Marketing is everything

Technology is creating customer choice, and choice is altering the marketplace. Gone are the days of the marketer as salesperson. Gone as well is marketing that tries to trick the customer into buying whatever the company makes. There is a new paradigm for marketing, a model that depends on the marketer's knowledge, experience, and ability to integrate the customer and the company. Six principles are at the heart of the new marketing. The first, "Marketing is everything and everything is marketing," suggests that marketing is like quality. It is not a function but an all-pervasive way of doing business. The second, "The goal of marketing is to own the market, not just to sell the product," is a remedy for companies that adopt a limiting "market-share mentality." When you own a market, you lead the market. The third principle says that "marketing evolves as technology evolves." Programmable technology means that companies can promise customers "any thing, any way, any time." Now marketing is evolving to deliver on that promise. The fourth principle, "Marketing moves from monologue to dialogue," argues that advertising is obsolete. Talking at customers is no longer useful. The new marketing requires a feedback loop--a dialogue between company and customer. The fifth principle says that "marketing a product is marketing a service is marketing a product." The line between the categories is fast eroding: the best manufacturing companies provide great service, the best service companies think of themselves as offering high-quality products. The sixth principle, "Technology markets technology," points out the inevitable marriage of marketing and technology and predicts the emergence of marketing workstations, a marketing counterpart to engineers' CAD/CAM systems.