Marketing vs. Marketing communication

How the two are different, in a different way than you think

Over the last couple of years I’ve had the good fortune to work close by one of the — in my view — top marketing professionals in The Netherlands. Roel Stavorinus is very influential and fairly well-known as a branding and identity specialist in my country. It’s really a pity only few of his publications are available in English.

Over the last year we’ve worked more closely together than before. Next to learning a lot more about branding and identity, I also had a key breakthrough in my thinking about marketing, thanks in part to Roel.

Marketing does not equal marketing communication

Marketing is not just pushing out content and talking about your business, what sets you apart from competitors and how you’ve helped other customers ‘just like you’. I specialize in content strategy, but marketing is much more than creating the right strategic marketing mix based on carefully crafted and validated personas and customer journeys.

Too often do marketers, in their work in organizations and when talking or writing about marketing, implicitly equate marketing with marketing communications. I have been one of them.

Matching your self-actualization with the customer’s

I had realized and even written before that marketing, in my view, essentially has four functions: to feed the business and management with insights about broad trends in the market and signaling changing customer needs and behavior; to ensure integer, transparent and effective communications; to manage the power of the brand and to provide sales with enough hot leads to score on.

But that’s not what I was doing. Nor what we have been doing as a team. And I’ve come to a realization about what marketing is, at its core, that will and does make it easier for me to work more effectively as a marketer:

Marketing is the process of matching a business’ capabilities, knowledge, skills and mission to a customer’s capabilities, knowledge, skills and mission. The place where the customer lacks a given set of skills, tools, products, knowledge and capabilities — a problem, or challenge to achieving his mission- should be where the sweet spot is where your company or business perfectly fits in.

It’s about fulfilling your mission, following your drive, and actualizing your own full potential, to help others reach their own. It’s about growth, which is best done cyclically and together.

Marketing = communication

Marketing at its core is the creation of a nicely fitting value proposition. A value proposition that perfectly fits the sweet spot between your mission and capabilities, and the customer’s needs. One that you can prove to work. And one that offers a clearly defined value for a clearly defined price.

You arrive at that spot by using tools and methods such as the Value Proposition Canvas. This tool by the way is also very practical for talking and thinking about marketing content.

And the process through which you test your ideas and the match with your target group’s needs is what start-up culture calls ‘validation’. Validate, validate, validate. From your initial idea, to the beta product through to the pricing, communications and content.

How do you validate all of this? By talking to your customers and other people in your target market. So… that means that marketing at its core is communication. Just differently from what you might have thought before. And probably differently from what a lot of us are doing.

Was this article helpful, meaningful and relevant to you? What are your thoughts on the whole and on specific points? I’d love to hear from you in the comments section! Claps are also very much appreciated.