Updated July 24, 2023
Difference Between Marketer vs Marketeer
Marketing is now a business term that has become commonplace in the business lexicon, but many times, people get confused about this function. Some people think of it in narrow terms to imply it’s another name for sales, or others view it as developing strategies to promote a product or creating a brand.
Marketing is much beyond, but most people are aware of the jobs available in these functions. The jobs in these functions are normally denoted as Marketing Executive, Marketing Officer, Marketing Manager, Director-Marketing, and so on. On the sales side, they are denoted as Sales Officers, Sales Executives, Sales Managers, Directors- Sales, and the like.
Marketer-broad umbrella term
In common discussions and articles, there is a requirement to have an umbrella term for most functionalities that denote a person who is not attached to a particular job function, like marketing manager or brand manager but a more generic term that denotes a person capable of decision making. A visualizer in an ad agency is part of the creative team who decides what colors, pictures, and infographics should go with a particular campaign. A Public Relations Manager can independently decide on a communication strategy to deal with an issue facing their company.
In marketing parlance, a marketer has the decision-making capability and powers to conceptualize and execute marketing strategies in an organization. The job function may differ from company to company, but the marketer is a key part of the strategy and operational part of the organization.
Sometimes, it can also denote a particular firm or group – such as pharma marketers, real estate marketers, consumer electronics marketers, marketers of personal loans and advances, and insurance marketers, among others.
Here, a marketer denotes a firm or organization whose role is to develop new markets and territories and help their parent company develop new products and services that customers require.
Head-to-Head Difference Between Marketer vs Marketeer (Infographics)
Below infographics on Marketer vs Marketeer throws light on the major differences between the two.
The Marketeer
We have heard of musketeers popularized by the work ‘Three Musketeers ‘ by Alexander Dumas. It is a key position in the infantry of the modern army. Likewise, a racketeer indulges in fraud or cheating on a sustained basis to fool the public. Then, What is a marketeer?
There are differing views on who a marketer is or whether they are the same as the marketer or do different roles in an organization. One school of thought feels both marketer and marketeer are the same, and people use both interchangeably.
A survey by UK-based Orchard, a digital and creative marketing consultancy, found that over 78.3% of marketing professionals preferred to be called ‘marketers’. In comparison, 21.7% of professionals feel they are better known as ‘marketeers’.
One professional marketing felt marketeer rhymes with racketeer and possibly creative negative images for that functionality. Another felt shocked by the new spelling and terminology. He felt some guys should be doing ‘marketeering’ rather than marketing. On LinkedIn, most marketing subscribers prefer calling marketers rather than marketeers.
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Emerging paradigm shift for Marketeer
If we Google marketeer in the news category, marketeer is interchangeably used with marketers in different countries. However, there is an attempt to classify the ‘ marketeer’ as a specialized marketing breed capable of engaging more with consumers. Rather than using the ‘megaphone’ approach to reach the maximum target audience.
If marketeer was a synonym just as a physician is to a doctor, there was perhaps no need to create two different spellings for the same role. Perhaps, it would only cause confusion in the minds of people. Both these terms are not recognizable or distinguishable for most people. According to some analysts, the word’ marketeer’ is unheard of in many countries, such as the UK, the US, and Australia.
However, there are attempts to classify marketing functions as linear. They focus mainly on the customer. The traditional marketing persona or the ‘marketer’ is primarily focused on identifying the need of a customer or a consumer group and devising a product with the support of the technical team.
The marketer creates a brand with the help of mass media once the product is made. They build relationships with distributors and work out the logistics of making the product available in all targeted regions. He also coordinates with the advertising and public relations team to create hoardings, banners, and displays in different locations.
Once the development and branding of the product were complete, it was essentially a ‘push strategy for the traditional ‘marketer’. They know the need to persuade the consumer to buy their product.
However, the creative part of engaging with the prospective target customers is not in the expertise of the ‘marketer’. According to some analysts, this is where the ‘marketeer’ takes center stage.
The ‘marketeer’ is not someone who does a megaphone blast announcing a new brand launch or persuading more buyers to take a look at their offering. The core activity of the ‘marketeer’ is building customer relationships by connecting with them and conversing with them.
However, a ‘marketeer’ does not indulge in ‘marketeering’, which has a negative connotation, such as black marketeering, banned or not legalized worldwide. Many news items referring to black market activity describe it as a ‘marketeering’ activity.
The Critical Role of ‘Marketeer’
The consumer is now bombarded with ad campaigns in the mass media to get noticed in the cacophony. The new marketeers are the musketeers of marketing, with consumers as the King. They must listen and speak instead of sending linear messages without understanding the consumer. The key difference is that they don’t own customers but customers’ moments. Here are the key attributes of the Marketeer persona :
The foregoing discussions have proved that the term ‘marketeer’ is still unacceptable for most people. But to a small group who have tried to create a different creative persona for ‘marketeer’, here is an attempt to develop further on the theme and give clarity to their perceived qualities that distinguish them from marketers.
