Marketing is a disciplined way of thinking about the relationship with the market, activating an ambition that mobilises every department in the company and gives the process of making money a broader purpose of shared prosperity.
However, in many Portuguese companies, including medium-sized and large organisations, marketing continues to be treated as a secondary, decorative or merely instrumental activity. It is still frequently associated with ordering promotional gifts, occasionally managing social media, producing brochures or organising events.
This narrow view of what marketing is and what it is for does not result solely from a lack of resources. Above all, it stems from an insufficient understanding of how much marketing can contribute to a company’s sustainable growth.
In a business ecosystem with limited academic literacy in these disciplines, marketing is rarely called upon as a source of strategic knowledge. Unlike accounting, production, logistics or sales, which tend to have clearly defined roles within decision-making structures, marketing often occupies an undefined space.
Many CEOs only turn to marketing when there is a trade fair, when someone needs to “make a post”, when the company wants to refresh its visual identity, or when the competition appears to be gaining greater visibility. Yet marketing is rarely integrated from the outset into discussions about product, pricing, positioning, segmentation, customer experience, sales channels or value proposition.
This absence of marketing from the company’s internal processes is a weakness with real consequences. When there is no marketing culture, each company ends up creating its own improvised definition of the discipline. That definition depends on circumstance, the owner’s personality, the personal taste of whoever makes the decisions, the pressure of the moment, or the availability of someone who “has a knack for writing”.
Under these circumstances, marketing ceases to be a method and becomes an opinion; it ceases to be analysis and becomes an aesthetic preference; it ceases to be a growth tool and becomes a scattered collection of isolated tasks.
The problem becomes more serious when the market itself demands no more. In sectors where demand exists despite weak differentiation, where customers buy out of necessity, proximity or price, many companies feel no immediate need to invest in qualified marketing. They sell enough to continue operating. They grow little, but they survive. And that survival is sometimes mistaken for validation of the strategy.
The absence of strong competitive pressure crystallises outdated practices and prevents companies from asking the essential question: do we sell because we are genuinely preferred, or simply because a more convenient or more convincing alternative has not yet appeared?
If the value of products and services depends to a large extent on buyers’ perceptions, then objective quality is essential, but it is not enough. A product may be technically superior and still be poorly understood, poorly positioned or undervalued. A service may solve a real problem and still fail to make its relevance clear.
Between what a company does and what the customer perceives lies a decisive space, and that should be the territory of marketing. Taking marketing seriously means studying markets, understanding customers, identifying needs, building differentiation, communicating consistently, and aligning the brand promise with the experience delivered. It also means freeing business decision-making from constant improvisation.
Marketing does not replace the entrepreneur’s vision, nor does it eliminate the importance of intuition, but it gives that intuition criteria, language, data and method. When competition is broader, consumers are better informed and attention is a scarce resource, reducing marketing to promotional gifts or social media means wasting one of the main levers of value creation.
Portuguese companies that understand this and act accordingly, integrating marketing knowledge and best practices into their organisations, will be better prepared to grow beyond their usual boundaries, expand their customer base, sell more effectively, and build longer-lasting, more profitable relationships.
Paulo Fidalgo
CEO of Marketividade
