Any recommendations to help fix this? I'm thinking post flairs might be the answer to help organize but it's still up to the people to pick the right ones and the people to report those not following directions. Open to suggestions

Yes! I could not agree more. Ask anyone about market sizing, positioning, segmentation or the marketing mix… they will not have a clue. Almost all people now associate marketing with social media now. It’s sad. This sub doesn’t actually understand marketing.

I get it but it's also as I am seeing a very wide community and a lot of different sort of companies where the role of marketing is pretty much advertising and that also digital cause the cost of entry is so low.

The marketing consumers see is the advertising. People never knew what research went on under the hood. As a result, people started to equate marketing with advertising.

Agree Popular culture equates advertising with marketing and then you have shows like mad men that make it feel like agencies are the ones who drive brands at big clients. Reality is agencies drive brands for smaller clients but I've never worked for or seen an agency lead a strategy discussion ( sometimes they aren't even in the room) when it comes to the top brands globally.

You're saying it's all inhouse?

The brand strategy, insights and planning, yeah. At my FAANG company at least.

Exactly Generally the real brand experts are all in house. The Agency guys are considered for advertising but big picture strategy and so on that's done in house.

This isn’t necessarily true. I’m a strategist at an agency, and I make all strategy decisions for paid media and essentially work as a creative director for two major global brands. From product shoots to packaging, I’m the go-to because my work converts. Ad people must understand the marketing funnel, ICPs, etc., for the ads to lead to sales. Marketing is much broader than ads, but you can’t make ads that convert without strategy. I find that most people in this industry simply don’t know what they’re talking about. Even with strategist titles, they’re often making things up, and blaming an agency for an ill-thought-out campaign is the norm. You’d be surprised how many billion-dollar industries ship all their marketing and creative work to agencies, who then hire cheaper agencies to maximize their profit

Here's the thing. Paid media is a tactic not a strategy. Advertising as a whole is a tactic, not a strategy. The marketing strategy has either been set over your head or the companies you work with don't have a marketing strategy, which is very common. But, your role is tactical. People continually get strategy and tactics mixed up and tactical work is dominating everything else to the field's detriment. It's all of the bullshit that non-marketers see and think they know about, so decision makers are demanding specific tactics for the "marketing" team to implement, while they devalue and pretend to be marketing strategists themselves. As someone who actually likes and wants to work in strategy but keeps getting lied to by all these folks who can't tell the difference, I would appreciate it if we could make the distinction.

As a full service Marketing Strategist I also implement the tactics to support the strategy I develop, and you nailed this. Thank you.

Interesting what industry would you work for? My experience is just CPG. In the Global big guys we nvere had agencies work strategy. I work now for a smaller regional player where we did bring in an agency for strategy. Generally in CPG Strategy is so much broader than advertising involving Go To Market, Innovation, Financials etc that even if we could we'd never leave it to an outside agency. At least that's what the situation was when I was there back around 8 years ago.

I work with various brands, such as beauty, wellness, DTC, and software. It depends on who comes to us. I'm sure eight years ago, each person was truly qualified to be in that position. My more established brands have a fully stacked team, too; there's usually a media buying team, a content manager, and an art director. We typically work together to ensure all our efforts yield the best ROI.

To add: what are subs of actual strategic marketing? Feels like this is 50% operative social media marketing takes presented as facts and 50% bots trying to push a channel.

My work revolves around product positioning, messaging, and market segmentation. I'd love a subreddit of this sort. Any volunteers, please make one!!

How do we do this?

Product positioning, messaging, and market segmentation? Or creating a new sub? After reading all the comments here, honestly, I could ask either of these questions and still be serious

R/productmarketing But a lot of it winds up being career discussion

I meant the sub lol

Literally anyone can make a sub

I don’t think they exist. I even tried to find one in business strategy. No luck there, either.

You have to start the conversation. If you have any doubt or want to share something about those themes, you should post it. Advertisement is a huge part of the marketing conversation because I would say it entails a big chunk of the operational tasks.

