What is the Purpose of Marketing?

For a lot of teams, creating a digital marketing strategy has always been somewhat vague.

And then the world changed forever on November 30, 2022. That was the day millions of people first experienced ChatGPT and suddenly realized that everything we thought we knew about information, search, and the internet was about to be transformed.

If you feel like the ground is shifting beneath your feet, that’s because it is. We’re currently experiencing a fundamental reimagining of how humans interact with information.

For years, we’ve been told that marketing's job is to "build brand awareness" or "drive traffic." But in a world where artificial intelligence can instantly generate answers to any question, we have to ask: What does it truly mean to be trusted?

Trust is the core of the Endless Customers System™ that we teach and use with our clients to help them become the most known and trusted brand in their market. Whether you work with us or not, we hope all businesses chose to embrace transparency, candor, and trust.

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Why Are We All Facing A Marketing Identity Crisis?

Whether you are a CEO or a marketing manager, you’ve likely felt a serious identity crisis lately. You’re constantly having to justify what you are doing, and why your work is valuable.

Let's take a look at who can be effected by a marketing strategy:

The Stressed Business Leader

If you’re leading a company, you might be asking yourself why customer acquisition is harder than ever.

You’ve poured your heart and soul into your product, yet deals are stalling and website traffic is drying up. You know the market changes fast, and you're wondering what you need to do to protect your position.

The Misunderstood Marketing Head

You love your team and believe in your work, but you’re tired of having to prove your worth every single week.

You see organic traffic nosediving, not because your content is bad, but because search engines have changed the rules of the game. You’re trying to right the ship, but you aren't always sure you’re pointed in the right direction.

The Overwhelmed "Worker Bee"

You are the marketing manager or content specialist on the front lines.

You just want to understand what success looks like and how you’re supposed to be supporting the rest of the company. You’re tired of your hard work being labeled as "fluffy" or "hollow" because it doesn't seem to connect directly to the bottom line.

What Is The True Purpose Of Marketing?

The core purpose of marketing is to generate revenue for a brand, company, or organization. Marketing teams achieve this through the execution of strategic digital activities that drive traffic, qualified leads, and sales, in direct collaboration with their sales team.

However, the way we achieve that purpose has evolved. In a world of infinite information, trust becomes the ultimate currency.

Marketing Is Now About Signal Creation

Visibility no longer guarantees clicks. Because search engines are moving toward a "zero-click" experience, you can no longer build your house solely on Google.

The purpose of marketing today is to create signals.

Signals are undeniable digital breadcrumbs that lead back to your brand. Every piece of content you produce is a potential signal, not just to humans, but to AI recommendation engines as well. Your mission is to own your digital space in a way that both people and AI cannot ignore.

If you want to make your brand easier to find online, check out our resource, How to Build Search Signals That Strengthen Your Brand in AI and Zero-Click Search. You’ll learn how to optimize your website, content, and reviews to improve AI visibility and ensure your brand is discovered by the right buyers.

How Does Radical Transparency Build A Known And Trusted Brand?

To successfully fulfill the purpose of marketing, your organization must adopt a "trust-first" mindset.

This requires you to embrace the 4 Pillars of a Known and Trusted Brand:

1. Say what others aren’t willing to say: Address the questions buyers are actually asking, even the uncomfortable ones.

2. Show what others aren’t willing to show: Use video to pull back the curtain and verify your claims.

3. Sell in a way others aren’t willing to sell: Empower your buyers with control and transparency.

4. Be more human than others are willing to be: Foster real human-to-human connections in a world of automation.

What Content Drives Real Sales Opportunities?

If your marketing efforts aren't moving the needle, it's usually because you aren't talking about what buyers actually want to know. Buyers today are "info-vors" who expect to be fed the information they crave.

To drive revenue, you must focus your content on The Big 5:

• Cost & Price: Everyone wants to know what they can expect to pay. They also want to understand what constitutes “value.” Such behavior is universal amongst all buyers.
• Problems: A desire to buy something is often accompanied by fears and worries. What are the drawbacks? How could this purchase go wrong?
• Versus & Comparisons: As humans, we love to compare. It’s how we make informed decisions, stacking one option against another to find the best solution for our needs.
• Reviews: Buyers want the good, the bad, and the ugly. And, importantly, they want to know who a product or service is and is not a good fit for.
• Best in Class: Everyone searches for the “best,” “most,” “top,” or whatever extreme they can find. Even if they don’t end up choosing the top-rated option, they want to clearly understand all the possibilities available to them.

