Alice Alfano
How Marketing is Like Buying a House
A few months ago, I had an offsite with my amazing marketing team. We were discussing what we wanted to be as kids. Some of my coworkers knew marketing was for them from the beginning, but I just had to laugh.
When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be an architect. From my childhood, which was spent sitting at the breakfast bar of local NJ diners drawing out 100-room mansions in crayon on the back of a paper placemat, to my teen years, where I dedicated myself to drafting out grand homes and luxury apartment buildings, I wanted to create beautiful homes and buildings.
However, life has a funny way of making things happen and I ended up going to school for something that was just as creative and fun, but a little more practical: Marketing.
One of my coworkers just smiled and said “Alice, you are our Marketecht!” And you know, that might be the best way to explain what I do. In my opinion, and just hear me out on this one, Marketing isn’t much different from drawing out the perfect house
The Main Floor
The biggest similarity between houses and marketing is that you have to always be aware of everyone’s varying tastes. Some people love classic layouts that are more closed off and accentuate private spaces. Others, who prefer modern styles, might prefer a wide-open floorplan to watch their kids and families.
Similarly, Marketing needs to take into account how different segments want to get information in different ways. Just because you prefer something one way, does not make any other ways “wrong” or “right” for that matter. You need to think about the preferences and desires of your audience more than what YOU would enjoy.
Function and Form
Lets be real, no one is going to want to live in a house that has no curb appeal. And no one wants to interact with an irrelevant or uninteresting piece of content.
The cavio is that whatever yu build still has to serve a function: be liveable, or inform.