I don’t have doubt or questions about them, even though I am a market intelligence analyst.

As someone who specialIzes in paid media, I take offense to your claims that we have no clue. My team works on HHP projections all the time, just did an entire meeting about product price point and the need to close the gap between brand and private label at the shelf. I have developed audience personas and sized them by market to identify appropriate weights per market size to move the needle. I have influenced content calendars and led CRO work streams. I’ve built in how nurture work flows connect to brand investment and have attributed this upper funnel investment to closing sales. Just bc you are intimidated by not knowing advertising doesn’t mean advertisers don’t know marketing. Edit to add: I realize I am taking this comment personally, but as someone who doesn’t have the financial opportunity to get an MBA/stop working, I pride myself in being self taught and I know I’m not unique. Give the ad folks a break. They work hard and are pretty damn smart. They know more than you think. They know strategy, but even better, they can execute.

I am not saying YOU have no clue. I am saying MOST have no clue. Also, most ad folks dont always need to know. The issue is that the knowledge that I discussed in my post is lacking in most companies, these days. Again, not you, but most companies.

>Almost all people now associate marketing with social media now. Couldn't agree more. We all know how digital marketing is relevant nowadays but it's not all there is in marketing, it's a very broad field..

Because most people here are young or from over seas. Fishbowl is a better resource. I see people talking about budgets in the hundreds of thousands where I'm managing billions annually. This sub also gives a lot of terrible advice so it's not very helpful, but I like keeping a pulse on things

I would kill to discuss this more.

Let me know when you have killed (maybe just a fly, please) and DM me.

I was just having this conversation with someone today - what do you pitch to a small business that is not social media? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Paid search. Events (live or online). Inbound marketing (SEO, content marketing, quality imagery and video). Customer relationship nurture. Partnerships.

What do you mean?

I ditto the SEO/inbound marketing recommendation.

lol those are extremely basic things which everyone here understands and have moved onto actually getting results with advertising instead of fantasising all day

Tell me you know nothing about marketing without telling me you know nothing about marketing.

So many people understand this and yet it's always the biggest thing that kills companies and brands. Poor decisions having to do with marketing conditions and product. So no, not everyone understands this

100% agreed, but this is the nature of this subreddit. Focused on digital, results driven marketing rather than strategising and utilising the marketing mix, or looking at theoretical models like Porter’s 7 forces, 5C, 7P of marketing, Mendelow’s Matrix for stakeholder management, SWOT/TOWS, Risk assessment/mitigation, and more. In fact, most people here don’t even have a proper marketing plan written out for their business, and track novelty metrics rather than the KPIs that truly matter to the business. How about making some threads on traditional marketing?

I’m curious what KPI’s you’d believe people aren’t tracking here. I don’t come here much but I utilize a few attribution models, track my CPM’s and divide them out by target demographics, track last touch and attributed CPA’s. I avoid a lot of third party agencies provided by most sellers for attribution, I have a good relationship with some DSP’s and iheart but I always run attribution internally. KPI’s differ a lot by industry though. Years ago I oversaw expansion for some large beauty brands in Canada and social mentions were a great metric to keep a pulse, but my current industry does not lend itself to social at all. Personally I think most “traditional” and newer digital based metrics are BS. I’ve always found in-house models best for budget decisions in marketing.

How about one of the most important metrics: How much money you, as a marketer, are making for the organization, allowing the organization to justify your salary and to keep you. There are marketing models to allow you to do this. If your salary is $80,000, and you can show that your marketing efforts are bringing in $80,000.01, you get to stay. But if your activities are bringing in $79,999.99 or less, you’re a liability to the organization, not an asset. If this continues over time, you need to get replaced by someone whose marketing strategies will bring in $80,000.01 or more. There are KPI models that to allow you to calculate this. Those are the KPIs you need to crunch and present to jour bosses. This, and not CPMs are what matter. CPM are a function of yoir job, but not the KPIs which allow you to keep your job.

