Tony Lopes

Ask yourself – does my company need a marketing department? You may be in marketing at a large company, or you may be an entrepreneur running your own business, or you may be head of a non-profit organization. In each of these situations it is important to do one thing well and that is:

You must match the capabilities of your organization with the needs of your customers

You don’t need a formal marketing structure to ensure that your organization meets the needs of your customers. A good manager of a business knows what the needs of customers are. Even large companies don’t have need for a formal marketing department since the product will be developed by the product manager people, the pricing will be established by the accounts people and the strategy will come from the MD.

However, if you leave marketing up to the product people alone you may end up with a situation where the product is full of amazing features and capabilities but it doesn’t sell well because nobody bothered to find out whether the product satisfies the needs of customers.

Think of all the penniless inventors out there who develop technologically advanced products that just don’t sell.

If you left marketing up to the accountants then you would have a situation where the product was sold for the highest margin at the lowest possible cost but this wouldn’t meet the needs of customers.

Having a formal marketing function means that you have dedicated professionals focused on:

• Product range
• Customer types
• Competitive pressure
• Environmental influences

All too often you find the situation where people “fall” into marketing because they don’t fit in anywhere else. If you truly want a successful marketing function, you need to make sure that your marketing people are skilled and experienced.

Marketing should also not be regarded as simply the promotion and advertising that the marketing team comes up with. Marketing is an alignment of all departments to matching the capabilities of an organization with the needs of customers, to ensure that both parties gain maximum benefit.

Alan Mitchell, a freelance journalist for Marketing Business said:

To say the Marketing Department is responsible for marketing is like saying love is the responsibility of one family member

Make sure that, no matter who is responsible for marketing in your organization, you have a good understanding of what each of your customer groups wants and that the resources of the organization is focused on meeting those wants at a profit.