Marketing with a capital ‘M’ is coming up with the ideas that will change a market, or even create one.
Marketing with a small ‘m’ is the campaigns that stem from those big ideas and which engage customers. Campaigns that attract, entertain, educate and persuade people – so that they choose to be customers.
Effective marketing involves choosing the right tactics once the strategy is defined. It means making informed choices about which tools are best to use for a given situation – whether that’s direct marketing, social media, referral programmes, advertising, public relations or any of the other marketing methods.
Across that wide range of marketing activity, from strategic to tactical, attention to detail matters. People say that marketing is ‘an art not a science’, which can’t be measured and managed effectively. They’re wrong; it can.
To be effective, you need to be clear about how to measure the success of what you do.
Marketing built on clearly thought out objectives, winning value propositions, and imaginative campaigns, is at the heart of every successful company we admire. When that’s done with efficient use of your marketing resources, that’s what I would define as effective marketing.