Marketing is four step processes that begin with analyzing and defining a qualified universe of potential buyers.
After this first phase in the marketing process, a true marketing effort succeeds in capturing the attention of the intended buyers within the targeted universe.
Third systematic effort must be put into getting the prospects to accept the concepts or propositions offered via the marketing effort.
Finally with all three of the previous steps achieved, the marketer must convert the prospective buyer into an actual buyer by getting them to take the desired action (purchase, rent, call, download, subscribe, refer, sell, follow the law, become a member etc.)
But, if we step back further, I can offer you another definition of marketing, I’ve created perhaps simpler and universal in its relevance;
“Marketing is the ongoing process of moving people closer to making a decision to purchase, use, follow, refer, upload, download, obey, reject, conform, become complacent to someone else’s products, services or values. Simply if it does not facilitate sales, then it’s not marketing.”
With this definition in mind, you can appreciate the power of marketing. Marketing never ceases. Every decision we make spawns from the left or right brain making the more compelling marketing proposition.
What feels good versus what is practical. What you want versus what you need. The desire to live in the moment versus the desire to plan ahead. The desire to make passionate love to the stranger standing next to you versus the desire to be faithful to your partner.
Marketing can be a catalyst to change. And is an equally powerful way to preserve the status quo. Often he, who markets best, gets the change he advocates.
At least until a better marketing machine arises
Every effort warrants the creation of a marketing machine. At any moment hundreds of them are swirling around you invisibly, vying for your dollars, your allegiance, your time and your soul.
Each marketing machine employs various means of persuasion to move you closer to make a decision to purchase, use follow, refer, upload, download, obey, reject, conform, and become complacent to another person’s, society’s or organization’s values.
Ultimately in every matter, the winning marketing machine makes the choices for you. Since you came into this world, you have been bathed, swaddled, diapered, showered, paddled with and intravenously hooked up to hundred of marketing machines.
A marketing machine taught you how to think, and how to buy or sell, how to act like a man or woman, how to make love, how to treat people, how and who to love and who to hate, how to fit in and how to play the game of hide and seek with your friends.
The machine tells how you should think and what you should say; and you comply. You play your role. You buy and sell your goods. You download music in your cell phone. You start making faith to your best friends. You chose to marry him or her. You chose to divorce him or her. You chose your career. You chose your college.
Marketing machines built the templates for the decisions you make. No matter what you choose, even if you choose nothing, the choice was pre-scripted by the best marketing machine.
No place to run.
Start with 2500+ marketing messages thrown at you daily. Add to that equation a list of rehearsed options ebbing through the mass media into your brain.
As an informed member of society, you do what the best built machine wants you to do, and think what they want you to think. No thought, however unique is spontaneous.
What is sexy? What is right or wrong? What is fashionable or passé? What is fringe or what is mainstream? What is a good idea or what is a bad idea?
What is considered porn and what is considered a high art? Who is the better candidate? With which sports teams, country or war does God side? Is a leader of movement a terrorist or a messiah? Is someone a cold blooded killer or a patriotic hero?
Have you answered these questions- and others depends on which marketing machines succeed in thrusting their needles in your veins.
And once attached, the machine pumps their proprietary drugs (a blend of words, images and sounds that attempt to quench your thirst or hope, escape, love and lust and power) into you.
Addicted to HELP
You and I are conditioned to seek out the intoxicating outcomes that the marketing machine promise: Hope, Love/Lust, Escape and Power (H.E.L.P.). We are addicted to H.E.L.P. and go to great lengths to get it. Let’s look at the components more closely.
H-Hope:
Behind every prayer, every vote, and every celebration to usher in a new year is the quest for hope. People hope for a better future, hope that life will cut them a break, and hope that they will live a legacy.
Most hope that there is life after death, that the just will have their reward and that innocent will be avenged. Most hope that their loved ones will be faithful. People hope that they can pay the bills, hope that their children will turn out normal, hope that their business will survive.
Hope is a multi-billion dollar industry. Those who create their marketing machines know that most customers will spend their last cent if it buys them hope. The sweeter the hope, the more valuable it becomes.
E-Escape:
People want to escape the small and utterly ordinary lives they lead. They want to escape the feeling that life has passed them by. They want to escape getting older, escape their jobs, escape their dysfunctional parents and escape the feelings of regret that remains every years of playing it safe.
In a perpetual state of denial, people search for the drug, the cocktail, the shoes, the car, the church or the lover that will whisk them from their real and imagined prisons.
The cruelest joke is that the marketing machines often manufacture the symptoms that mandate escape (i.e.: depression, fast food, marriage) and then create the cures to treat the symptoms (drugs, diets, divorced lawyers).
L-love/Lust:
Love makes us crazy. Yet we are addicted to the pursuit of love, even when it takes us to unfamiliar places. Most want to hear the words, “I love you” be it from a soul mate, a drunken stranger in a smoked filled bar, or even a celebrity hawking shampoo on TV.
And if only our pets could talk! They will love us. Wouldn’t they?
We want to be wanted. For every hour spend on a treadmill, every Botox injection, or every new piece of clothing added to our already stuffed closet we want to be lusted for. It is the same for those who pursue the advanced college degree or endure the painful induction ceremonies to member of a group , fraternity or club.