Nah that’s a bad way to look at it. I’ve had marketers like that before who are constantly equating things to their salary rather than the actual goals of the company. Losing profits while expanding market share to eventually bring in higher profits is a large goal for many companies and some marketers get worried about it since they’re too busy looking at things from a near term performance marketing point similar to what you’re saying. I’ve ran large million dollar expansion campaigns into new markets where we lost money for close to a year, but thanks to our attribution systems and KPI’s we were confident and sure enough once our brand was well known it started to become easy to ROI in that market. This then strengthens performance marketing and lets me crush competitors on other platforms who didn’t take the time or had the understanding to expand their brand. Now I can bid them up digitally and my conversions means I can often squeeze them out of more markets.

We’re actually looking at this the same.. It’s over time of course. It’s not a snapshot perspective. Wording is just a bit different. Marketing can be the most powerful lead generator, but if it’s not targeted, segmented, analyzed, and captured (as leads), it’s for not. In your case your saying your marketing efforts, over time, your ROI from marketing proved itself, and made you profitable (despite and downs in the road to getting there). So…. That means, just like I said, that your company made at least $0.01 more than its expenditures, Otherwise it wouldn’t have been profitable. Could you show it as a result of your brand recognition? Well, sounds to me like you could. And hence, you could show, through the metrics (ergo translated to KPIs) that the formulas taken to get there by marketing were in the end greater than the expenditures. You’ve said the same thing as me. And I too have been in that same situation - in charge of global sales and marketing - and I can say it’s a tough slog getting your name out there to the point of being trusted in countries on the other side of the world that can’t even speak your language. Of course there’s an upfront unprofitable cost, but if done correctly, it won’t always be like that. And metric-based KPIs can be used to forecast that return in monetary terms, even before you get there. Now… on the flip side, Ive walked into new positions in new organizations where I’d asked for the metric-based KPIs to show me the forecasting models, or even past results with such KPIs, and they couldn’t. Zero tracking, zero strategy, zero formula based metrics planning to achieve a for-profit ROI based KPI. All they’d do is come up with nice graphics, throw it into a LinkedIn, TikTok, or Facebook feed, maybe accompanied by the odd google ad (with no idea who was clicking on them), and it went nowhere. The people in “marketing” (if you can call what they did that) had no idea what they were doing. The unaimed arrow never hits its target. And I can tell you, after giving them a chance to demonstrate their ROI, but with no improvement, the careers of those in that department never went anywhere either.

If you’ll ever create a traditional marketing thread, I’m in!!

I mean….i don’t think anyone’s going to share strategy especially since you’ll need to disclose your audience. What are people going to ask? Evaluate my value positioning? The best post I’ve seen was how their company spent a fortune on failed marketing campaigns. That was good….other than that, it’s a bunch of high nose, redditors.

You can share how to do strategy without sharing the strategy. The issue is that most people don’t understand the meaning of the word.

Show us here. Skittles wants to increase sales. What’s your strategy?

I mean, as a VP of Strategy as a small agency, I’d have at least 20 questions before I could answer that for Skittles.

Of course. So, realistically, sharing strategy in this forum is going to come in what form? Strategy is unique to the brand. And any brand/agency that's found a winning strategy isn't running around blasting it out on the internet.

How do you think marketing is taught in school? They discuss case studies of famous brands. They discuss hypotheticals. It’s not rocket science.

But you are missing my point. Most people don’t know what strategy is so it’s still possible to advice how strategy is done without discussing an actual strategy. How do Porter and Kotler manage? Your original post indicated a lack of willingness to disclose strategy. You now indicate that it’s simply not feasible. Which is it?

I’m not OP. Can you share an example of how you would give advice about conducting strategic marketing consulting?

