(What a career choice.)

A Marketing Manifesto – Some Thoughts Wrought©

Marketing is the activity and process of creating,
The management of communicating and relating,
Moving from concept to value to customer compliance,
As we debate whether marketing is art or science

Challenged and anointed by Corporate Town,
To boost sluggish sales when profits are down,
And extend the good fortune as profits rise,
But busted when others’ shoot snake eyes

Discovering customers even if they don’t exist,
Retaining the base and ensuring they’re kissed,
Leading the way engaging 2-way social media,
And daily rewriting of the marketing encyclopedia

Needed to transform those aflutter, to serenity,
While building an unmistakable brand identity,
Balancing attention to Sales and C-suite teams,
While planning new products and revenue streams

Developing those public and community relations,
While appeasing but tempering expectations,
Contributing concepts, plans and mental donations,
Doing the metrics and predictive calculations

Monitoring competitors, walk-the-talk campaigns,
And creating adroit new website domains,
Integrating all channels and the marketing mix,
And having a never empty bag of marketing tricks

Marketing is a world of bold and daily decisions,
Maintaining what works and supporting new visions,
Hair-raising commitments, and deadlines rapid-fire,
Not for the faint of heart or those that perspire

We report to some who’re self-righteous and asinine,
Calculating, spying, nasty and scary… like Frankenstein,
Pompous, paranoid, unreasonable, insulated, pontifical,
and occasionally… this is all the same individual!

eTactics… interactive… online… CRM… and integrated,
Multi-channel… messaging… social… always inundated,
SEO… content… engagement…messaging unabated,
Optimization… solutioning… and always ROI-related

Behavior, experience, differentiation and a little sixth sense,
Considering marketing as an investment than an expense,
Brand awareness is critical, but not enough to bombard,
Today, marketing is complex, but… it’s supposed to be hard

For complex undertakings…there are no simple solutions,
But dare start with basics and fundamental executions,
As this elementary but mandatory approach still works,
Lest we forget the landscape where Marketing 101 lurks

Marketing 101’s primary principles to most likely succeed,
Simply, are initial controls regulating what might impede,
A vital blueprint controlling customers and not vice versa,
Such as building trust, rewarding loyalty and reducing inertia

Customization, personalization and messages event-driven,
Drive open rates, conversions and a click-through decision,
A push to stay in the forefront with top of mind awareness,
Making it easy to decide by exposing competitor bareness

From multi-channel integration and customer acquisition,
To eMailing best customers and getting opt-in permission,
Those are a few of the basics, some staples and a bit of 101,
That used to be the “be-all that ends-all,” but it’s just begun

Using behavioral targeting and lifetime value opportunities,
Applied predictor score modeling to database communities,
Creating Branding uniqueness differentiating the competition,
Fixing the customers’ pain with a Unique Selling Proposition

Marketing daily leverages strategy, creativity, and analytics,
But unlike static areas, like accounting, it always has critics,
Maximizing revenue and sustaining marketplace advantages,
Protecting all corporate cuts and contusions, like bandages

Sales and its bottom line always a Key Performance Indicator,
As Marketing daily builds advocacy, and is the great insulator,
Multi-charged with winning and amazing feats of legerdemain,
Marketing gets its hands dirty so all can drink the champagne

Always more pressure to build solutions fast, good and cheap,
But there’s the old adage of only two of the three can you reap,
Marketing can be complex and filled with an opacity invasion,
So keep in mind this rule of thumb: Clarity beats persuasion

I’ll end with a paraphrase of immortal words said splendidly,
As we recall the one for the ages quote of John F. Kennedy:
Ask not… what your marketing department can do for me…
… But don’t hesitate to ask what I can do for your company