Marketing department is now necessary for almost every company, because without studying the market it is very difficult to sell a product with maximum benefit. What does the marketing department actually do and what are its goals?
Term concept
The attitude to marketing in the business environment is controversial. Most entrepreneurs and businessmen understand the need to implement certain marketing strategies in their companies, but there are still those who take the concept of marketing negatively.
What does the marketing department do in principle? And why were opinions divided around the need to create a department?
In fact, all owners of shops and enterprises are engaged in marketing. It's just that those who think that they are not engaged in marketing are actually most often engaged in poor marketing. Or how-to marketing.
When you determine the price of a product in your store, when you think about how to sell a long-lying product, when you make a decision on the purchase of a product, you are already engaged in marketing.
Marketing in essence is the totality of all the actions that a company performs in the market. And the task of the marketing department will be to build the right market action strategy that will increase the company's sales.
Marketing inside the company or outsourcing
Like the activities of any department that is not directly related to production, the marketing department can be outsourced. This way of organizing the company's marketing is preferable if you need a quality implementation of new strategies, as well as in the case. when it’s not practical to pay a permanent marketer on staff.
However, in most cases, companies still face the need to have a full-time employee who, even when working with non-staff specialists, will make key decisions on the implementation of a particular strategy.
This increases the possibility and effectiveness of control.
Which companies need a full-time marketer or marketing department
Any manufacturing company in the modern world just needs a marketing department.
However, it is not always necessary to have a marketer on staff. In some stores or online businesses, the marketing function is partially performed by another employee, for example, a merchandiser or category manager.
But it is worth noting that in most cases it is easier to monitor the effectiveness of the company's sales precisely in the event that a specially dedicated specialist is engaged in marketing, the motivation of which is directly related to its effectiveness.
Marketing Department Objectives
The marketing department has the following goals (depending on the goals, the responsibilities of the marketing department as a whole and each individual employee are formed):
- Increasing product value in the eyes of customers. The value of the product in the eyes of the buyer is formed on the basis of ideas about the usefulness of the product and its benefits.
- Market analysis of competitors and related products is a constant monitoring of the market of competitors and related products in order to study its dynamics, search for new sales platforms and niches.
- The choice of target market. Identification of target audience and key customers.
- Development of a marketing strategy. Depending on the choice of the target audience, the development of interaction with potential buyers.
- Assortment management company.
- Analysis of sales and success of the existing strategy for promoting goods and services.
What is the company marketing department for?
What is his task? A key function of the marketing department is to build brand and customer relationships.
In fact, everything that marketers do is done just for that.
Accordingly, based on the main function, additional ones can be distinguished:
- market research (study of demand, supply, customer behavior);
- development of product policy (selection of assortment, bringing the product in proper form, packaging, proposal for goods);
- pricing, setting pricing policies;
- sales strategy;
- organization of communication with the market (holding shares, branding, establishing the image of the company).
Structure
The structure of the marketing department can vary greatly depending on the type of company, its goals and functions. What does it look like in practice?
Department marketing at the enterprise will be very different from the marketing department of an online portal or publisher.
Most often, the marketing department consists of a marketing director, analyst, and product promotion manager. In this case, the analyst collects market data, the promotion manager draws up a sales plan based on the data received. Also, in some cases, the department may include a specialist in assortment of goods and a person specializing exclusively in promotion on the Internet.
Marketing department employees are usually divided into five levels, which are partially present in some companies and completely in some. It happens that in small companies the organization of the marketing department is such that one employee combines the execution of tasks at different levels.
Levels:
- strategic management (department head);
- tactical management (department manager);
- executive level (state marketers);
- technical (level of implementation of marketing campaigns);
- auxiliary (designers, copywriters, content managers).
The task of the head will be to coordinate the actions of employees, ensuring their workload and monitoring the effectiveness of the marketing department.
Marketing department performance
The marketing department must constantly increase sales growth through the most complete tracking and closing of customer needs. The effectiveness of the marketing department in different companies will be calculated differently. However, there are general criteria that reflect the essence of the problem. It should be noted that the marketers themselves do not sell anything, they are creating optimal conditions for the sale.
The effectiveness of the marketing department can be assessed by the following criteria:
- Sales funnel efficiency.
- Sales conversion. Ratios of the number of informed customers to customers who made a purchase.
- Compliance of the sales plan with the real capabilities of the sales department. As a rule, this is 100% fulfillment + - 20%. If sales amounted to more than 120% or less than 80% of the plan, then the marketing department worked ineffectively in either planning or promotion.
- The increase in enterprise profits should also be in line with the plan.
- Optimization of the use of advertising budget.
- Price per customer.
- The price of one application.
- Reaching the target audience during the marketing campaign.
- The effectiveness of investments in a particular marketing campaign.
Responsibilities of a marketing director or department head
The head of the marketing department manages everything that the marketing department does. Briefly describe its functions as follows:
- Budget planning for a company’s marketing.
