Marketing Advice: Stop Copying Everyone Else, Maybe

This is where marketing usually goes to die.

When I was a little bit younger, I was often confused about marketing objectives. To be honest, before I even worked in marketing, I really didn’t understand the difference between “marketing” and “advertising.” (Truth be told, most CMOs probably still don’t understand that difference.)

I think it’s worth a little bit of discussion around marketing objectives. Let’s dive a bit deeper.

Marketing Objectives Phase 1: The Basics

Here’s where most decision-makers in marketing are already getting tripped up. Senior people love to run around yelping about how they “protect the brand” or “manage the corporate image to the world.” Sure, sure. There’s validity in all of that, of course — and it’s best to think about your job at some high-functioning level, because then if you’re a person that holds yourself accountable, you’ll probably do OK at it. (Er, or you’ll do OK at what you think it is — but only about 1 in 2 people are really clear about what’s expected of them at work.)

Alright, so as you rush around squealing about branding and margins and KPIs and all that, here’s the basic thing to understand about marketing objectives: