Understanding Marketing vs Marcomms

Marketing

Marketing is the strategic process of compelling a commercially-valuable (and mutually-beneficial) action. The person or group taking the action must want to take it.

The core elements of marketing are well documented by academics and practitioners — the ‘four Ps’ — Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Promotion is often called Marketing Communication.

Validating assumptions in each of these core elements provides the recipe for effective marketing strategies.

There are many models and tools for validating assumptions in three of the four elements — from Eric Ries’s Lean Startup Methodology to Steve Blank’s Customer Development Method and Alex Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas.

Marketing Communications

When many practitioners talk about marketing they are really only talking about marketing communications — the strategic process of compelling a person or group to take a specific action. Effective marketing communications relies on a number of key elements: a compelling value proposition, clear positioning, a clear call-to-action and delivering the CTA via an appropriate mechanism.

The Lean Communications Framework™ contains canvases for testing both marketing and marketing communications hypotheses. By testing assumptions it is possible to increase the chances of both marketing and marketing communications success.