Home | Books | Blog | Learning Fountains | L.F. Directory | About me | Site Map Replace the Marketing Culture with the Learning Culture by Paul "the soaring" Siegel I recently read in a Marketing textbook that there have been three eras: THE PRODUCTION ERA - From the start of the Industrial Revolution until about 1930, business was concerned primarily with manufacturing products THE SALES ERA - Between the '30s and the '50s business aggressively sold products through emotional and manipulative sales pitches THE MARKETING ERA - Between the '50s and now marketing became a rigorous discipline whose purpose was to discover and then satisfy buyers' needs and wants. And we are now in the MARKETING CULTURE. We talk about the marketing mix - product, pricing, distribution and promotion - which entangles all parts of the corporation. The MARKETING CULTURE is expressed through market research, forecasting and planning, and technological and other forms of innovation. The MARKETING CULTURE is geared to the selling of products and services to particular demographic groups. But society has changed: The Industrial Society is gone. The emphasis today is on services, especially intellectual services. We must think of clients, not customers. Demographic studies worked when we could design products for specific groups. Their value for services are not so great. Forecasting the future is difficult. Change is so rapid today that we can't take the time to forecast and then develop 1-year and 5-year plans. Listen to what Kim Polese, CEO of Marimba says: "Companies that develop five-year plans for the Internet are "blowing it" because life on the World Wide Web does not move in annual increments." We must be continuously learning in order to stay on top of things. Innovation may lead us astray. We may spend so much time developing new technologies, which we later find the client does not want. Society has changed and so must our marketing change. Instead of innovating products and services, we need to focus on the needs of clients. Instead of marketing to groups, we need to market to individuals. Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, in their acclaimed book, "Enterprise One to One," say we need to develop "learning relationships" with our clients. But, instead of merely learning the needs of the clients (as they imply), we need to develop mutual learning arrangements with our clients. Each of us in the company, regardless of our function, needs to be constantly learning. Also, each of us needs to help those we communicate with on the outside, whether they be associates, vendors or clients, in their learning. Mutual learning will help all of us with our bottom-line. The best way to market today is by developing a LEARNING CULTURE. Home | Books | Blog | Learning Fountains | L.F. Directory | About me | Site Map Copyright 2003 - 5 Paul Siegel. Your email address will not be used or sold for unwanted solicitations.