This latest post is some sketching for a longer riff I’m eager to dig into. I love the fact that I can do sketch out loud thanks to American Express. Here’s the first few grafs:
Over the past several posts I’ve been talking about the role of search, conversation, and media in your business. While not explicit, each of these posts was about one thing: Marketing.
Marketing is one of the most misunderstood practices in business today. For most of us, marketing is about convincing potential customers that our product or service is worth their money. And while that’s certainly party true, it never struck me as the whole narrative.
Where does marketing really begin? As management guru Peter Drucker stated it, “Marketing is the whole business seen from the customer’s point of view.” Put another way, every single interaction the customer has with your business can and should be seen as marketing.
I’ve argued elsewhere than a truly successful business is one that is an ongoing conversation. Those conversations are marketing – if you add value and connect to your customer, you’re succeeding. If you don’t, you fail.
It’s easy to know if you’re succeeding while having those conversations – we’re all pretty good at sensing when customers are happy as we directly interact with them. But we often forget a crucial ongoing conversation that usually occurs beyond our personal presence: The conversation between the customer and our products.