Rob Engelman is putting up a list of nine core activities / responsibilities a Marketing Department must handle.
1. Focus on the Customer
2. Monitor the Competition
3. Own the Brand.
4. Find & Direct Outside Vendors.
5. Create New Ideas.
6. Communicate Internally.
7. Manage a Budget.
8. Understand the ROI.
9. Set the Strategy, Plan the Attack, and Execute.
As per the 3rd point in the list Rob is saying:
The perceptions and feelings formed about an organization, its products / services, and its performance is what is known as its “brand.” The Marketing Department is responsible for creating meaningful messages through words, ideas, images, and names that deliver upon the promises / benefits an organization wishes to make with its customers. Furthermore, the Marketing Department is responsible for ensuring that messages and images are delivered consistently, by every member of the organization.
I cannot agree more with the this, with only one point to add. While it’s true that the marketing department is usually the one that gets the praise or blame for a good/bad branding I believe that both the ownership and message delivery of the branding message / image are the responsibility of the entire organization.
Read detailed list here.
Read more on the subject:
Your Marketing Department: Its Organization and Structure
How to Evaluate and Improve Your Marketing Department
Data-Driven Marketing: The 15 Metrics Everyone in Marketing Should Know
And like you I cannot agree more.
It is “the responsibility of the entire organization” to own the brand.
My experience suggests to me that when brand ownership becomes the focus most organizations quickly learn they have to up the quality of their leadership.
My guess is that for way too long folks have been looking to the marketing department to own the brand. For that reason leadership got ignored.
Thanks for posting this and expanding the conversation!
Keep creating,
Mike
I’d propose the following as additional responsibilities of the marketing department.
• Track conversion rates of everything, every ad, mailing, web site etc
• Use the existing conversion rates as baselines to beat.
• Constantly find ways to reduce the lead generation and client acquisition costs.
• At the same time find ways to consistently increase profits.
• Educate the sales staff about how to talk about their products and services from the client’s perspective.
etc.
It seems to me that corporate marketing people get sucked into the day-to-day and lose site of so many of these things. In some cases, it’s really hard for them to not “go native.” If they have a good ad agency, the agency needs to help them keep their head up, and the agency needs to both help them be, and remind them to be, the voice of the customer.
~Jim Tobin
http://lifeismarketing.blogspot.com
I work in the marketing dept. of a manufacturing company. The company (which shall remain nameless) has an interesting perspective on marketing. First and foremost we don’t actually do marketing. We have an advertising agency that designs our ads and product graphics. We also have a sales force. That’s it. The Marketing dept. supports the sales force, and not much else.
Personally, I don’t think we do a single thing mentioned on that list. I never understood why until I had a discussion with one of the top sales guys. Apparently the clients we deal with already know what they want when they come to us. Further, we only sell to the really big clientele, sometimes to the medium types, and never to the smaller startups. As a result, there seems to be no feeling of urgency as far as branding, marketing, etc.
We have a logo, a website, and a sales force and documentation. I honestly don’t know what else we do as far as marketing goes.
I’d be interested to hear what others think about this.
i find the points here are useful but it seems they are not in chronological order
can u post more,.tnks
interesting material
i wanna know about wht experience that required if we want to work in marketing department
the nine commandmant, the most important is focus on customer, if no customer, no marketting.
brilliant
very important tips for marketing principel
I being a lead marketer think that the most important thing in marketing really is customer as said previously if there is no customers there’s no sales and therefore no marketing.
But unfortunately there is a lack of comunication between our marketing dep and the customer representatives and this has a negative impact towards customer focus the most important point in marketing.
Like everyone I come at this from a personal perspective; mine as a brand consultant. I echo Michael’s comment; brand ownership and the ultimate responsibility of leadership.
Marketing cannot in reality ‘own’ brand. Their remit is too focussed on taking the product to market (hence the name marketing). marketing is tactical. Brand is strategic and needs to be owned by leadership and tactically delivered through the entire organization.
I know many marketers incentivised by conversion rates and profits. But precious few by increase in brand perception and attributes.
Marketing departments normally should do the following so as to support the life of business.
1. Doing research on their products or services
2. Keep and maintain existing customers
3. Boost sales