About the essence of the work of marketers. I took the main theses into my work and began to shamelessly exploit them. Well, the article is just about exploitation. To get something new, you need to exploit something old. For example, what does the entrepreneur exploit?
The entrepreneur exploits resources. Any resources. These are the ones he can reach and exploit. The most popular resources - labor, capital, information, land - are well-known and known to everyone... now things are actively shifting towards the search for resources. After all, only from a resource (his own, someone else’s, someone else’s, stolen, accidentally found) can an entrepreneur build machines to earn money.
What does a marketer exploit?
First, the marketer creates endless lists. Clients, journalists, contractors, conferences, publications, competitors, keywords, presentations and so on. Very different, but - lists. And then he begins to exploit these lists. ... In short, he juggles his inventory. This is the daily work.
But this is all a game of tricks, because external lists are a poor resource. To extract a useful product from it you need to try very hard. Unfortunately, neither entrepreneurs nor marketers see the internal resource that lies literally under their feet.
The fact is that as a company develops, it accumulates what is commonly called expertise. Knowledge of specialists, experience in carrying out projects, an archive of old materials, useful contacts in the market and in the media, and the same client base. However, it accumulates in a very medieval format: most of it is oral traditions and walking sages in insanity, the rest, in small pieces, is carelessly written down here and there and gathers dust in the Dropbox basements.
This is where the answer to the burning question arises: why do you need a marketer? On the one hand, there is an entrepreneur who is looking for more and more new resources for exploitation. He has the expertise, but he doesn't know how to squeeze a useful product out of it. On the other hand, there is a person who is trained to exploit the data. This knowledge is also suitable for exploiting the company's expertise. The puzzle has come together.
A marketer is a person who exploits the company's expertise. 
1. Collects, organizes and updates expertise and knowledge of all types. In other words, it materializes that ephemeral resource that actually increases the value of the company and enhances its market opportunities even on its own, simply by being separated from the carriers of secret knowledge and recorded in files and papers.
2. Takes responsibility for the business exploitation of accumulated wealth. That is, he organizes, plans, does a lot of things with his hands, reports on the processes and demonstrates the results.
In general, Olga’s article is devoted to the question of whether it is possible to automate the process of operating expertise for small and medium-sized businesses. You can’t rely on would-be marketers for objective reasons:
Unsystematic marketing activities. An article - and a year of silence. A dozen blog entries - and a break for a month.
Low density of these activities. And it would be possible to make reports at conferences once a quarter, but organizing a presentation is a whole undertaking, and I don’t have the energy for it.
Acquired experience dissolving in the fog. Who among us has not suffered over cases, which for some reason are always so difficult to write when the project has already been closed, and a new customer is kicking at the door.
Disposable content. Huge efforts to hold the conference - but no one bothered with video recording. And the (potentially huge) audience instantly shrank to a small number of those present.
Unsystematic sales. Key contacts and details of transactions are again in the head of the main one, there is no energy or time to take them out, somehow it lives on little by little, but the entire business depends on the memory of a single person.
Low quality of communications with the market. More precisely, a quality tied to a specific person. Not scalable, not reproducible, not standardized - templated.
Maybe marketers should be excluded from this information flow altogether?
How can a marketer avoid losing the battle with automation tools? For me, the answer is simple. You need to become a conductor between the internal and external environment:
1. Closely monitor what is being done well in the internal environment.
2. Accurately describe the company's expertise.
3. It is interesting and regularly to talk about expertise in the external environment.
That's the whole secret in the work of a marketer.
Tip of the day.
Be your own marketer. Start preserving your expertise today: describe completed projects, keep a list of achievements, collect a portfolio in the background. Rest assured, you will definitely have a reason to demonstrate your accumulated expertise.
Surely you have met people who work effortlessly, and everything they come up with flies away like hot cakes. Those who spend considerable resources on building a marketing system in business always want to ask these lucky ones: “How do you do it? How much do you spend on advertising? And the answer most often is: “Why do I need advertising: it sells itself!” My marketing research professor used to say that if everything sells, there is no need for marketing. Let's see how true this statement is.
