Marketers are savvy.

Marketers make you want what you don’t need. Marketers embed a desire whether you’re hot to trot or not.

Marketers are the Ambassadors of Quan for sales targets and brand focus.

Or are they?

Does your decision rest on your head or your heart? Is there an emotional reason for buying something or a logical one?

Does it matter? As long as you buy, the marketer’s job is done, right?

Maybe, maybe not.

Take a look at some of the key tools in marketing’s make-up:

• Target markets
• Products
• Promotion
• Distribution
• Pricing
• Support services

These aren’t all that marketing does, but they’re the ones that need to be done well to succeed and measure the success. Savvy marketers would use a combination of these and instill a want for a product or service, collect the check and move on. Game over, new challengers please.

That was then; this is now

Today, marketing is different. Today, consumer marketing is the new tool-set. Communication channels have changed and the message distribution model has changed with it.

Today, it’s not word of mouth but world of mouth that’s leading the charge of marketing. Services like Twitter, blogs, Youtube, citizen journalism and more mean a single marketing message isn’t enough anymore.

Consumers no longer like to be told what they want; they like to be asked what they need. Want is the old; need is the present and the future.

But not everyone’s on board with this idea.

Companies are still spending thousands, and often millions, on a message that isn’t being heard. Or if it’s being heard, it isn’t being listened to. Marketing agencies are just as at fault – many still cling to the power base they used to have and feel they can ride out the storm that is social media.

After all, what do us consumers know, right? Wrong.

Today, we’re connected in ways that marketers can only dream off. We have instant access to the best information on anything we need. We’re now the tool-set that used to be the sole domain of the marketer.

And still many don’t get this. And they wonder why results are crap.

To paraphrase The Cluetrain Manifesto:

“When we’re not busy being your ‘target market’, many of us are your people. We’d rather be talking to friends online than watching the clock. That would get your name around better than your entire million dollar website. But you tell us speaking to the market is Marketing’s job.”

It is marketing’s job; but today the target audience is the marketer.

We’re your people too, marketers – isn’t it about time you opened up to our tool-set?

photo credit: Kippras