We want to know that we make others feel alive in their presence. We want to earn the love of the abusive parent, to feel the love of the God. We want it all and pay any price or endure any absurdity to get it.
P-Power:
We want power over others, power to be exempt from the rules, and power to beat the odds. Through elaborate rituals, incantations and mythology we impart power to all kinds of things and to all kinds of people.
The shaman, the politician, the rabbit’s foot and the blue pill are only as powerful as the people who chose to believe in them. We chose power because it let’s us feel secure.
We revel in the truth that power is un-transferable. Can bigger cars, bigger purchases, bigger weapons and bigger lawyers lead to power, or to respect or actual supremacy? No. But, that truth won’t keep the marketing machines from trying to convince you otherwise.
These ingredients ensure each marketing machines’ continuity. In fact, the marketing machines survive in part thanks to the persistent belief that a product or service, religious or political ideology can actually provide access to H.E.L.P. permanently or temporarily. You will find these elements at the core of each and every successful marketing campaign.
As long as you get your daily fix of H.E.L.P., you will do whatever the machines tell you do.
Before you know it, you are hooked. Addiction completed, the marketing machine can do whatever its creator commands.
The best machines patiently lay the groundwork and discreetly cultivate their biases and agendas into your brain years before you are even aware of what your answers, opinions and feeling ought to be!
As long as the high can be sustained, the marketing machines map out your answers, opinions, feelings toward their specific products, services, causes or ideologies. The place between bliss and addiction is indistinguishable. You want more of what makes you feel good.
So, it’s only natural that every day you gladly jump into your defined roles and go alone with it. It’s easy to rationalize why you act like an obedient dog, isn’t it? You know the standard lines by heart:
ü Because that’s the way I have always done it
ü Because the Bible tells me so (or Koran, Bhagwat Gita, Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia etc)
ü This is just who I am
ü Ours is not to reason why
ü We tried that once and it didn’t work
ü What will the neighbors (friends, family, relatives, colleagues, boss, the woman who gossips every afternoon with my mom etc) think about us
ü We have to wait for the right time
ü Our time has passed
ü Who am I to question the system?
ü We just have to deal with the cards, who are we to create those?
ü We aren’t paid to think
ü But it was on sale
ü Everyone is wearing (or watching, reading, buying, eating, drinking) it
ü If the president or Prime Minister says, so it has to be
These are words and excuses of the addicted, and proof that the marketing machines are functioning as they should.
Confusion and apathy
When more than one machine latches onto you, indecision and confusion arise. We literally freeze until one machine succeeds in overriding the other or comes up with a more addictive drug.
Watching the same images repeatedly and listening to the same arguments desensitizes us. The competing points of view work so hard to get leverage that they overwhelm our senses. We go numb. The dosage has to be increased. Now coma and apathy.
This apathy and inaction is good for some and bad for others. Change in any direction is easy when no one cares and no one looks up. When no one questions anyone about anything, it becomes relatively easy to take control.
It’s good for politicians who only need a few hundred of the faithful to turn out and vote for their re-election or pass legislation that favors lobbyists. Good for investors who put profits over people and economies over environment.
It’s bad for people enlightened enough to step back and see the machines for what they are and what they do to others. Bad for people who claim to value democracy. Bad for companies who need consumption to generate profits.
The last sentence is worth reading again because it offers an option for those who wish to destroy the marketing machines.
If you want to cause marketing machines to be destroyed, stop the cash flow. Get by without it. Under consume. Resist the urge to buy something else or trade-up. Return your purchase for a refund within 30 days. Find a new distributor.
Share your single purchase with thousands of other people for free so they don’t have to buy it. Cut your credit cards and frequent buyer cards in half. Make your own open source version. Create your own currency.
Don’t lease it, don’t rent it, don’t recommend it, don’t renew your contract of subscription, and don’t contribute to the cause. Don’t obey.
This kind of implosion takes the combined, sustained efforts of dozens, hundreds or perhaps thousands of like-minded people. You will have to create your own marketing machine. Kind of ironic.
If implosion isn’t possible you can at least disconnect from the marketing machine in three steps (not easy, but possible).
1. Let go off the excuses and rational lies listed above
2. Actively question the scripts fed to you by the marketing machines; all of them
3. Stop seeking H.E.L.P. Break your addiction. Hope is not a strategy anyway. Escape is an illusion used to sell product since there is nothing to escape from. Love yourself and how you look without a single iota of clothing, make up gel, and supplement cleanser, jewelers or accessories. That’s love. Power comes to those who are most willing to relinquish it. The more you horde, the less you have.
I see marketing as the quintessential tree of knowledge
To eat or not to eat. To share or not to share. To stay with your current supplier or choose another one with a more compelling offer. Marketing is neither inherently good nor evil. It’s all about who programs the machine.
In the hands of the small-minded fool, marketing has been used to hurt, lie, promote bigotry and usurp the rights of other to live free and pursue happiness.
In the hands of well-intentioned, marketing is the bedrock upon which civilians are built. A strong marketing machine is at the heart of every reform and revolution. The progress brought about through marketing is rarely painless, but always necessary.
So you decide and answer the question, “WHO SHOULD CONTROL THE MARKETING MACHINE AND HOW???”
-INSPIRED BY “CREATIVE SALES AND MARKETING MANUAL” BY BRIAN NORRIS