It’s rare to have such a calm day—sleeping in until noon, waking up to eat, having coffee, play with my son, and writing. The soft, purring presence beside me keeps glancing around curiously…
Marketing is, at its core, a psychological game. One day, I might develop this perspective into my own theory. For now, I fully agree with @SteveMcKee’s statement:
“Marketing is everything.”
And the more I work, the clearer this becomes.
When you grasp this truth, it becomes obvious that a marketer needs to know as much as possible about everything surrounding their product. Absolutely everything.
One of marketing’s crucial functions is profit maximization, which essentially boils down to reducing costs and increasing revenue simultaneously.
Profit maximization = Cut costs + Boost revenue.
It’s simple in theory, but in practice, achieving this requires a profound understanding of the product. With countless types of costs, how do you determine which ones can be reduced and how?
In one operations meeting, the company raised an issue: this month, costs had increased unusually, including office supplies and electricity—each up by 5%-10%.
So, what’s a solution for a restaurant to cut electricity costs? Aside from promoting conscientious usage, one suggestion was to separate electricity zones and install switches for each area, ensuring that only the necessary zones were lit. Of course, arriving at this solution involved thorough discussions among leadership and department heads, based on detailed analysis of electricity usage patterns.
And for cutting office supply costs? Stop providing certain reusable items to encourage employees to maximize their use, like staples and document folders.
If we consider marketing as a business unit, are these tasks within a marketer’s responsibility? The answer is yes.
In reality, marketing is far from the theories we study in textbooks. It’s not just about flashy media campaigns or pinpointing target customers and analyzing their interactions with your brand. At its heart, marketing begins with the product.
A marketer must be obsessed with the product.
Do you truly understand your product on a deep level?
If your product is a restaurant, beyond curating the menu and ensuring food safety, consider the demeanor of the security guard or the cashier. A bad customer experience caused by these touchpoints could result in an irreversible cost compared to the revenue they generate.
How many types of costs does your company have each month? How can you reduce them? Electricity bills, gas, cleaning, employee benefits—all these eat directly into your profit margins. You cannot truly “optimize” profit without addressing cost reduction alongside revenue growth. Cutting costs in specific areas demands a solid understanding of all elements related to your product.
Take employee benefits as an example. To establish a fair reward-and-penalty system and minimize financial loss, you might need to speak individually with employees to understand their needs. This way, you can develop policies that best suit the majority. Disengaged employees are also a form of cost—your company may be investing in someone with low commitment, and when they leave, you’ll spend additional resources onboarding a new hire.
In reality, marketing is about solving internal organizational and product-related issues first. Only after that do you focus on external efforts—finding customers, building communities, and driving sustainable growth.
Of course, you don’t have to physically rewire the building’s electrical system yourself, but you should know enough about your environment to propose specific solutions.
Unless you think these things are unrelated to your role as a marketer.
If you do think they’re part of your role, there’s a vast amount of knowledge beyond marketing to explore—like electrical systems or human psychology. Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
Understand your product, but also everything that lies behind it.
That’s why marketing feels endless.
P.S. While optimizing profit is a critical function of marketing, it should never be the sole purpose of a business. Peter Drucker’s famous words come to mind:
