What Does Marketing Do?

Do you ever get the continual question of “What
does marketing do?” I honestly believe its right up there with What
is a lead?” It seems no matter where I have worked, or how large or mighty the organization is, marketing is one of those areas that seem to be an enigma to most people.

I would image that that is even more so today, as marketing
is quickly evolving from the brand guys or as some may say the “cakes
and cookies” function, into a real business driving, value adding, entity
that needs to generate results.

We now live in an era where +80% of your new business finds
you on the web, and when a prospect does decide to engage they are 60% of the
way through the buying process. So when my CEO asked me to put on a companywide
presentation on what marketing does, I wanted to try and show something more
than org charts, power points, brand logos, and leads. I wanted to try, and
show the end to end value chain that our marketing function can provide.

What Does Marketing Do from Lumension on Vimeo.

Nice goal, now the question was how do we that and avoid “power point poison”. We’re a small company, and production budget is limited. However; a burgeoning photography hobby has left me with contacts for cheap studio rentals, and expensive photography equipment. I’m lucky to have a team that while small, is well versed in the use of all digital tools at hand, so we produced our content in house.

I don’t know that we were any more successful than the next
guy in trying to convey the value proposition of marketing, but we gave it a
college try. Let me know how you thought we did. Nuff said.

Comments

[Steven Shaffer]

Very well done, on several levels.
Production (Done in house, wow!) as well as the marketing strategy overall. Data driven marketing, baby. Love it.

(Disclosure: I just applied for a Marketing position w/Lumension, but no I'm not sucking up.

[integrative marketing agency]

Although this article is very written and articulates many of the operational details required of a marketing department, it misses the point completely.
The job of any marketing department is simply to generate qualified leads for sales to follow up on.
All the rest of this is just path that gets you there. If you’re not generating qualified leads in the end, you’re just masturbating.