Marketing - Marketing communications = Commercial management

My blog has marketing in its name but I haven't wrote anything about marketing - or have I?

Actually I have because I have for example written about international expansion, business models and solutions business... and those texts are full of thoughts around marketing. But for many so called marketing experts they are not because marketing is "hidden" and the focus of the texts are in creating new business, growing business, expanding business, offering development - not in communicational aspects of marketing. 90 % of marketing professionals I have met and will meet are communications experts not marketing experts.

How do you identify when someone is a marketing vs. marketing communications expert? Marketing communication specialist's focus is in communications and she/he is not in her/his comfort zone when you start discuss about business models, sales, pricing models or customer value (yes even that one). Now many will raise a red flag that this is not true. But it is - they are not comfortable discussing about actual subject and content but start to be inspired when discussion moves to "how do we communicate about this". Marketing expert is focused and knowledgeable about these topics in subject expertise level.

I am so tired of the whole concept of marketing. Changing word does not lead anywhere but deciding that there is no general concept of marketing does. Pricing, customer segmentation, product development, international expansion, social media, innovation development, brand management, communications, etc. just cannot be put under one umbrella. What if concept of marketing included only marketing communications (as it does in so many companies already) and everything else was under commercial management - tools, ideas, thoughts, processes, methods and theories how company faces and interacts with the market... and creates revenue.

Ad agencies would not like this because they have tried for ages to own the marketing concept despite they focus only to marketing communications. Yes I know they want to be strategic partners with companies with wider focus but in the end they make their money from producing ads and campaigns - no social media or other internet trend has not changed this.

Marketing functions at companies would not either like this because they have an endless fight to gain more strategic relevance - we are a marketing function not communications function. But hey just assess the outputs of marketing functions - mostly communications related stuff.

If marketing was divided into two, marketing communications and commercial management then latter would be naturally "owned by" business line management - as it should because then marketing (=commercial management) would be an integral part of business management.

With this approach we also have a problem. Many companies have identities (souls of the companies) which are not commercially or customer centric. Manufacturing oriented companies have manufacturing oriented managers as line managers who have their focus in manufacturing assets and utilization rates not in customers. R&D oriented companies have R&D oriented managers as line managers. On the other hand why to even care about these companies when defining marketing. These companies do not see commercial management as their critical success maker so they can think, name and organize marketing how they will. They can be successful with their approaches as can a company which is genuinely market and customer focused - there is no one singular formula on how to be successful.

From a general point of view and from a small growth company point of view I would anyway place my bets on commercial oriented business approaches = having a management which has commercial management (marketing - marketing communications = commercial mgmt.) in their genes.

Few thoughts about design

Last July I was introduced to a service called balancion.com - online based service for consumers to help them manage their personal financials. What is so unique to the service that it is consumer centric: whole design starts from consumer's everyday money management occasions and situations. In other words it is based on user experience design. Therefore majority of the value to the customer is delivered in usage occasions not at the point of purchase.

It sounds bizarre that a service can be unique in today's world with such simple principle - being user friendly. Earlier in one my blog texts I mentioned Apple's iPhone/iPod, maybe the world's best known example of user friendly design. It is another proof point that being user friendly is uncommon in today's world because it gets so many applauses of being one.

Along with balancion.com I was introduced to the guys from Idean who had designed the service. Very passionate guys who live and breath user friendly designing. Also Idean is able differentiate itself from others with this simple principle - helping companies to design user friendly services, software and different gadget user interfaces.

Last spring a year ago I was giving multiple presentations across Finland about how to build successful online stores. One of the key message was based on a very large customer research that online store itself is a way to differentiate yourself. Being user friendly added with tools to interact with customers (also part of being user friendly) is a way to acquire customers and especially to get them back to be your regular customers. Majority of the participants didn't buy this message because they were in a rush to sell shoes, apparel, or what ever they were planning to sell. For some reason they didn't think store design had something to do with running a successful online or multi-channel business. Back to the idea that user friendly design is a way to differentiate yourself.

Earlier in my career I was responsible for selling (and partly developing) an IT B2B solution which had an online component - customers could track their performance by using an online based service. Design of the service was terrible far from being user friendly. When I indicated this problem I got blank looks from many. It was already thought to be user friendly mainly because it just existed - knowledgeable customers know how to use the service I was told. Problem is how many times you have customers with this knowledge or time and interest to gain this knowledge. Unfortunately not many times. Of course as a good salesman I continued to tell customers about this service as a great value add in the solution.

Ten years ago I was involved in building online portals related to home and housing management. Already then we thought they were way a head of time because design was based on customer's housing management occasions not on single items company was in general selling. Naturally at that time we got blank looks and also lot of complaints that why the focus is not in the point of selling than in the usage value we wanted to provide.

That was ten years ago and today things should be different but for some reason they aren't. Still majority of online presences of companies indicate their organization structure or internal way to classify their offerings. Just look many B2B companies how they have in the navigation menu different areas for products, services and solutions - how potential customer is supposed to understand what is considered to be a product vs. service or service vs. solution. Shouldn't the online presence help customers to understand how the company is able to support their business not just communication the aspects of offering.

What is interesting that same design principle can be adopted to business - business design. Do you build your business around customers or your say manufacturing? But that is another story.

So take a look at balancion.com, unfortunately today only in Finnish, and you understand... if you can think like a customer. I know you can because I have no design related education and my career is filled with sales, marketing and business development experiences not design mgmt. roles.