Traditional marketing required a strong management background, with an emphasis on planning ahead and sticking to a strict financial plan. Modern marketers need to think and act more like entrepreneurs in order to maintain "product/market fit."

The New Venture More and more people in the Bay Area are using apps like Checkr, which exemplifies a growing pattern. Entrepreneurial methods, such as lean startup and agile development, are being used by marketers. Checkr's expansion into new market categories for its background check service was hampered by the ineffectiveness of its previously employed sales and marketing strategies cuphead. They understood they needed to expand their definition of marketing beyond simple product promotion. They collaborated with engineering to redesign the product and release a "minimum viable product" (MVP) for these new customers using an agile methodology based on frequent testing with real customers. The use of this integrated, agile strategy has helped the company achieve early 2017 sales targets at conversion rates four times the typical market norm.

Because of developments in consumer habits, media, and technology, marketing innovation is evolving. In marketing, the value of the output—whether it be income, customer loyalty, or customer advocacy—is what matters more than the quality of the input, which might be anything from the content itself to the entire campaign. Traditional marketers used to have the mindset of managers, promoters, and performers. Marketers today must challenge themselves to adopt the mindset of innovators and entrepreneurs in order to meet the demands of the modern business environment. This includes thinking about the customer's experience as a whole, making decisions based on data, and gauging success in terms of the business's bottom line.