Why I Like Marketing

Playing with spreadsheets is fun; some would say this is the sign of an accountant at heart. But to me marketing is about building a successful business. You set goals, find out what your customers want, check you can provide the product at a profit and try to promote the product. Whether its pulling together a product-marketing plan, or putting together your marketing campaign budget, you really have to use a spreadsheet at some point.

Budget spreadsheets are especially thrilling to me. Why, well you get to forecast the future. Sometimes your crystal ball reveals all and your assumptions hit sales pay dirt but most of the time things don't go as well as you hoped. And you have to explain why your marketing campaigns were miserable. "err...well we won't do that again!"

Balance sheets and spreadsheets are the life and blood of marketing, especially Internet marketing. Numbers do not lie. The fun comes when things do go right; you succeed in getting rid of enough bad programs and campaigns that you actually do make a profit. Oh, rats I may be giving the game away here, marketing is more based on failure than success, on the cutting room floor rather than the bright lights; on planning for red ink rather than blue, and on being vigilant enough but not trigger-happy too much to know when to pull a campaign.

Posted by johncass at April 11, 2006 4:23 PM