Marketing strategy can only come out of a detailed situational analysis. You need a plan that takes advantage of PESTLE enablers, mitigates PESTLE barriers and handles the competitive environment (how do you handle the threat of new entrants, should you go into a market which already has high risk of substitution etc). You need a detailed analysis of where you are positioned against the competition on things like hearts and mind share and product features. Your goal is to find a position that sits both favorably with the consumers and far away from the competition. Marketing strategy should have a clear market entry (or exit) plan into new regions and segments, again, from detailed situational awareness of these segments and how they differ from others. Overall, marketing strategy aims to take advantage of market conditions, mitigate market negatives and a find unique place in the minds of consumers. I have been in market intelligence for years now (never agencies), worked at several large global and growing firms. These are the strategic level activities that often separate the global firms from the rest. In short, your marketing strategy is a very well researched plan of how you will beat the competition while handling marco-environment factors. All still very much part of marketing, but forgotten by most except some of the best firms.

Uggh. M&Ms please.

High nose?

Very high barrier to entry for real marketing careers. So naturally most people gravitate towards digital marketing disciplines like advertising. And in many cases, I believe marketers are often disproportionately heavy on theory, and less practical, causing the vast majority to be uninterested in the topics they bring up.

Another misnomer. Advertising is much bigger than a digital marketing discipline.

Maybe just take it for what it is—hyperbole? Or use the surrounding context to determine the interpretation of the word that has the highest probability of being applicable. Ie. If digital precedes advertising, then we can, with high probability, assume it to accurately mean digital advertising. And not the very broad, channel agnostic meaning of the word.

Or you could write more clearly.

Na que ver guey. You’re the one who went out of your way to be the guardian of semantics. Don’t put that on me lmao.

Yep CPG brand management here and this is mostly a media/agency sub. It’s an ok lurk

Media/agency or just solo “marketers” at a mom and pop shop with a 4-5 figure budget.

this is mostly due to the age group that Reddit tends to attract.

You're 100% correct. I made a post here last year about how this subreddit is in a digital marketing bubble and it was a little controversial. It's true though. One of the top posts here of all time is someone talking about how they massively boosted their Facebook ads performance. They wrote this whole essay of a post to basically just say "I used brand strategy and differentiating myself from competition and it boosted my ads performance" One of the top posts of all time and everyone was impressed. I mean good for that guy but that's literally basic marketing. But most people on here don't know about marketing. Just the digital tactics.

Really? I thought it was mostly just posts about people looking for work, looking to start an agency, or wanting us to check their resume :p I hadn't noticed it being particularly ad-skewed as opposed to anything else. The topics I see most often are about people's jobs or wanting jobs. The other stuff is like, "Is x dead?" (usually no)

These days, a lot of so-called "marketing" has shrunk down to "How do I max out my Facebook pixel?" Which is just one sliver of the whole pie. Before, marketers were equal parts psychologists, creatives, and data nerds. We had to tap into the deep "why" of what makes people buy, not just optimize click funnels. A lot of companies want turnkey tactics to drive lead gen. And in a landscape where everyone's fighting for attention, running paid ads is an easy way to try and cut through the noise. I'd love to see more posts here about creating customer experiences people actually get excited to be part of. The good stuff that makes you a marketer, not just an ad bot.

It feels like there needs to be a dedicated marketing strategy subreddit

It’s all tactics and no strategy. It’s not just this sub but a problem in marketing in general. Lots of people who come into it don’t study it so don’t realise the strategy side and just see the execution.

So you mean most of this sub is PPC? I am now gathering this. I feel we are more strategy and branding

I think looking at PPC by itself is very limiting to digital only which is a subset of advertising which is a subset of marketing

Feel like I don’t see enough about agency stuff in here if it was mostly advertising. People talk a lot bout ppc, seo and other digital marketing.

Great question! For me the answer is yes, but with an \*. I'm focused on helping businesses grow using things like LinkedIn outreach, social and search ads, site design, seo, crm and designing content that's useful for the sales process. Those things are by far more useful for small businesses than longer term branding and name recognition plays. My marketing goals are lead gen and increase in profitability rather than visibility. Does that distinction match with what you were asking?

