So I'd have to worry about those pesky customers. So I'd like to talk about marketing capability. Because talking about marketing departments sort of says, well, that's those guys over there. We don't have to worry about that. And I've got to say it's like it, we got an IT department, we're not worried about information management, and all that sort of, because they're handling all that it's got information in there title. It's all this. And you wonder why we've got problems with scams and cybersecurity with an organization's procure. People say we've got an IT department, it's their responsibility.

Brenton Gowland:

And look, what we're trying to do with this particular episode, this is going to be really organic. Because Ron and I sat down this morning, we went through this, you were talking about marketing capability, we we said, what's our next episode going to be? Because there's so much here, where do we which way do we go? And we want to make this really practical in the sense of how do we do this in the organisation that I'm in. So what we want to define, again, is, what marketing really is, and how to build that capacity in your business. So our next episode will be on how to build your marketing capacity. But I think to end off today, Ron, so we've talked about three things. And I keep reiterating, because I like repeating things so that we understand what we're doing, because I'm trying to keep myself on track. But so we talked about the problem marketing speaks a different language, it's not understood. We talked about the definition that it's creating value for the customer and the business value exchanged the needs and wants of the customer. We talked about where it lives, where does marketing live in the organisation, it lives in that zone between customer needs, and the company needs that cross over that intersection, which we call the value zone where we creating value for both the customer in the business.

Ron Tomlian:

And I want to emphasise don't think of it as a department within an organisation. Think of it is where the organisation interfaces with the customer. And value is created.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, I love that and I really love that.

Ron Tomlian:

Now, the one thing I say to people, when the when they started marketing courses on is if you want to take one idea away with you, yes, about marketing. Take this one away. Ask yourself the question What problem Am I solving the customer? If you strip away all the excess, all the techniques, all the baggage from marketing? And yes, and ask yourself a simple question, what value? What problem am I solving for the customer, you will be streets ahead of most organisations in terms of getting people to understand why they exist, and what marketing really is all about.

Brenton Gowland:

And I think one of our episodes should be really exploring that value zone, exactly what you're talking about there. So next, next episode, we'll be building your marketing capacity within your organisation. And I want to suggest, again, because this is organic, that maybe we really closely look at that value zone, but I thought it would be good to end off today, Ron, just to punctuate this with looking at well, what are the results of marketing when that marketing capability within your organisation is working really well?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, if you take my definition, then really, you can't run an organisation you can't provide anything to customers. Without that marketing capability of the organisation

Brenton Gowland:

Some businesses do, though they don't have a marketing department, they don't you don't have that might be marketing ability. They just, they're not managing it.

Ron Tomlian:

Well, you can do things by chance.

Brenton Gowland:

What's that saying? What you can't measure you can't manage. And I think a lot of companies are in that position. marketing's there, whether you want it to be or not, because people have a perception about you. I've used the perception word again.

Ron Tomlian:

But it is all about perception. Everything is about perception. And that perception exists in the minds of customers.

Brenton Gowland:

So you can either control the marketing and manage and grow the marketing within your business. Or you can let it be nebulous and just do what you reckon, and see what happens.

Ron Tomlian:

And see and some organisations exist happily with that. But what usually happens is another concept takes place like, we need to get more technical expertise. Yes. And so an organisation tends to go down a certain path, thinking that this is what the customer will value. Yeah, without ever knowing what value really is from the customers perception.

Brenton Gowland:

So let's say, if the marketing capability is firing really well, what results will a business get from that?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, what you get from that is understanding what the customers are looking for what they value, what problems you're solving for them. So the potential for the organisation to provide more value is increased. And so you are providing that value more effectively than other organisations. And customers will tend to use your products and services more and value that and provide you with what you're looking for as an organisation, which is usually more money.

Brenton Gowland:

So if your marketing capability is being managed and executed really well within your organisation, what I'm hearing is you've got a much closer deeper relationship with the customer, and you're getting much better insights from them, and you're matching your service offering to their needs. And you're ultimately growing your business and you're becoming of much more value to the customer. So demand increases, whatever your business is, it might be all sorts of different things. We know that value has different shapes and sizes to different people. But let's say, in general, if your marketing capability is going really well, you're building a much higher value of your company, in the eyes of your customers and potentially the market. Absolutely. Because some people won't buy you because they can't or.

Ron Tomlian:

Don't forget my main definition. It's not about the concepts. It's identifying today, and anticipating tomorrow, because being able to satisfy needs tomorrow means that I've got some time to build the solutions to those problems, if I can anticipate what they will be. Yep. And that's what really to my way of thinking. That's what really great organisations do is they understand, they seek to understand their customers better than sometimes the customers themselves. When you talked about that organisation that looked at what customers were doing. Do you think any of those customers came up with a solution to the problem with ourselves.

Brenton Gowland:

That goes back to the Henry Ford in the car thing? People want a faster horse? What do they get? They get a car? Because Henry Ford looked at it from a different point of view. Absolutely. They looked at what they really needed, rather than what they thought they wanted.

Ron Tomlian:

Product development, you'd say, well, it's simple. Just ask the customers what what new product they want. Yeah, they can understand this is why I say understand the problems of your customers because usually people can articulate their problems quite well. The solutions to those problems, that's your job. Yeah. As an organisation to see what could be a solution to a customer's problem. Yeah, check that out, etc. That's where the capabilities of the organisation other than well, including marketing, become really valuable to the customer.

Brenton Gowland:

This is obviously a big topic because we've talked longer than we have for quite At some time, Ron, and I think we're both passionate about this.

Ron Tomlian:

Passion, it's my passion, no question.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah I'm on the same page. It's literally what I do. But look, the direction of what we want you to do with this. And what we're going to look at is really how we build value in a company through marketing. And that's what this series is going to cover. If you haven't got a marketing capability within your organisation, or you have, but it's just not being managed or grown. We want to give you everything we possibly can to start, kick starting that marketing capability, if you've already got a really well, running marketing capability, we want to provide you with scope to grow it. If you're flying along. We just want to be able to give you, I guess, backup to say what you're doing is great that we really want to help you understand what marketing is with this series. And we might not get it right. We're not necessarily experts. We've both been doing it quite a long time. So we have our perspective. So we'll bring in a bunch of other people to talk about their views.

Ron Tomlian:

Let's look at it from the perspective of our target audience. Business Builders. Yes. How can we add value, though, if we can help them see what we did there? If we can help them build a more effective marketing capability for our organisation? Because I suspect that's what most people are looking for. Then we will have provided that value, and we will fulfil that mission, our purpose.

Brenton Gowland:

That was such a great twist there. I love that delivering the value, right?

Ron Tomlian:

It's called practising what you preach.

Brenton Gowland:

It's great. Anyway, I think that's enough for this week, Ron, we've set the foundation for what we're going to do and if you're listening today, we'll say goodbye, and we'll see you in a couple of weeks.

Ron Tomlian:

See you later.

Brenton Gowland:

Bye for now.

Intro
The Problem With Marketing
The Definition of Marketing
How Marketing Creates Value in a Business
Even If Your Business Does Not Have A Marketing Function, You Are Still Marketing
Where Does Marketing Fit?
What Can Marketing Achieve?
Wrap up