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.

Titles and managers

Interesting how the words in manager titles can have such a big difference. During my career I have met several managers having in their title "sales and marketing" only to discover that actually they are sales managers. On top of sales responsibility they manage marketing but marketing is diminished to brochures, leaflets, customer events, fairs and other marketing communication tactical tools. These managers have little competence from marketing therefore to do the actual job they have outsourced the work by hiring a marketing communications manager. Marketing has become marketing communications but is titled as marketing.

I have also met several managers whose title is marketing manager only to discover role actually covers only marketing communications. These managers have more strategic view to the marketing communications when role covers aspects of brand management... but normally only from the marketing communications view point. When discussing aspects of sales with these managers they rather quickly withdraw from the conversation indicating clearly it is not in their comfort zone. Real marketing managers have and should have sales in their comfort zone - to face and convince customers to buy.

Then we have managers whose title is sales manager - in this text these are not my in focus because their role is clear and simple as their title indicates - to sell today and tomorrow. More interesting are these various titles and definitions of marketing because in many cases actual real activities of marketing are missing. Discussions around pricing management or offering development just as examples are out of bounds with these earlier mentioned marketing managers even with the first one mentioned "sales and marketing managers".

Things get more complicated when we add to the plate partnerships development, solutions development, online services, channel mix design, customer relationship management, customer base management, experience management, etc. - all part of real marketing at least in my vocabulary. Maybe I have just misunderstood something or my definition of marketing is too much business development flavored. For too many marketing is closer to communications than business development and I must accept this fact of life.

Still one more try - anyway companies need to develop and manage things I mentioned above in an integrated manner. Whose role it is and what should be the title when titles above are reserved for operational aspects of business. Marketing business development managers (no) or just business development managers... but then marketing managers should be called as marketing communications managers.

In the end titles are just titles but words in titles and their defined meanings in the organization indicate the mindset of the company. Thank god sales is so much more simple with its definition.