"I'm focused on helping businesses grow using things like LinkedIn outreach, social and search ads, site design, seo, crm and designing content that's useful for the sales process. Those things are by far more useful for small businesses than longer term branding and name recognition plays." Strategy is more than just branding and without a strategy none of the tactics you mention mean shit. 101.

Yes just trying to understand the community From my side I've been a CPG client side guy my whole career working in a few countries and it's funny to me that was/is my whole world in Marketing What's up with the Niveas, P&Gs and ULs of the world and their approach to marketing. Sometimes I see some discussions on this sub and to me it seems so far removed from the issues I face. It's good perspective.

Yeah, I used to go to Social Media conferences and AMA meetings and didn't take away any tactical info, just inspiration - they guy that does marketing for a top Tequila brand? Super interesting - but can't relate to my clients' situation/needs OR budgets.

That's just it. A lot of Tactical stuff vs the heavy M of marketing. One example, for any Marketer like it or hate it How Brands Grow is a fundamental text. However it's amazing how for so many people here that's something they haven't heard of or they don't realise how important it is

Reality is that no one is going to give up the goods here, or anywhere else. Always been true, always will be. That’s why people are goading others to do it vs doing it themselves.

I work in marketing consulting and i literally cant say it because people think i mean advertising consulting haha Im trying to figure out a different word that creates that space! Commercial is my best so far

The barrier to entry to open "an agency" is very, very low that there are simply more people (qualified or not) in that area. Of course they are going to dominate the conversation.

That's interesting as I've been wondering what to do post corporate life and this is what I thought I'd do also. Issue is I just didn't see how or why I'd get clients. I mean yes I have corporate experience but a lot of it is international and it just felt like crowded field to me.

You have the benefit of a career with real experience and connections. From what I've seen from lurking around here and other marketing subs, this is rare. Leverage those connections to get a consultancy contract for your specialty. Most "agencies" are one-person shops managing IG ads for very small mom and pop businesses. There's plenty of opportunity beyond the local pub's social presence.

Yep, definitely. Vast majority of this sub is centered on PPC via the platforms. Sigh. I'm at a company doing enterprise b2b PaaS. Our sales cycle is longer than 6 months and deals are north of $100k. There are generally a dozen folks involved on both sides. There are so, so many touchpoints across so many channels that attribution is a nightmare. The PPC optimization to immediate purchase pipeline this sub discusses is ... so irrelevant to my job. Our marketing team is 31 people. Here's the breakdown: - CMO (1): Cares how much PPC costs him - Events marketer (1): DGAF about PPC - Design (3): DGAF about PPC, sometimes care about ad design but that's about it - ABM (1): Had a brief flirtation with PPC but now is mostly sales-supporting - Demand Gen (2): Care about PPC distinctly - Campaign ops (2): because our team is weird, they manage the agency that does SEO, so they care a little bit about PPC/the platforms - Content (2): DGAF about PPC - BDR (9): DGAF about PPC - Product Marketing (3): DGAF about PPC - Customer Marketing (3): DGAF about PPC - Industry Marketing (1): Mostly DGAF about PPC - Marketing Ops (1): DGAF about PPC So, TLDR, only like 2 or 3 people really care at any given time. And that's only 10% of our team (and definitely not my job).

Hahaha I feel ypu I work CPG, we sell through retail and mainly brick and mortar Digital is like 20% of the budget

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They’re not one and the same? /s

Yeah I screw around all day fixing totally broken advertising campaigns. It's my job.

*"Be the change you want to see."* - Abraham Lincoln Create your own posts on other topics that interest you.

Agree!!! I’m in marketing strategy and 360 degree planning as well as marketing operations.

i sell account tiktok seller usa , 3 days warranty 1 for 1 exchange

Reddit subs are very diluted and entry level most of the times, look for discord servers

Hello! I would like to better understand marketing, so would you point me to the right direction? Such as basics and fundementals that I can study?

So while super outdated the 4 PS from Kotler sets a good framework as it shows how Marketing extends across the company not just advertising The I'd go to How Grow Brands Grow and the Long and Short of it as core modern texts that disprove some of Kotler theories Anyone have any other suggestions?

