What do marketing people do if they're not dealing with things marketing the business?

if it's got the logo on it it's marketing's responsibility this is a really clear sign does not understand what marketing truly is but I'm gonna deconstruct why this happens and how you can overcome it and how you can deal with perfectly valid comments like this one from Scott so when you asked okay I want you to sort out the bathroom doors I want you to sort out the stickers for the bins I want you to order umbrellas for us what is happening is the people in your company are thinking that logo equals marketing but they're missing a huge opportunity by not understanding the true definition of marketing so let's go back a few years in B2B marketing in B2B marketing marketing was basically supporting the sales activities because we didn't have anything digital anything internet based and super important point people made the decisions in meetings with salespeople they'd have a call with a salesperson they'd have an information booklet from the salesperson there was no real interaction in the old days a lot of our Gen X leaders a lot of our people even older than Gen X not the Gen X is old my husband's Gen X and they are still stuck in the place where in say the even the year 2000 26 years ago even to me doesn't feel that long ago where marketing was there to make the sales cycle easier through things like oh we're hosting a golf day get some branded umbrellas really important thing but what's happened now is marketing's role has dramatically shift shifted people research and make way more choices online so even in the most traditional B2B companies you will notice that your sales people are finding it harder to get meetings to get someone on the phone because they're able to really scour your website for customer success stories they're able to network with other people on LinkedIn find solutions research even using AI now to say well what approach should I take what sort of company should I use and the decision making process is made on average and B2B something like 70% the decision making process is made independently through researching online so what we wanna say to people like Scott who saying what does marketing people do if they're not dealing with things marketing the business what what I want you to say to these people is that's absolutely fine the things you're asking of me let's really look at what is more than operational sort of ordering process absolutely be in charge of where the logo is placed on an umbrella what colour the umbrella is like which um colour reference is closest to our brand pantone that's fine we get that confirmed for you and that would be our sales support admin marketing person doing that but then the operational side of reordering dealing with suppliers you know that needs to move away from us that is not strategic marketing work if it's gonna stay with marketing fine but we need someone very junior doing it because this is not marketing the business producing at branded items making stickers for the doors in house like that's a HR thing that's a facilities management thing you know the logo can be stored centrally we make the logo but we're not the person responsible for putting it on everything this is where we're missing what marketing really is what is marketing marketing is now the main growth engine of the business if done correctly so imagine your total addressable market imagine you've got 5,000 people that your company could sell to maybe you're quite niche how are we gonna get in front of those 5,000 people and get as many of them as possible to agree to a meeting with our sales people is the most effective way to do that through your sales team desperately trying to set a meeting with them which is more of a kind of cold selling technique maybe they can be at events maybe things like that absolutely can happen but marketing is gonna be the ones who keep all of those people nurtured engaged warmed up position the business correctly within the mind of those people help them see why we would be the better choice for them to choose over the other options available so that when they are in the market cause what happens to sales people is they're like can we do a project for you you know really wanna meet you can we work together and they're like looking for them at the moment okay cool I'll call you in six months what marketing does is primes that person so that when they are okay I need someone they like right those are the guys I need and that's called brand salience should a marketer focus on ordering umbrellas and putting posters in and toilets or should they be focusing on brand salience to close more deals and then have an actual pipeline based predicted return on investment that they directly contribute to which one do you want because it's absolutely fine if what you want is and I'm not I'm I'm not being passive aggressive at all all I would ask you to do is if you're going to task your marketing team with these types of things that is that is your business and if it's working if you're getting sales the way your business is set up now and you're comfortable with the level of sales stay where you are but don't ask marketing for results don't say where's the leads what have you been doing all months they've been ordering umbrellas that's what they've been doing they've been doing the millions of tasks thrown at them so there's no room for growth activities so all I ask leaders to do is is recognise they can't have both you can't have a team that set up to do sales support admin work and a growth driving marketing department you can't have both this massive mismatched miss matches come up is like we're still treating them like a sales support function results that are now absolutely possible but they don't have the time to implement.