Marketing is not promotion or advertising
Advertising- these are any communications that we carry out to directly sell our product. The advertisement will be a post on a social network with the call “Come to the training!” and a TV spot promising “My yogurt is the best!”
In a situation where “everything is on sale anyway,” advertising is really not needed. When production capacity is fully utilized, growth opportunities arise: you can increase production, expand your product line, and so on. And as it grows, advertising support may be required. But here and now it is not needed.
A promotion- these are actions aimed at maintaining your brand as a whole. This includes speaking at conferences, interviews, publications in some publications, blogging, and so on.
Even if everything is on sale here and now, promotional actions are most likely justified as an investment in future sales. You don't need promotion if you are suffocating under a flood of applications and your problem is small opportunities. Simply put, you cannot and do not want to make more product or provide more services. And if they wanted to, they would expand production - which means you would need support in the form of promotion and advertising.
Marketing is a broad concept.
Marketing is needed to understand what product A will be and how much it might cost. Come up with discounts so that they benefit profits. Or vice versa, you will have to raise the price. You need to come up with product B and make it so that after purchasing product A, the client will automatically buy B. Creating product packaging also relates to marketing. Packaging can be both tangible and intangible (descriptions and evidence base for sale). It wouldn’t hurt to build an affiliate system to sell your product through someone else’s hands. You also need to understand what prevents your client from choosing you, to say about yourself in such a way that “extra” clients who are not yours do not come. It's all marketing.
Doesn't anyone really need marketing after all?
I believe that strong intuitives who are not interested in achieving any specific indicators in their business or private practice do not need special marketing actions.
Strong intuitives are precisely those who “sell themselves.” It seems to me that this is a special talent - to feel your client and intuitively do exactly what the client needs, and exactly as needed.
If this sounds like you, perhaps you don’t need to bother yourself with marketing so as not to scare away your inspiration. After all, it is known that when you try to complicate everything, simple intuitive solutions can suffer. And using inspiration and a sixth sense as fuel, you can create successful projects without a “smart” marketing framework.
Under one condition - I mentioned it above - if you do not have clear quantitative goals in your project and there is no goal of business growth.
For example, if you make handmade jewelry (teach English via Skype, conduct psychological consultations), all this is sold through word of mouth, through friends, feeds you enough to make you happy and carefree, and you have no goal of building a project that brings, Let’s say, passive income, when you may need separate marketing tools (let’s say you want to make a convenient website or manage social networks competently), then you don’t have to build a system. And so there is something to eat.
Please note that I am not saying that such intuitive projects without KPIs (target indicators) are bad. It's great, actually. I believe that it is not the person who serves the business, but the business who serves the person. And if you personally are happy in your business, then why burden this happiness from above. I myself periodically dissuade people from going to my trainings for exactly this reason.
In other cases, as soon as you set out to start a business, grow a private practice into some kind of stable and profitable system, or develop a freelance project, marketing is your first and best friend.
The main thing to remember is that marketing is not general advertising or senseless and merciless promotion. This is the construction of such a system (from scratch, from the foundation, from getting to know yourself and the client, from carefully thinking through the product, and so on), in which even advertising may be superfluous. At the very least, you will know which buttons to press to ensure that the marketing system you create works reliably.
Today it is difficult to imagine a modern company that does not have a full-time marketing and advertising department. Even small enterprises that do not have the opportunity to maintain a full-fledged marketing and advertising department have a person on staff who deals with these issues. Often this person is the director of the enterprise himself.
Marketing in an enterprise is no less important than advertising activities. A company that does not monitor the actions of its competitors will never be able to claim the place of market leader, since it will make the same inevitable mistakes as its competitors. It is also very important to monitor new products and advertising activities that competitors offer in order to successfully promote your product or service on the market.
