So just what is the mission of marketing anyway?

Quick try this test. Go around your company and ask the VPs, Sr. VPs, and C-level executives to write what they are in charge of on the back of their business cards. Everyone should be able to with one exception: Marketing.

Marketing people find this exercise to be a challenge. Marketing isn’t synonymous with advertising and the profession will be marginalized if we don’t tie what we do not to buying marketing services but to business results. So here’s what we think marketing’s mission should and must be:

to create new customers, retain the customers you have and grow them in value, and migrate existing customer through a portfolio of products