We hold these truths to be self-evident:

• Finance and Accounting can’t close the books on-demand.
• Corporate Counsel can’t draft an in-depth legal agreement at the snap of a finger.
• Product Development can’t conceive, develop, test and launch a product within a few days’ notice.
• Human Resources can’t swap benefits providers in response to a whim.

But, what about marketing? Well, when it comes to marketing, the whole business world believes marketing should function as a vending machine.

• “Hey, I need an e-mail campaign to launch next week. No problem, right?”
• “Can you add a few pages to the website tomorrow?”
• “I need you to create a whitepaper for a gated lead-gen campaign; let’s get it done by months-end, OK?.”

The answer to all these things? “Sure, no problem. Let me just go to our marketing closet and pull these off the shelf. Piece of cake.”  (I hope you caught the sarcasm here.)

Come on, folks. Marketing is not a vending machine. Marketing is not a short-order cook. There’s a reason why marketers are driving organizational change. There’s a reason why you see marketers are ascend to CEO.

• Marketing is not about flyers or donut boxes with logos.
• Marketing is about brand and product strategy.
• Marketing is about lead-generation, revenue-generation.
• Marketing is about process improvement, customer experience improvement.
• Marketing is about understanding that the customer has choices and they’ll choose to work with brands that treat them with courtesy, dignity and respect and make the engagement fast, simple and certain.
• Marketing is about knowing that customers don’t want to be sold; they just need help buying.
• Marketing is about building businesses through data-driven insights.

And marketing is about challenging the sales organization, challenging status quo, demanding answers to questions about how your idea will help make money, save money or do something that’s relevant, different and better.

Marketing done right involves planning, data, research, positioning, forecasting, competitive analysis, technology, measurement, revenue-attribution and more. And these things take some time. I’ve always acted in an urgent manner but I’ve learned that effective marketing should be well-thought. Be in a hurry, yes, but don’t be rushed.

So, the next time you put a quarter in that marketing vending machine, understand that it may take a bit of a time before the product falls and you get the results. But, trust me, the results will be worth it.