So what is marketing?

Most people would probably define marketing as some form of advertising.

This is a dangerous mistake, especially in marketing IT services, because it might lead you to overlook tremendous profit, potential loss and even quantum leaps that radically and exponentially expand your business potential.

All advertising is marketing but the full scope of marketing far exceeds advertising.

Its critical to understand this because if you don’t, your “marketing” will stop once the ad is placed.

And don’t blame yourself if you don’t feel “on top of it”. The role and full scope of marketing is still elusive because it’s a fairly recent “discovery” and wasn’t applied to business as a process until the 20th century.

Marketing impacts virtually every aspect of your business and if you aren’t aware of its full scope and aren’t effectively applying it throughout your organization and procedures, most of your profitability will be left underdeveloped or even impaired.

In a nutshell marketing is any strategy or tactic that helps position, sustain and grow your company.

This post will some of the ways marketing can be applied throughout your business to produce profits, stop losses, reveal hidden opportunities to grow both incrementally AND realize quantum leaps that dynamically transform your business.

Some of the items discussed will be fairly intuitive. Others may call for a paradigm shift in the way you view your business and the way you strategize moving forward.

If you can successfully implement good marketing in all the strategies and processes addressed below you can squeeze every drop of profit from your entire organization, tangible and intangible assets.

Some of these will already be performed but having a label for it can help you incorporate it into a more effective strategy for better, more consistent, scalable results, incremental growth

Most people think of marketing as strictly or primarily a prospect facing activity intended to turn prospects into clients.

We’ll begin with the roles that are more specifically under the marketing department and then expand into other areas of your business that might not intuitively fall under marketing but that could have a tremendous impact on your bottom line if marketing is effectively applied.

Core Marketing Roles:

· Market Research

· PRODUCT the physical features of the product, or the intangible aspects of the service covers things you do to make the product more attractive to buy

· PLACE decisions about where to sell the product or concerns about where the customers are, and how to get to them also includes the “channel of distribution” - meaning, all the different middlemen you use to get the product out to the customer

· PROMOTION telling the customer about the product

· identify the target market for products and services.

· To create an advertising or promotional strategy to appeal to the target market.

· And, last but not least, select the proper media to expose the message to the customer that will hopefully result in a sale and profit to the company.

· Packaging

· Brand Management

So branding in this context involves not only the look and feel of our brands (like logos) but also the meaning of the brand in the marketplace.

· Positioning

· Lead Generation

· Sales Coordination

· Who’s the market

· How to reach them

· Offer

· Risk Reversal

· Benchmarking

· Performance Analysis

· Improved Conversion Strategies

· Reporting

· Upsell/Cross-sell

· Reactivation

The roles outlined above are pretty core marketing functions that will intuitively fall under your marketing department… some possible gray area may exist between sales and marketing on the sales process.

The roles below are not generally marketing “activities”. In one way or another they are being administered by other executives and managers. And in some cases the activities may already be managed quite effectively with a watchful eye how the activity affects overall company profitability.

So please read the following with an open mind. While some things may seem intuitive I hope to stimulate your creativity and help you find at least 3 opportunities to dramatically increase profit by infusing marketing philosophy, systems and processes throughout your organization.

· HR

One of the most valuable assets your company will ever have is its people. What does this have to do with marketing?

· If you want your company to reach its maximum potential, you need to hire star performers.

One of the best ways to attract stars is to position your company as a star performing company in your industry, market and community.

The technologies you implement that will enable employees to perform at higher levels.

The image your company portrays.

The contributions your company makes to society.

· Be the visionary

If you’re the head of your company you have to viciously protect your role as the visionary. If you aren’t creating and communicating the vision for your company nobody else will.

The problem is its far too easy to get sucked into putting out fires and day to day details. You’ll feel busy and “maybe” productive but at the end of the day you’ll have been busy maintaining the status quo; not advancing.

Be very cognizant of how your time is spent. If you’re not spending time creating or advancing the vision ask yourself:

· Can I automate this?

· Can I delegate this?

· Can I outsource this?

· Can I hire someone to do it?

The above “should” go without saying from an administration standpoint but I address it as a marketing strategy because it will have a direct and indirect impact on profitability AND because it empowers you to be the visionary for you company. I’m assuming your “vision” will be to grow your company… marketing.

· Company Image

Your staff will be ambassadors for your company, representing you to the community, prospects, clients, partners, vendors, etc… whether they know it or not and whether you want them to or not.

Be sure to hire professionals that will reinforce your marketing and positioning goals.

· Procurement/Logistics

It goes without saying that you want to buy low and sell high. I’m including this as a marketing function because its not “just” about the initial dollars involved.

