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Measuring The Marketing Function & Its Importance
Posted By: terence* on 11/15/2004 7:38 AM (CST) 250 Points
I am currently an assistan marketing and customer relations manager in a print solutions company. i actually dont have a manager above me therefore the whole functions is supposed to be my responsibility. unfortunatly the is no proper structure in place an i have not been given accountability to the above. all things being normal i should be reporting to the general manager, bt this is not the case. At this point i need to convince the directors, senior , and other functional managers the importance of marketing as a stand alone department, and how best to measure the results of this function. which currently i cannot present

Posted by: thinkmor Accepted Answer
11/15/2004 9:07 AM (CST)
Hi Terence

When you were hired, did they define, within your role and responsibilities, how you would be responsible for 'marketing' or is this something you would like to introduce?

Your organization doesn't sound like it is marketing or customer orientated, is this the case? Ideally you need to demonstrate where your organization currently is (by doing a SWOT) and create a vision where it CAN go by being marketing orientated. I'm referring to 'Integrated Marketing' here as opposed using it as a function which is tacked onto another department without intergration throughout all functions of the organization.

How you see your role and how others including mangement may differ, so you may want to talk to your line manger (who is this?) to re-define your responsibilities so everyone knows what you do and what your responsibilities are.

To try to change your organization's attitude you will have to do your homework to demonstrate the importance of marketing and empathetically educate your colleagues and management. This maybe tricky if you are in a tenuous position or if your organization structure and political bias is against you. You need to find allies within your organization first to build relationships. Talk to your colleagues and management where you can share your opinions and get feedback. Understand the hidden political biases.

Try executing a workshop as an initial introduction to 'marketing' for e.g. Here are some things you should include:

•What is marketing? it's elements strategy, planning, mmix etc
•Why your business needs it?
•The importance of delivering differentiated customer value
•How you can use marketing to beat your competitors and increase profits
•Benefits of marketing in your industry with some case studies-directly and non-competitive companies
•What will happen if you don't use marketing in your organization
•Industry trends
•How can we use 'marketing' as an attitude change throughout the organization and not limit it to one department to bring about sustainable and beneficial change for customers and the business
•Resources needed to support marketing
•Marketing processes
•The financial measures of 'marketing' and how we can best measure ROI
•Marketing (budgets) and it's relationship to P&L

If you can present to your organization, understand the mindsets and motivations of your management, you will have a better chance to introduce 'marketing', demonstrate why they can benefit ($$ benefits get their attention quickly) from it and why it will help create a lasting change that will really drive the business forward.

Here is a link to a question that may also be useful:

http://www.marketingprofs.com/ea/qst_question.asp?qstID=4034

If you need extra marketing resources and inspiration try:

http://www.sethgodin.com

http://www/tompeters.com

Hope this helps.

Zahid Adil
 
Posted by: jstiles* Accepted Answer
11/16/2004 11:52 AM (CST)
Very sound advice from Zahid. I would add that it sounds like a large part of your focus needs to be on internal marketing for the moment.

- self assess your current role
- identify how mktg currently supports the company
- identify how mktg can be used to define, understand and target customers for increased account penetration as well as new sales
- communicate this to management through your marketing plan.

The plan is your most powerful tool. Not only does it serve as a guide but it also forces you to organize and adopt a methodical approach. Even if mgmt does not adopt all of the strategies and tactics, it will plant seeds in their minds of how mktg can be used and also that you are pushing for improving the company.

Best of luck!
 
Posted by: SRyan ;] Member Response
11/19/2004 2:47 AM (CST)
Terence, I seriously doubt that there is no reporting hierarchy in your company. You have NO boss??

Who hired you? Who can fire you?

THAT'S your boss!

Identify that person, confirm their goals, and meet their expectations. You'll do fine!
 
Posted by: vin20k* Member Response
11/22/2004 4:42 AM (CST)
Terence I am surprised to know that at such a post like yours you are facing such problems.I will like to look in to the matter with human relations aspect.You should have a talk with your Human Resourse manager regarding your state and should ask for authority to take decisions regarding marketing decisions at workplace.You should also give him the marketing plan and how are you going to achieve it.
About marketing aspect,you should market yourself.You better give them a presentation regarding your achievements with the organisation.You should also tell them about what your plans are regarding marketing and how it is going to help the company to achieve its goals set for sales and marketing.
 
Posted by: Jim Deveau/Catalyst* Accepted Answer
12/3/2004 2:52 PM (CST)
hi terence:

If you are attempting to prove the value of marketing as a stand-alone discipline on your firm, perhaps you could start asking questions no one can answer but everyone thinks should be known by someone in your organization.

Assemble the top managers of the company and ask the following:

What is the short and long-term outlook of our industry?

What are the critical factors that will affect our industry?

What are the customer trends that we can take advantage of? Which trends will place us at risk?