- Coordination of marketing activities.
- Determining the need for certain marketing activities.
- Monitoring the activities of department employees.
- Communication with the sales department.
- Communication with outsourcing specialists.
- Conducting marketing campaigns.
- Monitoring compliance with labor discipline.
- Identification of the need for marketing activities in the company.
Employee Requirements
The requirements for marketing staff may also vary from company to company. Much depends on the specifics of the tasks. For example, what a marketing department at a metalworking company does will be different from marketing campaigns in a clothing store. Most often, the main requirement for employees will be the availability of specialized education or experience in this field, as well as successful cases. However, this is not always the case. The job description of the marketing department and its employees may vary depending on the specifics.
Knowledge, skills and personal qualities that a marketer should have:
- Analytical mind;
- knowledge of the characteristics of the studied market;
- ability to work with a large amount of information and in multitasking mode;
- flexibility of thinking;
- willingness to learn something new;
- deep understanding of the mechanisms for promoting goods on the market.
Marketing motivation
The marketing manager’s efficiency coefficient is usually more difficult to calculate than the sales manager’s similar indicator. If the seller’s everything is simple and is calculated by the number of calls, involved customers and sold goods and services, then the effectiveness of a marketer is more difficult to calculate at first glance.
However, there are parameters by which its effectiveness can be evaluated:
- Number of clients.
- The increase in the number of customers.
- Customer value. It is considered in this way: the entire budget spent on advertising is divided by the number of all customers.
- The cost of the application or lead (for Internet marketers - one of the key performance indicators).
- Percentage of increase in the number of repeat purchases.
- The increase in the number of positive reviews about the product.
If we consider a way to motivate a marketer, then the well-established option is the standard salary + bonus bonus part, which is considered based on KPI indicators.
Department Interaction
To maximize the effectiveness of the company in the market, the sales department and the marketing department must work closely.
The marketer must collect information about customer behavior during real dialogues, and the seller must listen to all the recommendations of the marketer.
In this case, in the interaction of the marketing department and the sales department, the following nuances should be taken into account:
- Communication should be established and structured. This can be an exchange of letters, communication with managers and any other.
- Promotion strategy should be agreed between sales and marketing. Ideally, each seller should understand why he performs certain actions. A marketer consider any feedback.
You should not find out which department is more important. Both of them work together and are created for one purpose - building relationships with customers. In this case, the marketing department performs strategic planning, and the sales department - the tactical implementation of the campaigns.
Internet Marketing
If ten years ago few people knew about Internet marketing and few used it, now it’s hard to imagine a company that wouldn’t be promoting its products on the Internet.
In some ways, the Internet is a new type of media, where much is borrowed from traditional communications.
But the online market is different from the classic. The advantage of online trading platforms is a much simpler analytics of sales and applications.
Modern analytical web services allow you to track a sales funnel in stages without the presence of any special knowledge and skills.
Thanks to the introduction of Internet marketing, there are many areas of business development and, accordingly, new professions for the specialists who make up the marketing department. These are such professions as:
- content manager - a specialist who selects content for a site or blog, as well as community on social networks;
- SMM-specialist - a specialist who interacts with clients on social networks;
- SEO-specialist - a person who optimizes the site for search results;
- directologist - a specialist in setting up contextual advertising;
- targetologist - the same directologist, only on a social network (in the marketing department staff, these two functions are combined by one specialist);
- web analytics.
Also, copywriters and web designers can be present in the marketing department, who also help to carry out what the marketing department in the company does.
The most interesting examples
Consider examples of the effective use of marketing in various organizations.
What does the marketing department at Tefal do? A great example of market research and the impact of data is the change in Tefal's advertising campaign under the influence of consumer market research. Tefal manufacturers have long positioned their pans as a way to save on oil. However, when conducting surveys and focus groups, it turned out that buyers see the main advantage of the Tefal pan that, thanks to the Teflon coating, food does not stick to it, which means it is easy to clean. And that was exactly the most important advantage of the pan in the eyes of buyers. Thanks to the information received, the concept of the advertising campaign and positioning changed, which allowed a sharp increase in sales.
What does the marketing department at P&G do? There was a time when sales of powder from the famous Ariel brand were not about to move off the ground. P&G commissioned a large-scale study on how people care for their clothes. It turned out that most of the population uses powder in only 30% of cases, using dry cleaning services in 70% of cases. At the same time, the results of the study showed that most of the powder consumers work for hire, and go to work in suits that are cleaned in dry cleaning. It also turned out that many work more efficiently when they go to work in casual clothes. And P&G allowed employees to go to work in casual wear a couple of days a week. The news was widely covered in the press. Many companies have followed suit and the detergent market has grown by 20%.
We studied the structure of the marketing department. As you can see, this is a pretty important topic. Often, the well-being of the company depends on the proper operation of the marketing department.