The strategy you implement in procuring the goods and services that allow you to support your clients will have far reaching impact on your overall business, marketing strategy and positioning goals.

· Cost, Quality, Delivery

Again, you want to source at the lowest cost possible but this usually means a trade off in quality, delivery or other concessions. You don’t always need to sacrifice money for the highest quality or fastest delivery. Just make sure the concessions you make on quality, delivery, etc… allow you to support your overall marketing strategy.

Obviously, cost of goods/services will have a direct impact on overall profitability.

Most importantly…

Be sure to apply marketing philosophy to procurement. Benchmark your starting point and map out an ongoing strategy to continuously improve all factors.

· Once in production can you reasonably forecast higher volume to reduce procurement cost?

· Will this enable you to source higher quality products and/or services (if necessary)?

· Will it enable you to (cost effectively) carry inventory to improve delivery time allowing you to ramp up your sales and marketing activities?

If time to market is a consideration, prioritize early penetration. First to market will almost always be more profitable than highest quality. Once in production you can always improve quality.

· Production

How do you allocate your resources?

Do you have enough service techs to support your clients (potential) needs?

Should you be more focused on solution sales?

Do you have enough sales reps and can you cost effectively hire more if necessary?

These are critical questions demanding an accurate response or you’ll leave substantial money on the table and may be wasting money/payroll on the resources you have in place.

The framework for these decisions is provided in your initial (and continuous) market research.

· Finance

Your accountant will track, process and report the numbers but will they should also work to improve the overall margins. It would likely help to have an extra set of eyeballs (with a marketing hat)

· Budget

All “initial” marketing efforts will require a budget that needs to be coordinated and monitored.

Question:

Should all marketing operate on a budget?

What if your “direct marketing” tactics are producing a measurable return of 25%? Would you stop the campaigns simply because you’d reached your budgeted target of $5000 for that campaign?

Heck no! If you’ve got a direct marketing campaign producing consistent ROI scale that puppy up and spend as much as you can!

Your other forms of marketing, however, will need to operate on a very tightly controlled budget.

Ex. The ROI on a branding campaign, if any, is long term and very difficult to quantify. For branding you need to budget what you’re willing to lose and cross your fingers that it works… someday and know that you may not be able to measure the results (IMHO).

· Leasing (internal)

Are you currently leasing any of your assets and resources?

§ How much is it costing you translate: eating up your profits)?

§ What will it cost you over the long haul?

§ Is there any way to reduce the rates or improve terms to improve overall profitability?

· Leasing (external)

Do you extend leasing options to your clients? This is a POWERFUL way to increase sales but it comes with a cost… usually very acceptable since it helps deepen the client relationship, which opens the door much wider for future sales.

§ How much does it cost you to extend leasing options and can the cost be reduced?

§ Do you offer your own leasing programs or allow an outside company or vendor absorb the risk?

· ROI Analysis

All these expenses, transactions, fees, etc… need to be tracked and measured against projected results and past benchmarks to be translated into profit and loss. Some of this is simply the daily routine for your accounting department.

But you can also “‘roid it up” to improve profitability by applying systematic benchmarking, performance analysis and improvement.

This is just a glimpse of how marketing process can transform your company when applied holistically.

While much of the information in this post will have been known and/or already in practice I hope I’ve stimulated your creativity and exposed some additional opportunities to add profit to your business.

Consider the organization roles and functions above and how you can apply an effective marketing philosophy and process throughout your organization.

And please don’t think I’m suggesting your marketing manager has to be an expert in all these areas. A jack of many trades is a specialist in none.

Your marketing director needs to have a feel for how marketing can impact your company through these functions so they can effectively work with your other department managers. But they should be an expert in seeing the big picture when it comes to optimal operation and effectively growing your business. And they need to know how to find and work with specialists to accomplish the mission.

Also… don’t cripple your growth by limiting marketing to activities that produce directly measurable results. Sometimes the less intangible, less quantifiable impact of effective marketing can be just as (or even more) profitable than an additional lead or sale. But whatever you let your marketing head run with… don’t let it get away from you. Make sure there’s “some” way to measure the value to ensure accountability and ROI.

About the Author



John Tanner is a marketing consultant and founder of VAR
Strategy. 
After a career in military intelligence John helped grow businesses in various
industries through sales and marketing, eventually finding a passion for
challenges and opportunities for business development in the IT channels.

VAR Strategy is a product of this passion and was created to provide
helpful information and resources to assist VAR's in growing their businesses. 

Visit his blog and signup free to get tested marketing and business
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