By addressing these head-on, you move away from "Ostrich Marketing.” Burying your head in the sand and hoping buyers won't ask the tough questions. When you find a way to answer these, your buyers will trust you more.

Why Must You Operate Like A Media Company?

The businesses that will dominate the next decade won't be the ones with the most marketing spend. They will be the ones that understand that they are actually media companies.

Form A Unified Revenue Team

Marketing and sales operating as separate islands is a losing strategy. Instead, you must create a Revenue Team. This team brings together marketing, sales, and leadership to work toward the shared mission of becoming the most trusted brand in your market.

Bring Production In-House

To succeed, you need to take control of your customer acquisition process instead of relying on outside agencies. This means hiring an in-house Content Manager and a Videographer.

A Content Manager is the person who owns your written content: articles, guides, emails, landing pages, and more.

A Videographer is in charge of your entire video process. They storyboard, plan, shoot, edit, and optimize videos for your website, YouTube, and social platforms.

Outsourced content often lacks the expertise, passion, and authenticity that only your team can provide. Your sales team should act as Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), sharing the real questions and objections they hear on the front lines every day.

How Does Marketing Support the Modern Sales Process?

Back when he was selling pools, Marcus Sheridan found that “If a prospect consumed 30 or more pages of our website before their first sales appointment, they bought 80% of the time. But those who didn’t hit that 30-page threshold? Our close rate plummeted to just 25% - the industry average.”

That’s when he knew he was onto something, and he created Assignment Selling.

What Is Assignment Selling?

Assignment Selling is the strategic practice of requiring prospects to consume specific educational content before sales conversations. This ensures the prospect is informed and ready to buy.

When you use content as a sales accelerator, your sales team spends less time "teaching" basic concepts and more time "selling" to qualified, informed buyers.

How Can You Tell If Your Marketing Is Working?

In the age of AI, we need to stop defining success solely by website traffic. If you hang your entire strategy on traffic alone, you are potentially doomed.

Instead, focus on these metrics:

• Answer Rank: How often is your content being cited or synthesized in AI-generated responses?

• Self-Service Engagement: Are buyers using your pricing calculators and other self-service tools to qualify themselves?

• Close Rates: Is your sales team closing deals faster because prospects are arriving pre-educated?

• The Endless Customers Scorecard: How well is your company executing across the 5 Components of Endless Customers?

FAQ About Modern Marketing

"Why should I talk about my competitors on my own website?"

If potential customers want information on your competitors, they are going to get it somehow. Why shouldn't they get it from you? When you dare to address questions no one else will, you build massive trust and often win the customer's business anyway.

"What if I can't give an exact price for my services?"

You don't have to provide an exact number; you have to explain why the price depends on certain variables. Discussing what drives the cost up and what drives it down empowers the buyer to make an informed choice.

"Do I really need a full-time videographer?"

If you want to be seen by your market as a trusted brand, you can't be passive with video. An in-house videographer will be one of the greatest investments your company ever makes.

"Will AI content be enough to rank in the future?"

No. AI often churns out content that is robotic, stale, and boring. To stand out, you must inject your own stories, unique perspectives, and human personality into everything you produce.

Your Roadmap To Endless Customers

Marketing is no longer a department that works in a vacuum. It is a company-wide commitment to honesty and transparency.

• Audit Your Trust: Ask if your current content actually answers the real questions, fears, and worries of your buyers.

• Empower Your Buyers: Implement self-service tools like pricing estimators to give buyers the control they demand.

• Align Your Team: Form a Revenue Team and hold an Alignment Day to get everyone pulling in the same direction.

• Think Like A Publisher: Commit to a consistent schedule of "The Big 5" content and "The Selling 7" videos.

The future belongs to those who are brave enough to reimagine what's possible. By putting the customer, honesty, and transparency at the center of your marketing, growth becomes inevitable.

Take The Next Step

While the purpose of marketing remains as generating revenue for a brand, company, or organization, we know the marketing strategy to get there has changed.

It’s time to build a brand that AI and humans alike can trust.

If you're ready to align your teams around a proven system that drives trust, shortens sales cycles, and creates predictable revenue growth, learn more about the Endless Customers Coaching Program and how IMPACT can help you align your organization.

Learn How to Make It Happen

The Endless Customers Coaching Program

If your marketing isn’t delivering and you’re ready for a proven, future-ready system built for the age of AI (one your team can run in-house) check out our coaching program.

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