Finally, a post defending marketers everywhere…

It’s easy for a company to look at their success and either credit or blame the marketing team.

Our holiday promotion is tanking, what’s wrong with it? Or, our back to school special crushed last year’s sales targets, what a great campaign!

As a marketer, I’d love to take credit for the wins and find a scapegoat for the failures. But the truth is, more times than not, it’s not the marketing team who is responsible for either.

It’s important for business owners and managers (and young marketers) to realize that it all starts with the product. If you have a crap product, you can’t blame marketing when it doesn’t sell. And in the same way, a superior product can almost sell itself.

To be clear, I’m not making the argument that marketing is not important, or effective. But it has its limits. So here’s a message to all the young marketers out there who have taken heat from managers complaining about poor performance, or feel the pressure to improve the effectiveness of your sales and ad channels…

First, take a long hard look at what you’re selling.