Charity of a Marketer

Charity is the source of many wonderful feelings. I only wonder, are these feelings a result of the fact that you are giving someone something that they need, or out of feeding your ego by giving someone something you have more than enough of and the other person doesn’t have at all. So, the question is; are you feeding someone else or yourself? I know how to feed marketers, and that is exactly what this article is about.

In recent times, charitable teaching of marketable skills has become increasingly popular. One Polish company founded a free programing school for children, so this could be considered a sign that Polish entrepreneurs are focused on the future.

Check or…?

Charity is a holy thing. It’s an offshoot of the many different forms of assistance. Usually this sort of assistance suggests money or gifts in the form of essential products. Maybe because most people prefer to get the fish instead of the fishing rod. This can be seen every day, when events and charitable activities arouse admiration and attract the attention of many people, and focusing on the donors strutting the red carpet. A completely different form of assistance is that of the transfer of knowledge, teaching and sharing experiences. Interestingly enough, there is a lot more of these people who bring help in the form of knowledge, but very few are noticed and admired even if their help is worth a lot more than what can be written on a check. In recent times, charitable teaching of marketable skills has become increasingly popular. One Polish company founded a free programing school for children, so this could be considered a sign that Polish entrepreneurs are focused on the future. While scrolling through social media, occasionally there can be seen a story where someone taught homeless people how to code programs, so that they could make their own app. Does this sort of help have a future? We honestly don’t know, but there is a good chance that this change of approach where those in need are handed a fishing rod instead of the fish, will cause the creation of a tool which will yield its assistance for many years to come.

The wheel or…?

Long ago we were all poor…in knowledge. We ate raw meat because we did not know how to make fire. Sometime later someone came up with an ingenious idea, the wheel, and with it helped us all. After the discovery of the wheel it was only natural that roads should be developed for traveling on, and in some countries even highways – also in Poland just after the Euro 2012. Though I value most the individual who invented the computer, and not just because now you all can read my articles in the net. You might say that I am exaggerating because I could easily write by hand, but you only think this because you have never seen my handwriting before.

I will only say this, if you were to judge me based on my handwriting alone, you might think that I am a doctor protégé whose scripts cannot be deciphered even by the most brilliant pharmacist. But getting back to the topic at hand, it turns out that we stockbrokers, without the proper tools are completely helpless. Wandering around blindly, if not for hundreds of conveniences which allow us to monitor the statistics of our creations and our clients’ investments. What’s worse, if not for the creation of the necessary tools, we would never be able to reach customers, who’s special interests are not openly declared but discovered via their actions. This means that until the creation of this “wheel and hammer”, we marketers were more destitute than those who charity events are organized for. Luckily for us the computer programmers looked after us, and created the tools we need and without which we would have no right of being. An example of this is social media. Facebook alone is an incredibly important marketing tool with its expansive database of information on potential clients, their interests, and activities. For this tool,

there was a special advertising system created which helps the advertiser to better get to know the customer and choose the right target group to achieve a better conversion. In a way, Facebook bought this information from their customers for free, which I wrote about in my book “Marketing in 3 Weeks”, and was already an excellent strategic move for the creators of this tool.

App or…?

I started the previous paragraph referring to the story of how man had to learn how to make and use fire. In turn, the invention of the wheel led to the development of transportation and building of roads. Each of these elements influencing technological development, has been perfected. Today we have fire at the tips of our fingers in the form of a lighter, and the stone wheel has evolved into rubber tires with hundreds of varied treads and adapted to the seasonal differences of summer and winter. We developed them to such an extent that one material used in the production of tires assists in draining water away from the tire during rainy winter seasons, and a different one is used for lowering fuel consumption through friction reduction and decreasing the noise produced when concerning summer tires and all treads. Thanks to run-flat technology, we can drive further on our tires even if we get a hole. The exact same thing

happened to the field of marketing, where in addition to long standing marketing tools which we have discussed today such as Facebook, new software has been created which can utilize these resources better and more effectively than ever before. Numerous external software applications allow us to manage activity, build advertisement campaigns and use tools which were not provided us by the creators of the base marketing tool. What’s interesting, with the currently available marketing systems, it is the computer that is correcting the functioning of the man rather than vice versa, and even replacing the human element in the slow tedious task, creating hundreds of variable advertisements based on the data regarding the target audience and analysis of their effectiveness. This raises the question, how much longer will the there be a need for an expert in the field, and in what moment will the knowledge of an expert be equal or even replaced by a readymade application.

You or…?

Interestingly, the aforementioned fishing rod handed to an individual instead of a fish, will not immediately take care of the hunger but will instead provide a means for avoiding it in the future. Marketing tools are something which ensures, that thanks to its marketing work, not only will you be making money but so will the next generation. You are giving your successors a weapon, which with a little bit of creativity will help them achieve something great – something more than even with the help of years of experience. This means that you; as the equivalent of knowledge and experience, in a large degree can be substituted by automation and applications. So, we are faced with a question of when will applications as a tool of charity that supports the existence of the marketer or stockbroker become his successor and substitution. ■