EFFECT[ive] Marketing…Connecting Real-Life Businesses with their Online Market

Marketing isn’t just for marketers any more (not that it ever really was). It’s a crucial core task for everyone in every level of every operation in every industry. So isn’t about time we drop the “marketing–speak”?

Often, jargon, the shorthand language subset peculiar to a particular profession or industry, serves a valuable purpose: it allows practitioners to communicate efficiently with their peers where otherwise they’d have to fall back on the lengthy terminology or phrases that that jargon fills in for. It allows medical professionals to say “stat” instead of “I need you to drop what you’re doing and come right away” (by which time the patient could already be a goner), and computer experts to use terms like API, CMOS, DDR and POP3 instead of, well…who really knows what those guys are talking about?

But too much of the time, jargon is simply used to demonstrate to outsiders that the jargonistas are part of an elite group, a secret club that wants you to know that you can’t play in their treehouse. And since you obviously aren’t one of them, you need to hire them because they know stuff you don’t.

IMHO (See? I can use jargon, too!), that’s definitely the case in the marketing industry—traditional and traditionally–trained marketers work in an arena where quantification is difficult, often impossible, and where keeping the flow of billable hours going often depends more on maintaining the impression of producing results than on actual results.

“Benefit segmentation,” “AIO,” “positioning,” “CPM.” The seemingly limitless lexicon of terms like these certainly has actual meaning and value among marketing professionals, but when they come out from behind the closed doors of the war room and toss them around in front of clients or the public, it’s not only not done for efficiency or clarity of communication, it actually impedes communication.

But “branding”? That one is different. That one just makes my skin crawl. And I hear it all day, every day. I’m sure you do, too.

You have to develop your brand. You need to protect your  brand. You’ve got to brand your brand. And when you brand your brand, you’ll be branding. Does anyone really know what it means? Am I the only one who’s sick of it?

So, at risk of life and limb and my shot at membership in the Marketing Illuminati, I’m about to reveal a secret guarded jealously for generations by black–robed monks (or at least guys in vested suits).

“Branding” is another word for reputation.

That’s it. That’s the big secret. Your brand is your reputation (or if you’re stuck in the 90s, your rep). Is it important to develop and protect your business’s reputation? Absolutely. Your reputation is everything. And focusing on it, guarding it jealously, proactively improving it by diligently, patiently improving your level of service and your connection to and communication with your customers, and your awareness of and reaction to what’s being said about you on the Web, is the single best strategy for growing your business over the long haul.

But please—can you do all that without calling it “branding”?

And the next time a marketer or salesperson starts tossing out terms you don’t know, politely stop them and ask them to start from the beginning in plain English. If they can’t do it, kick them out or run away. And if they talk about branding, you have my permission to hurt them.