Welcome!

If you’re reading this, you must have an interest in marketing. For me, marketing is more than an interest; it is a passion. For the past 40 years, I’ve studied, practiced, and taught marketing. I always tell my workshop participants that they should listen to me because in my career I’ve made every mistake that one can make. I think that I’ve learned something from all those mistakes; and, maybe, I can help you avoid the same mistakes.

Why Marketing Guides?

Marketing is more than a business function, more than a business orientation. It is an academic discipline, a body of knowledge. The reason that colleges, universities, and professional training organizations can teach marketing is that there is a body of knowledge that is transferable from one business to another or from one product/service category to another. This body of knowledge is made up of principles which are fundamentals that generally hold true from one business or product/service category to the next. These principles, or guides as I’m going to call them, will form the basis of this blog. Periodically, I will add and discuss a marketing guide. Your comments would be welcomed.

Marketing as Science

More than an academic discipline, marketing is a science. It’s not a hard physical science like chemistry or physics. Rather, it’s a soft social science – a people science -- like psychology or sociology. The body of knowledge that governs hard physical sciences is composed of physical laws. Physical laws are generally regarded as universal truths, but physical laws are just theories -- theories to which there are no known exceptions. As an example, in physics prior to the 20th century, the atom was regarded as the smallest particle of matter and considered to be indivisible. That was the physical law because no one had found an exception to it. The discovery of nuclear fission negated that physical law.
The body of knowledge making up soft social sciences, such as marketing, is comprised of principles or guides. Unlike physical laws, one can readily find exceptions to principles or guides. Although they generally hold true, they don’t always hold true. How often do these principles or guides hold true? Pulling a number from mid-air, say 80% of the time.

The use of the word “principles” in marketing has fallen out of favor. Courses which were once entitled Principles of Marketing are now called Introduction to Marketing or Marketing Fundamentals. Additionally, most textbooks avoid the use of the word principles. Why? My classroom experience makes me believe it’s because whenever a principle is stated, one immediately thinks of the exception. With the mind focused on the exception, belief in the principle is never internalized.
Despite the word being out of fashion, principles or guides of marketing do exist, and it is the purpose of this blog to relate some of these marketing guides to marketing practitioners. This blog is not intended to be a scholarly work written to impress academicians, but a practical guide for marketers and their bosses.

Applicability of Guides

Many businesses recruit new graduates fresh from university marketing degree programs, and begin the process of beating everything they’ve learned about marketing out of them while repeating over and over, “That doesn’t apply here; our business is different.”

Admittedly, each business and each product/service category does have its unique characteristics. Additionally, there can be substantial differences in the marketing process in consumer categories versus business to business categories. However, marketing consultants with experience across multiple categories will tell you marketing is mostly the same from one business to the next. How much is mostly? Again, pulling a number from mid-air, say 80%. Because marketing is mostly the same from one business to the next and from one product category to the next, marketing guides will generally apply to all businesses.

Next Post

The next post will be a discussion of the ultimate objective of marketing as a business process. After that, we'll develop the framework into which the marketing guides will be structured. It is the marketing planning framework; the steps which should be followed in developing a marketing plan. Stay tuned, and let me know what you think of the concept of marketing guides.

Re: Marketing Guides

“Know the rules, so that you can break them properly.” Mark Twain