Getting to the Heart of Marketing — The Marketer’s Task
In the demanding and chaotic world of digital marketing, it’s easy to get lost as to just what the job is sometimes.
Our clients have demands and expectations that are constantly crashing over the marketing team’s heads like waves of the sea, and they would take us adrift around the world if we didn’t have a stable foundation.
The tools we use to do our jobs constantly change, like the wind, so we must have something stable that tethers us when the temptation to chase shiny nickels seems strongest.
Wisdom also requires adaptation and flexibility. It’s no wonder that keeping an eye on the main thing can sometimes be challenging.
So, what is the heart of marketing?
Here are five points that help us at NATIV3 remember what we’re here to do:
- Marketers are given the task of bringing their client’s message to their client’s audience.
- Identifying that message correctly and stating it clearly is crucial to our work.
- The message given to us is not ours to modify, but once we identify it, our job is to faithfully bring it to the end users.
- As we craft our presentation of the message, we must not get distracted by wanting to put our creative abilities on display. We must direct users’ attention to the one who hired us for the work.
- We have no ultimate control over success. We collect the responses, assist customers through the journey, and then put them in the capable hands of the one who employs us.
This is the heart of marketing: Every marketer is a messenger on behalf of someone else.
Even when everything seems to be working against us and it seems that we may have even lost the favor of our client, we press on with our mindset on what we were engaged to do; extract and unpack the message of the client, and use all of our resources to deliver it faithfully.
On behalf of our benefactor, we say from the social media platforms, “Follow me.” From the landing pages and email newsletters, “Follow me.” We search out our intended audience in all the digital places they’re known to frequent and say to them, “Follow me.”
That’s the essence of our job as marketing professionals: to bring a message to the masses.
If the message is good, people will respond.
“Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” — Jesus.