What is the job of the Marketing team?

One of my favorite things to do is taking calls from recruiters. A lot of marketers turn down recruiting calls just because they aren't actively looking, not realizing that it's some of the highest ROI activities they can do.

In addition to being able to calibrate my value in the market and learn about other businesses, talking to other companies who are evaluating your marketing aptitude helps you stress-test your understanding of marketing.

I was asked this question recently:

How do you think about the role of marketing in a business? What do you think the job of the marketing team is?

I answered by drawing this picture:

In my view, Marketing's job is manage these 4 circles.

Marketing's job is to contribute to strategy while leading tactical activities

Notice that it's not just "increase awareness" or "get leads for the sales team." I think Marketing plays a much bigger role in the business.

Strategically, marketing's job is contribute to the understanding of these:

The TAM. How big is the opportunity?

Who else is going after it, or how are potential customers currently dealing with the "problem" we're trying to solve?

What does a "good fit" or ICP looks like?

This means helping define positioning within the TAM.

Marketing then has a responsibility to realize that strategy through tactics

Increase the size of the blue circle.

This is one that few marketers understand how to do. And we're bad at explaining how this part is important. This is all the “awareness” and “share of voice” stuff that makes no sense in the short term but pays dividends down the road.

Capture as many people in the overlap as possible.

This is the job that everyone understands. Lead gen, activations, PPC, field marketing, getting people to click "download" or "install." Driving demos. This is all the short term tactics.

Marketing is not just "where blog posts come from"

This model broadens the scope of marketing. Marketing cannot be viewed as "the team that handles social media" or "that team that does events".

As an industry, we've really done ourselves a disservice by obsessing over the last point ("capture as many people in the overlap.") We're addicted to tactical case studies, reading about best practices, podcast interviews talking about a specific campaign etc, etc.

You really have to be careful not to think this is the entire job of marketing. We can, and should, strive to play a bigger role by managing all 4 circles, everyone wins in the long run.

What do you think of this model?