Marketing: Exaggeration or Excitation

My "developer" friend always pulls my leg, teasing that they do the real work and we marketers just show it off — they build a canoe, and we exhibit it as the grand Titanic.

This got me thinking. Is it possible for a business to exist without marketing? Do we really exaggerate things in marketing, or do we just excite them?

The first question was a no-brainer. I strongly believe no business can exist without marketing of some kind. A customer has to be aware that a solution exists in order to buy it, and that awareness — whether from a word of mouth or a billboard — is marketing after all.

Coming to the second allegation, that we "exaggerate": from the assurance of a non-existent feature to the promise of a niche deliverable, doesn't it all come down to making a sale? A global market survey by Accenture found that 62% of consumers had encountered a broken promise from a company. Since that isn't a drop in the ocean, I wouldn't generalize that all marketers exaggerate — but the numbers show some do. So what were the effects of those exaggerations? The survey found that:

• 38% of those who experienced a broken promise switched soon after.
• 10% kept working with the company but moved some of their spending to another company in the category.
• 52% considered switching — opening the door to an eventual defection.

The survey's conclusion: "A promise is a promise." To keep a promise, you have to be capable of living up to it. The companies that managed to showcase what they could actually deliver are the ones with high customer retention. In other words, the companies that excited their deliverables rather than exaggerated them are the ones with successful sales. The lesson is to promise what is possible, rather than what a customer wants to hear. What do you think works better — promising a Titanic and delivering a canoe, or promising a canoe and delivering the best canoe there is?

A sale can come from sales or marketing efforts, but the conversion only succeeds with customer satisfaction — and that is assured only by delivering on expectations. So I think it's safe to say: there are marketers who exaggerate, but the ones who excite are the successful ones.