Chapter 1

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SMART BUSINESS STRATEGIES™ - The Guide to Small Business Marketing EXCELLENCE: Chapter 1

What is Marketing? Let's go to the dictionary. The dictionary defines marketing as: "to go to market to sell."

That's what this book will teach you: how to go to market to sell. But it will also offer lessons in advertising. And what's advertising? The dictionary again: "to call public attention to in order to sell." So, by definition, if a truck farmer unloads a load of apples, the farmer is marketing the apples. If the farmer stands in front of the table and shouts hysterically, "de-e-e-licious apples, only 69 cents a pound!," the farmer is then advertising.

Both marketing and advertising are components of selling, which is what this book is really about. And both components are equally important, although practitioners of these intertwined disciplines commonly disagree...strongly.

I’ll give you an example of an agency that I’m familiar with. The agency was owned by a feisty brother and sister. Mike, the older brother, founded the agency and thus called himself the Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer. His kid sister, President and Chief of Operations. Mike considered himself an advertising man, Mary thought of herself as a marketing person. Each thought the other was next to useless.

Mike and Mary’s sibling rivalry, after simmering for five decades, boiled over when it came time to design signage for the brand new handsome, high-tech, and hard-earned headquarters. Mike wanted the signs to read:

McSWEENEY & COMPANY
Advertising, Marketing & Public Relations

Mary favored:

McSWEENEY & COMPANY
Marketing, Advertising & Public Relations

On the day before the sign man was to pick up his paint brush, the agency staff was entertained by a five-hour brother and sister screaming match. Was the firm an advertising agency or a marketing group? (Notice that in both case "Public Relations" was considered least important.) The account executives (salespeople) sided with Mary. The creative types (troops) were behind Mike. Consequently, by day’s end the family’s donnybrook was eclipsed by the interdepartmental verbal jousting, like:
"Marketing without advertising is like a car without an engine!"
"Oh yeah? Advertising without marketing is like a car without wheels!"

So it went. Morning brought calm. Overnight, without staff aggravation or intervention, Mary and Mike reached a compromise (through either the toss of a coin or fist fight we presume). They agreed that the illuminated lawn sign would declare the McSweeney’s in the "Marketing, Advertising, Public Relations" business. The huge front portal sign would announce to visitors that theirs was an Advertising, Marketing, Public Relations" agency.

Why all the fuss, prejudice and backlash? Marketing, you see, has a better curb appeal than advertising. The personalities of the McSweeneys demonstrated this fact superbly, almost poetically.

Mike the Ad Man, was loud and boisterous, an energetic rabble rouser. Mary, The Marketing Woman, was quiet and reserved…an unassuming "professional". Superficially, Mary was more appealing than Mike. So Mary served as the front person for the agency. That’s why "her" sign was out in front of the building. 

My recognition of this petty prejudice also explains the subtitle on the front cover of "Smart Business Strategies". It reads: The Guide to Small Business Marketing EXCELLENCE, not "How to Advertise and Sell Your Stuff." Marketing this book as a book on marketing was a marketing decision. But as Mike would stridently remind us, it’s also good advertising!