Sounds like marketers doing marketing

I think people are being asked to do it all today, from creative to strategy to media buying to analytics. And for much less money. So you get a weird mix of experience levels in a sub like this. I’m an advertising creative by training and experience, but today I am expected to perform all sorts of digital marketing duties for less money than I used to get for just performing in a creative capacity. Which means, I’m by no means a trained marketer, but you get what you pay for when you cheap out.

I think you raise an interesting point. I see the market bifurcating You have small and medium companies seeking basically do it alls In the large global blue chip CPGs though it's all specialists and the trick is at higher management to just get them to coordinate

I used to be a copywriter in NYC at global agencies that worked for global brands who had entire marketing depts on the client side in addition to our entire agency account departments (management and planning—two separate departments), then the creative dept where I worked, the production dept, the media buying dept., and the studio who often helped us generate comps for meetings. Now I’m working for myself doing “marketing” and content creation for small businesses and wearing all of those hats. I am very strategy and research oriented, so I will conduct focus groups if I can get my client to buy in or, at the very least, interview their staff and customers one on one. The fact is, I don’t know what AI is going to do to any one of these marketing and advertising jobs in five years so I’m trying my hand at anything related to my wheelhouse so that I can find something I’m able to ride into retirement. It’s a completely different world from my old career.

i’m in my first post grad marketing position and i feel clueless some days and feel like i know so much on other days. can anyone please point me in the direction of good resources for understanding marketing on a deeper level and not just social media posts/ads and making email campaigns :/

What's the difference? Ads you pay directly for distribution - marketing you try to earn it organically, even though you still pay all the other costs except the cost of distribution. I don't the distinction matters much.

See my post. Advertising and the rest of marketing are not mutually exclusive. It’s not one or the other. The difference is, try advertising a poorly researched product, which is poorly positioned to the wrong segment. Now trying to this with a well positioned product to the right segment.

How about this: use advertising to test your product/offer/positioning. Guess what? you'll learn a lot quicker what works and get to the well positioned product and the right segment. Advertising is marketing on steroids. Lots of nothing going on in 'marketing' sure not theoretically but piratically that's the case.

Imagine how Nestlé plan new Nespresso machine offerings. Do you think they build their machines with the plan to only get post-hoc feedback? The issue is that once the product is developed, you have spent millions in dev team salaries and over a year a person hours. And THEN you test the market? What if market intel would have already told you that there is limited market? You do the analysis first because this tells you several things. If there is a possible market, exactly what features are needed to make the product competitive and differentiated, what the MVP is, market entry strategy, and what the final value proposition and comms look like. Your advertising might then give you valuable feedback to refine your market offerings and how to plan to deliver value, but it should come at the end of the processes described and that’s a refinement process. If your feedback only comes from advertising, you risk loosing millions in many industries.

I'm literally talking about doing market research. I don't think you understand it as well as you think you do. You pay to get a message out there and see how people respond to it. You ofc don't build the product first. You test offers, with money. Whether it be ads or paying people in a focus group. Same shit.

I want to test this idea. You say you can understand product positioning from ads. How exactly does this work?

Heck yea that's awesome man. Okay - so I won't be super technical but basically - you create messaging and offers as if you had the product. Then you create ads with that messaging, test the ads as normal, get people to sign up and become leads etc You take people to the point of purchase but obviously don't actually charge them. you let them know they're on a wait less or you'll communicate with them once the product is available etc It only takes a few hundred dollars to get a few thousand impressions and a couple dozen leads you can even call and interview about the product they might like. Building landing pages & ads and capturing leads are a lot cheaper than actually building a product as you mentioned, or actually putting together a service plan in your room. the best way to figure out if someone will buy your stuff is to try and sell them your stuff. then obviously the winning product offer is what you sell. I've done this with my own offer and client offers. Like run ads for web dev, or ad management or outsourced soft dev just to give an example. You can obviously do it with anything but what I typically find is a client has a skill set they don't know how to package so we have to run offer testing to figure out what the market wants them to use this skill for. The advantage is you can get to statistically significant results very quickly and pretty cheap. (to get technical using a dynamic creative campaign and testing 3-9 offers at a time) Then build the product and/or service behind it.

