There’s More to Marketing Than Meets the Eye

I started my career as a management trainee in a telecommunications company in the Philippines. As part of the training program, I had the chance to do a three month rotation within the company to learn the various functions of the business. It was a blessing in disguise for a fresh graduate like me. It bought me some time to figure out which career I wanted to pursue.

After completing the program, I was given a product to manage. That’s when I realized marketing was much more complicated than I thought. So much so that I had to rethink my predisposed notions about what marking was.

Contrary to popular belief, a marketing job is not just coming up with advertisements and promotional campaigns.

While the scope of work of a product marketing manager varies from one company to the next, it usually includes an end-to-end process of understanding consumer needs, preparing business cases, developing products, and creating go-to-market strategies. Marketing requires close collaboration with every part of the business, from finance to sales, customer service to IT, and even corporate communications. It goes way beyond creating marketing campaigns.

Another common misconception is that marketers only do the creative work the customer sees. In reality, crunching numbers is a big part of the job—most marketing managers are responsible for the profit and loss of their respective brands, as.

In my marketing work, I monitor telecommunication revenue drivers such as churn rate, average traffic per user, and average revenue per user.

I was also heavily involved in the budget cycle process, wherein we would take a bottom-up approach to setting revenue targets for the year.

One of the most exciting parts of my job is building business cases. Presenting a business case is like weaving a narrative that illustrates how much capital and resources the company needs to invest, how much revenue it will deliver over time, and how all that will contribute to the company’s vision.

The challenge for every marketer, especially in a technology-driven business, is to translate technical benefits into a language that is relevant to consumers.

You don’t have to be an engineer to carry out the role, but you do have to be patient and determined to understand all the technical specifications of your products. Otherwise, you won’t be able to come up with marketing materials that matter to the target market.

Marketing is a field with a vast, ever-expanding scope. As a marketer, you know that there are a million stories you share to let the world know about your product. It’s your job to pick the one truthful, impactful story that will capture your target market’s attention.