You know you want to be your company’s most successful department head and manage hundreds of employees — not just a team of marketers. You know you want to work with an organization with strong finance and HR partners so that your department has the resources it needs to succeed. Just as a maintenance department needs to performa maintenance inspection to determine what repairs need to be done, you must inspect and assess the work your department does regularly. You want to be sure that every employee is getting a fair deal on their career path. And, most of all, you want to support your team in their quest for greater profitability by helping them expand their reach into new markets and industries.
It’s no wonder that companies like Coca-Cola, Marriott, American Express, Baroda & Co., Moisture Technologies, and many others have operated for decades as one entire marketing segment or brand groups. If you operate as a marketing department or make up one department within another, this article can help you increase your corporation’s profitability while maintaining order and control over the day-to-day operations. Here are some steps you may take if you’re operating as a marketing department:
Take an Inventory of Your Marketing Behavior
One of the best ways to increase profits in an organization is to take an inventory of each and every marketing effort your company makes. This includes expenses, efforts, and outcomes that help your business earn its green light to operate. Even if you don’t spend a single cent on advertising, it’s important to know where your company is spending its money — both in terms of buying media and more importantly, the effort it’s putting into marketing it. What are your spending categories? For example, do you spend money on designing and developing a website? Do you spend money on paying employees? Do you spend money on paying for brand marketing? If you don’t know where your company is spending its money, it can be difficult to know what needs to be done to increase profitability. The best way to begin placing a check in this box is to take an inventory of all of the activities your company is involved in that can go a long way toward increasing profitability.
Monitor and Assign Customer Service Responsibilities
Customer service is often a top priority for managers and leaders in the business world. This is especially the case during a crisis or when an organization is found guilty of Marketing misdirection, unethical or otherwise.
Another concept we can borrow from the maintenance department as we discussed above, is the idea of proactive maintenance. What is proactive maintenance? It is the act of taking steps to care for something in order to prevent issues down the road. In marketing customers expect fast, effective, and consistent service — and if your department proactively sets goals for these levels of service, you’ll be in a much better position to grow and achieve your Marketing objectives.
Customer service responsibilities vary depending on company size and type. For example, a company with just 10 employees might be expected to follow suit with the rest of the company, while a company with 50 employees may be expected to provide exemplary customer service at all times of day or evening.
Work with a Marketing Executive to Define Marketing Objectives
Managers and chief marketing officers need to know the marketing objectives of their companies in order to best serve their organizations’ customers. Marketing objectives are goals that a company is trying to achieve through effective marketing. The best marketing objectives can be incredibly ambitious. For example, the king of global marketing, P.T. Barnum once said: “A good idea is a great advertising idea. A great advertising idea is an excellent marketing idea.” What is an excellent advertising idea? Well, there’s no question that a great way to begin answering this question is by discussing your company’s marketing objectives with a marketing executive. The best way to do this is to sit down with a marketing manager or general manager, get their honest critique of your marketing program, and then outline your company’s marketing objectives for the year.
Manage Employees in Line with Brand priorities
Managers and heads of departments who operate as a department of one or many brands should aim to develop a culture in which employees feel comfortable talking about and having confidence in their brands. This means it’s important for you to manage your employees in a manner that is consistent with brand priorities. For example, a company with 50 employees may want to run a campaign targeting consumers in emerging markets who might not be aware of its brand until they get to their home countries, while a company with 10 employees might want to run a more targeted campaign that looks at consumer geographies outside of the United States.
Monitor and Control Marketing Automation
One of the best ways to increase profitability is to monitor and control marketing automation. What’s happening in your department every day? What’s happening with your competitors? What’s happening with your customers? How are you doing compared to your competitors? It’s important to note that monitoring and controlling marketing automation doesn’t just mean that you need to look out for your company’s interests — it also means you need to look out for the best interest of your team members (and, by extension, your customers). For example, a company with 50 employees might want to make sure that each of their employees is aware of their company’s policies and expectations for how they’re operating during bad times — while a company with 10 employees may want to make sure that employees have a plan for dealing with sudden, stressful moments in their jobs.
Wrapping up: Is Your Marketing Department Working For You?
You’ve probably heard it before: “You’ve got to keep marketing in business to survive.” Well, don’t kid yourself — it’s not just marketing that’s got to survive; it’s also a business’s ability to operate as a business and be efficient in the day-to-day operations that make up a company’s life. And it’s not just any operation that’s got to succeed; it’s also how a company employs all of its resources to achieve its goal. These four points can help you better understand your industry and see how your company can be more profitable in the years to come.