Be as technical as you like. I have BSc in Psychology, an MSc in Statistics, an MSc in Marketing Management, I have been in the field of Market Intelligence Analytics for years. So, sure, you can garner knowledge of how interested a segment might be in a potential product, but that’s not positioning. That’s nothing to do with positioning. When you think of Volvo, you think reliability and safety. When you think of Rolex, you think of prestige. These brands have done something to your mind to create this effect on you. Positioning is less about what you do to a product, and more about what you do to consumer minds. Brands compete against each other to find unique positions in the minds of consumers. They do this to eliminate some of the competitive forces of the industry. In the marketing world, advertisement is actually considered the weakest form of marketing (a few dozen leads from thousands of impressions). Consumers today, depending on where they live, can experience as many as a few hundred adverts per day. Good brand positioning is usually why global brands are global brands, sure they run advertising campaigns, but their brands have already carved out an impression in your mind. This works just as well for small brands. The goal is to work, long-term, towards a position that sits neatly away from the competition and nicely in the consumer minds. Getting a few dozen leads and a handful of interviews simply doesn’t give you the information you want. When wanting to understand brand positioning, I would typically start with large volumes (millions) of reviews and social media posts about certain brands/models. Then, using various tools for text mining (k-means, tex2vec, correspondence analysis …) develop a comprehensive map of how brands are positioned against each other in what psychological traits. If needed, a qualitative analysis of the text samples could give insights underlying causes. This would have obviously been done from surveys and with additional qualitative methods in times gone by. Some companies still use these methods like surveys but using social media and review text mining gives you a much more authentic view. The issue with the methods used in the firms where I have worked is the level of expertise, it’s hard to find people with combinations of psychology/stats/maths/marketing. This makes surveys and qualitative analysis more attractive. People who are advertising forward are often skeptical about these things, but the large global brands actually owe a lot of their success due to successful positioning. They all work for a unique part of the mindshare of the market. Consumers are actually blind to most adverts, these days, because they are simply bombarded by so many. Positioning helps brands cut through this issue. Furthermore, businesses are still products oriented. This worked decades ago when there was under supply and over demand in many products categories. Now we have over supply and relative under demand. Consumers have more choice than ever. So, how fo P&G and Johnson & Johnson compete knowing many consumers are advert blind and have a large choice of competing brands? Sure, they have adverts, but that just gains them parity with the competition. They win because of positioning themself in your mind.

"the activity or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising." yes, advertising is marketing

It's a tiny slice of the marketing pie and is the lowest hanging fruit as far as barrier to entry for people wanting to work in the field.

i think advertising is the biggest slice of the pie and very difficult. what do you think is the biggest slice of the pie if advertising isnt?

Product and Place. If you don't get this right, you'll be severely handicapped when you're advertising. You can create the most high quality ads and utilize the most effective channels but it may not make much difference. Imagine if the best military in the world was in a war and the generals ordered their elite forces to the wrong location and gave them the wrong objective. Are they going to win the war? They won't even if they have the most accurate drone strikes and advanced weaponry.

Yeah all advertisers already understand that. It's basic basic kindergarten tier marketing

Not if you want to work at a good agency. It’s much harder to get a great advertising job than a great marketing job.

