If you own a small business, you probably know about the intrinsic value of branding and marketing. Even if the products and services offered by your company are not necessarily innovative, you can still achieve considerable success with the right promotion and branding strategy.
Most new business owners start off marketing their companies on their own; later, they are likely to retain the services of advertising and marketing agencies to help them increase the reach of their brands. At some point, however, business requirements may increase and you may start thinking about hiring a marketing manager.
What many entrepreneurs do not realize is that hiring a marketing manager is something that should be accomplished in the earlier stages of their companies. To understand the importance of marketing managers in today’s highly competitive business world, you need to start by understanding their role.
What Marketing Directors Really Do
Some of the main functions of an in-house marketing director include market analysis, marketing strategy, and campaign implementation.
Marketing directors live and breathe branding; this is their lifeblood and this is what they understand better than anyone else in your company. Your marketing director will investigate trends in your chosen industry and will also conduct competitive analysis studies to see how your company fits in the marketplace.
The person you hire to direct the marketing efforts of your company will look at the factors that may help your business in terms of getting a competitive edge. When marketing professionals analyze target audiences, they determine the strategies they will use for the purpose of reaching specific segments. Furthermore, in-house marketing specialists can also help with the determination of pricing as it relates to products and services. To this effect, you should not try to control the price points on your own before consulting with your marketing department; indiscriminate pricing could be a recipe for failure if it is not carried out strategically.
Other Functions of Marketing Directors
Although marketing professionals tend to be technicians and specialists, they often make good leaders and effective members of executive boards. For this reason, many of the top global corporations and Fortune 500 companies include at least one executive with a solid marketing background on their boards.
Having a marketing director can be beneficial to your company in terms of leadership assessment. Seasoned marketing professionals tend to be quite good at reading people and getting to know their motivations, expectations, and behaviors.
Marketers know about the art of persuasion and influencing people; in fact, marketing directors are often appointed to be counselors of sales teams due to their keen insight into various industries and the marketplace.
Customer Relationship Management
Once your company starts growing, your customer base will expand accordingly. What this means to you as a business owner is that you will first have to expand your operations; your second move will be to sit down with your marketing director and formulate a strategy that will take advantage of the larger customer base.
It so happens that marketing directors are adept at customer relationship management, a business process that can generate marketing intelligence and opportunities for cross-selling and expansion. This is a very valuable skill that marketing directors can bring to the business table, and it can be implemented very easily by means of software solutions.
In the end, hiring a marketing director would be one of the smartest moves you can make as a small business owner.
