Is marketing Really Dead?

The first glimpse of the title of this article, I was shocked – how could marketing be dead? If so, what is the meaning for me to learning it right now? After read through the article, I found that “marketing is dead” actually is refer to the traditional marketing. Instead, the author, Bill Lee, pointed out that the future marketing will be replaced by social media which is more customer-oriented. However, I need to argue about Bill’s opinions somehow.

First of all, I have to admit that I agree with the author to some extent. The three parts of evidence Bill provided is objective and persuasive. In real life, Take me as an example, as a customer, I always look up the information or comments from internet before I make the decision for my purchase. Also, CEO nowadays pays more attention to the result instead of the process. For instance, CEO from my company currently laid of many employees from marketing department, because the company keeps losing money. Often, marketing is the department that takes the most responsibility for the company’s equity. In addition, the tendency of marketing today is more about the experience – user experience, feedback, comments, etc. Just like a company would not hire people who have no related experience, and know nothing about the filed.

Because there is a saying that "customers are gods", the four ways Bill mentioned that how marketing should guide the customers are all from the customers’ aspects. Nevertheless, those four means are partially, but not absolutely right.

To restore community marketing is applicable, because customers need a place to exchange opinions and user experience. The problem is that the comments from the customers are subjective – everyone has different thoughts on one thing, just like two leaves are the same. Moreover, it is hard for the company to define whether all the feedback is from the real customers or not. Sometimes, competitors may hire people to defame their rival’s products or service. It would be better if the customer can combine the community information with the traditional marketing information from the company. Finding customer influencers and assist them to establish social capital is a win-win solution for both company and customers. However, it is not easy to do so, and most of the customers they actually prefer the real incentives, such as coupons and discounts, rather than networking abilities. The part about getting customer advocates involved is a great idea from my aspect. It is not only because referral is more persuasive, but also has more infection to the target customers.

In my point of view, Bill’s future marketing is more like a pull marketing strategy, and traditional marketing from his opinion is nothing but a push marketing strategy. In real life, pull strategy is more ideal, but push strategy, such as adverting is essential. Without push strategy, how could the company reach the mass customers at first step? The best and most effective way would be combine those two strategies as push-pull strategy. Although digital marketing may become more popular in the future, marketers should not fully abandon traditional marketing.

 

Reference: Bill Lee, Marketing is Dead

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/08/marketing_is_dead.html