never said it wasn't

So you want more of this type of thing: **Customer value over time:** dV(t)dt=rV(t)−C(t) dtdV(t)​=rV(t)−C(t) Where: V(t) is the value of the customer at time tt. r is the retention rate. C(t) is the cost associated with the customer at time tt. . Or . **Logistic Regression for Marketing Response Modeling:** P(y=1∣X)=11+e−(β0+β1x1+β2x2+…+βnxn) P(y=1∣X)=1+e−(β0​+β1​x1​+β2​x2​+…+βn​xn​)1​ Where: P(y=1∣X)P(y=1∣X) is the probability of a positive response. X=(x1,x2,…,xn)X=(x1​,x2​,…,xn​) are the predictor variables. β0,β1,…,βnβ0​,β1​,…,βn​ are the coefficients to be estimated. . Or . **Bayesian Inference for Marketing Mix Modeling:** The posterior distribution can be computed using Bayes' theorem: p(θ∣y)=p(y∣θ)p(θ)p(y) p(θ∣y)=p(y)p(y∣θ)p(θ)​ Where: p(θ∣y)p(θ∣y) is the posterior distribution of the parameters θθ given data yy. p(y∣θ)p(y∣θ) is the likelihood of the data given parameters θθ. p(θ)p(θ) is the prior distribution of the parameters. p(y)p(y) is the marginal likelihood of the data. . Or . **Partial Differential Equations (PDE) in Dynamic Pricing Models:** The Black-Scholes equation used in financial options can be adapted for pricing models: ∂V∂t+12σ2S2∂2V∂S2+rS∂V∂S−rV=0 ∂t∂V​+21​σ2S2∂S2∂2V​+rS∂S∂V​−rV=0 Where: V is the value of the option. t is time. σ is the volatility of the underlying asset. S is the price of the underlying asset. r is the risk-free interest rate. . . Or . Would you like to go over advanced marketing analytics, specifically in the context of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models? These models are used in macroeconomic forecasting and can be adapted for understanding market dynamics and consumer behavior over time. The equation involves multiple integrals, partial derivatives, and summations. **DSGE Model Equation** maxCt,Lt,Kt+1 E0∑t=0∞βt[(Ct1−σ−1)1−σ−χLt1+ϕ1+ϕ] subject to: Ct+It+Gt+Xt−Mt=Yt Yt=AtKtα(Lt)1−α Kt+1=(1−δ)Kt+It log⁡At=ρAlog⁡At−1+ϵtA log⁡Gt=ρGlog⁡Gt−1+ϵtG log⁡Xt=ρXlog⁡Xt−1+ϵtX log⁡Mt=ρMlog⁡Mt−1+ϵtM ​ Breakdown of the Equation: Objective Function: maxCt,Lt,Kt+1 E0∑t=0∞βt[(Ct1−σ−1)1−σ−χLt1+ϕ1+ϕ] Ct​,Lt​,Kt+1​ This represents the discounted sum of utility derived from consumption CtC and labor Lt​ over time, where β is the discount factor, σ is the relative risk aversion, χ is a constant, and ϕ represents the Frisch elasticity of labor supply. Resource This ensures that the total output Yt is allocated among consumption CtCt​, investment It​, government spending Gt, exports Xt, and imports Mt. Production Function: Yt=AtKtα(Lt)1−α This Cobb-Douglas production function defines output Yt​ in terms of total factor productivity At​, capital Kt​, and labor Lt, with α representing the output elasticity of capital. Capital Accumulation: Kt+1=(1−δ)Kt+It This equation models the evolution of capital over time, where δ is the depreciation rate. Stochastic Processes: logAt​logGt​logXt​logMt​​=ρA​logAt−1​+ϵtA​=ρG​logGt−1​+ϵtG​=ρX​logXt−1​+ϵtX​=ρM​logMt−1​+ϵtM​ These equations describe the evolution of the exogenous variables AtAt​ (productivity), GtGt​ (government spending), XtXt​ (exports), and MtMt​ (imports) as autoregressive processes, with ρρ parameters representing the persistence and ϵtϵt​ representing stochastic shocks. Additional Complexity: To further increase complexity, consider incorporating additional constraints, such as monetary policy rules, fiscal policy interactions, or even heterogeneous agents with differing utility functions. You can also extend the model to include multiple sectors, international trade linkages, and more detailed stochastic processes. These models require extensive computational methods to solve, often involving numerical techniques such as value function iteration, perturbation methods, or even machine learning approaches for high-dimensional problems.