By George Meszaros
While marketing industry is often labeled as glamorous, marketing people always expected to be creative, and marketing companies’ role usually reduced to that of advertising companies, it is becoming more and more apparent that marketing providers outgrow these stereotypes – that their activity relies on numbers and statistical analyses as much as it relies on talent and creativity, that their practice is science and art in the same time, that their result are seen in consumers’ attitudes towards brands as much as in consumers’ shopping cart.
Many of the stereotypes associated with marketing companies come from the fact that in many cases the role of marketing is reduced to that of advertising. Developing memorable ads that remain deep into consumers’ minds and influence their decision making and buying behavior is just one of the many things marketing companies do.
Another misunderstanding of marketing companies’ roles comes from the fact that in many organizations the sales and marketing functions are separated, which makes it difficult to emphasize the importance of maintaining the first one as an integral part of the latter one.
Nowadays, advertising is mostly done in advertising agencies and the sales function has grown so much in its diversity of means for implementation that it is done by different types of companies, depending on the form it takes. For instance, sales through sales agents -the most traditional form of sales we know – is usually still done by internal employees and not so often by outsourcing it to a specialized marketing company. Still, other forms of sales such as telemarketing or electronic sales are mostly done by specialized companies contracted by the organization producing the goods or services that are being sold.
While the role of sales and advertising is indeed important, these are just two of the types of promotion a marketing company employs together with public relations and promotional techniques.
However, a marketing company’s activity can include anything in between marketing research and customer relationship management. Its role is to first understand the consumer’s attitudes, cognitions, and behavior, then use the insight gained into developing the product or service, its promotion, its placement, and its pricing, and then continue to facilitate the sales of a product or service while using the feedback gained from the consumers and the foreseeable opportunities of the market in improving this marketing mix or replacing it with a new one once before reaching the decline stage a product life cycle. Even though a marketing company can do sales, PR, strategic marketing, advertising, market research and many other things in the same time, many organization have chosen to concentrate on only one of this areas. No matter what the level of specialization of the marketing company is, all of them can have an impact on the awareness and profitability of a company. However, what truly matters when choosing a marketing company is how it integrates the different types of services provided in order to create the highest added value for the investment a client company made in marketing programs.
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