What is our competitive position in this industry? What are our strengths and weaknesses? What opportunities have we failed to capitalize on? What threats must be acted upon or leave us vulnerable?

When we think of our customers, how do we segment customer types? By size of business? By industry they cover? By type of printing requirements? Geography? Which makes more sense? Which of these segments are the most profitable for our firm? Which are least profitable? Which segment is our biggest growth opportunity? Is there a segment we should cnosider exiting?

What are the real needs of our customer segments? Can we leverage certain aspects of our product offering to be more competitive? Which ones? How can we present these elements in the most favorable light?

How should we communicate to our customers? Industry magazines? Direct mail pieces? Should we create a seminar or stage a forum? Are there other companies that provide a complimentary service that we can align with?

How do we decide to price our products? Do we price differently based on the industry or segment we compete in? Do we change our price based on geography or other factors? How do our prices compare with competition? Which products are most profitable based on our pricing? Which are least profitable? If the firm needs more revenue - should we increase price across the board? On selective products?

Do we need to develop new products and/or service to grow? If so - which ones offer the largest potential return for us? What are the performance requirements for these new products?

I can go on for an hour, but hopefully you can understand the intent here. I will wager that the managers of your company will not have a consistent answer for more than 50% of these questions. I will further wager that these managers will all beleive someone else knows the answer to every question or that it is an irrelevant question (defense mechanism).

THIS is why you need a marketing function.

I hope this helps.
 
Posted by: D4Demand Accepted Answer
12/3/2004 3:53 PM (CST)
Are you ready to roll the dice, grasshopper?

I have been where you are now. It is not a pleasant space. Here is what I know.

Currently all marketing and sales functions are probably being filled by the directors and owners. They are running on the intuition of entrepreneurs. They have hired you in just to be their arms and legs (and in your case, a voice) to their customers. This is not a company of functions, but a company of persons.

If you want marketing to be a stand alone department, you cannot ask the boss what kind of marketing things that he wants you to do. You have to ask things like: How do you track the success of your salesmen? I'd really like to understand how you are "marketing" the company? What is the best method of promotion you've found? Then you follow that up with: May I start taking care of that role FOR you? Thus you grow your job in their eyes.

In other words you have to prove yourself as a valuable PERSON before you will ever be able to sell marketing as a valuable stand-alone FUNCTION.
 
Posted by: michaldover* Accepted Answer
12/3/2004 7:18 PM (CST)
Terence
I think all the above responses are extremely beneficial. What I hear from your managers though is that they are also in distress I think that they know there is a need to change they don’t know how (that is why they asked you to prove it). They need to see that it is worth their investment. I think this is a wonderful opportunity for you to show them some facts and figures.
If I were in your shoes I would start by orders and invoices: who are your customers? How many customers do you have? How much (on average) the big customers bring in each month? How much do the small customers bring each month? This will set the foundations to build a marketing plan. First you need to know what you have right now. You need to constantly think what are the marketing actions that you did until today that brought in additional customers or that maintained large customers - this will be your
proof that marketing works.
Let's say you know that your sales now are for example $100 with 5 customers by doing marketing through sales calls, direct mail, or all the other great advise you got here that will cost $120 you will be able to bring in 10 more customers and your sales will grow to $300. However you need to PRICE everything . A marketing department would mean investing in marketing materials possibly sales representatives, direct mailing. I would also try not to start from nothing to having a huge department start by having a one marketing person (hopefully you) that will be responsible for everything after he proves success bring in a marketing assistant and three sales people and inside sales etc.
In short your management wants to see hard numbers. How much is it going to cost me and what will I get out of it?
Research your existing situation and then price the marketing investments and give them the answers they need.
 
Posted by: Sanjeev Kumar Vyas Member Response
12/5/2004 10:25 PM (CST)
Hi Terence,
I am kind of in a similar situation. Yes the answers given above are all good. But just wanted to tell you this could take quite sometime for your higher management to digest, hence don’t loose heart along the way. Your speed would be slow but just hang in there and get a good rapport with other, find people who are willing to support your this cause openly (some might say they want to support but when they have to open their mouth in front of someone from higher management they just loose their voice), try to analyze whether or not higher management is ready to accept that some things need to be changed, if they do not then you will have to get then to accept this (this could be a hard part). Office politics will also affect as some people will have to part with their powers which they usually don't like.
Hope you are successful in your venture. If possible do let me know how it goes at your end.
Wish you all the best.
Regards
Sanjeev
 
Posted by: Val (Moderator)* Moderator Response
12/13/2004 2:38 AM (CST)
Hello all. I am closing this question, since its more than 10 days old. We do this to make sure members' contributions are rewarded in a timely manner and to improve the visibility of newer questions.

Thanks, so much, for participating!
Val (Moderator)
 


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