1. Marketeer is more creative
The marketeer doesn’t have a linear view of the market. The industry produces a product, does the branding, and creates a unique selling proposition. Thereafter there is a bombarding of campaigns to get the attention of consumers. Brand recall among consumers is attributed to success in the marketplace, which is partly true. However, as recent marketing surveys have indicated, the best campaigns and frequency cannot guarantee brand recall across all geographies.
The ‘marketeer’ is more creative than the marketer. The former considers each consumer as a number or data. The consumer is king and has the power to determine the success or failure of a brand in the marketplace.
2. Marketeer has more consumer engagement
The marketeer believes in keeping constant touch and conversation with the consumer, who could be existing buyers or potential product or service customers. The marketeer believes that an existing customer is not a robot or inhuman, not having a persona. Each individual has desires, aspirations, thoughts, motivations, needs, and outlooks about life, lifestyle, and role in society. The marketeer believes in understanding their motivation and sending invaluable inputs to the product development team.
For eg. For passengers, understanding the motives for buying a car in a particular price range can help automobile makers develop better models. Buyers in the #1 million range are looking for power, comfort, or good looks. Or if it’s a vehicle meant for the whole family, is boot space more important than leg space?
Premium residential flats are costly because of their local branding in real estate. Still, there could be other features customers may be looking at quality gyms, swimming pools, gardens, play areas, and grocery stores within the premises. Understanding the requirements of a product or service, getting their feedback, and analyzing them is all part of the marketeer’s game.
3. Marketeer is not target-focused but experience focused
The traditional ‘marketer’ is most likely to focus on achieving numbers and expanding the territory of product distribution or developing sub-brands to show top-line growth. The’ marketeer’ focuses more on giving a good experience to the customer, not only about the product but also about the company.
In Kerala, the top-selling electronic voltage stabilizer V-Guard attained the position of offering a good product. Still, they consider the customer to be their king. They never refused to take back a defective product and put all emphasis on customer service. This has paid off, in the long run, pushing competition several steps down the line.
4. Marketeer is data-driven
This is the age of big data. The treasure lies in consumer interactions and transactions through inquiry, sales, billing activity, and feedback. This has to be analyzed and worked upon. More companies are realizing the value of big data and implementing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions to gather data and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) to integrate all the functions within an organization.
5. It has social empathy
The success of the marketeer lies in imagining themselves in another’s shoes and being truly human. Machines don’t have empathy even if they perform tasks that humans find hard to do- robots in medicine and manufacturing. Great marketeers are not the left-brain-driven analytical types but also comprehensive and curious personalities.
6. Marketers need to be visionaries, social media focused
Until a few years ago, marketing was all about mass media, hoardings, and banner displays in public places. Now the media has expanded to the web, and social media has emerged as a medium on its own. Now no marketing is complete without online and social media marketing, not to forget inbound practices through blogging and content marketing strategies.
It needs to use social media and the web to get valuable insights in terms of opinions, suggestions, and experiences. But, more importantly, get big data regarding consumer tastes, preferences, and desires. The explosion of social media has thrown up new applications that automate several activities on the web and FaceBook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc. The marketeer needs to work closely with the social media team on using such tools or learn to use them.
Conclusion
Much of what has been conceptualized about the ‘ marketeer’ functions and role is attributable to the marketer. Several gray areas and roles overlap between those roles.
Tai Tran, a regular contributor to Forbes, pointed out that the millennial marketer’s or marketeer’s outlook and profile have to change with the changing times. They need to think like entrepreneurs and demonstrate thought leadership. An
An entrepreneur is strategic, creative, analytical, and passionate about their work. Likewise, the marketer or marketeer must also imbibe these qualities. They need to keep pace with the latest digital technologies, which are cost-efficient and have more geographical reach.
More importantly, according to Glenn Leibowitz, Head of Communications at McKinsey, they need to demonstrate thought leadership. They should have at least two active social media accounts, Linkedin, Twitter, or Facebook. They must be actively blogging and sharing thoughts on a variety of topics related to the industry.
Great marketers make products succeed in the marketplace with their understanding of applied microeconomics, the nuances of supply, demand, and consumer psychology. The new-age marketer has to have social empathy along with techno-savvy. They should know a variety of strategies, including inbound, ambush, and event-based promotions, to deliver better results.
The marketer needs to keep track of topline growth in any company. Still, the changing business dynamics and consumer trends dictate the need to understand the consumer better through engagement and continuous innovation to stay ahead of the competition. It is interesting to know how fast the industry will accept the ‘marketeer’ persona and see them as a subset of the marketing function in an organization. As of now, your word processor will highlight the term ‘marketeer’ in red t show that it is not a recognized spelling in its dictionary!
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