Many large companies that have their own full-time marketing and advertising department still turn to marketing agencies to order marketing research from professionals. Marketing research helps you competently promote your product and take your company to the next level.
Also, before launching a new product or service, it is important to thoroughly research the competitor’s market in order not to act blindly and prevent failure.
Monitoring competitors is just as important for the successful operation of the company as such important things as the price of the product or range you offer.
Also, before launching any project, a competent and thoughtful business plan and an accurately calculated budget are very important. The very concept of the product you offer is also very important. And the terms of sale. Such conditions include price, quality of product and service, and many other factors.
Also, do not forget that marketing and advertising are only a tool that helps you offer a product or service. The correct positioning of the product determines who will buy from you, how much and at what price.
It is important to understand that it is not possible for one company to organize the entire work process and solve all existing problems. Moscow Marketing Agency, conducting marketing market research, found that only those companies achieve success in which marketing activities are well established.
“From time to time, not entirely flattering reviews appear on the Internet on the topic of why marketing is needed in a company. And why do we need marketers, they only waste money. Naturally, such statements rarely evoke positive emotions for any specialist in this field. Emotions, emotions, but let’s constructively understand why marketing in general and marketers in particular are needed.”
So, what is marketing for?
What areas is marketing responsible for? And he is responsible for the interaction of almost all departments and divisions of the company with its clients. I wrote earlier about what falls under the responsibilities of a marketer, according to the HR department. However, these are the responsibilities of the specialist directly, but is the company able to do without marketing entirely? My personal opinion is that a normally developing company cannot exist without marketing. Without a staff of marketers, it’s quite easy, but additional functionality will fall on the shoulders of other company employees - sales people, suppliers, managers and other company personnel. However, everything is in order.
Why does the purchasing department need marketing? There are several key points in this connection:
- Marketers determine the concept and direction of assortment development.
- We, marketers, are directly involved in the formation of the company's pricing policy.
- Who else but marketers analyze the company's supplies and sales?
- One of the key responsibilities of a marketer is to analyze product shortages or, conversely, warehouse overstocking.
- Who calculates the turnover of product groups? Often marketers.
- The compilation of an assortment matrix should take place exclusively at the suggestion of marketers.
Naturally, all these responsibilities can be performed by the supplier on his own, but when he performs his own functions - directly ordering goods and maintaining warehouse stocks. There simply isn’t enough time for everything.
Why do sellers need marketing? How can a marketer benefit sales managers or sales consultants:
- Assistance in training salespeople in original and new ideas.
- The logical display of goods on the sales floor will reduce the time it takes to select goods.
- The marketer responsible for the sales floor can help determine the main features and nuances of product placement on store shelves.
- Assistance in the selection and designation of products that will increase the profitability of the company.
- Plans the time and place of launching an advertising campaign.
- Develops and approves the format and type of advertising.
- Marketers evaluate the effectiveness of promotional activities.
Marketing is needed by the management team of the organization. Naturally, such concepts as mission or development strategy are not present in all companies, however:
- Determining the general direction of development of activities.
- Segmentation of the market and customers.
- Analysis of the company's competitive environment.
- Analysis of the company's own indicators.
- Participation in the preparation of various instructions.
It is these components of marketing that contribute to the relationship between marketers and company management. Based on all this data received, management makes decisions about the prospects and further development of the company.
And finally, Why do we need marketing to customers?. Key points of interaction between the marketing service and the company’s clients:
- Providing complete and clear information about a product, company, news
- Identifying and meeting customer needs
- Timely notification of ongoing company events
- Creating a favorable and calm atmosphere for the buyer who comes to purchase
- Planning, development, implementation and control of the execution of a loyalty program for the company’s clients.
Naturally, not all areas of responsibility of the marketing service are listed and briefly described here. Absolutely all processes taking place in the company, one way or another, relate to marketing. In this regard, I think that the question - What is marketing for - is simply inappropriate. What do you think, dear reader of the Diary of a Marketer? Why is marketing needed, in your opinion? Have your say in the comments.