Role of marketing in a company

This was a part of my final paper. In no more than a page, I need to explain what role Marketing plays in a company (pretty lame question by anyone’s standard). For the record I finished this in 10 minutes. That’s a beauty of take home exam. And it counted like 50% of my finals. You kidding me??

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Analyzing the traditional marketing definition of “process for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationship”, marketing is in fact total business in a nutshell. To fulfill the basic purpose of business of “creating and keeping a customer”, it has to produce and deliver goods and services people want and value. And that should be done at prices that are attractive relatively. Marketing helps a company in achieving that target.

Marketing is not simply advertising, and it covers a wide facet of today’s business operations. According to Winer’s strategy, marketing focuses on objectives, customer target, competitor target, core strategy and marketing mix (implementation). Marketing brings the company’s message on products and services to the customers through the channel and in a way that matters the most. Whether it’s for stating the product/service value proposition or to reposition a product/service, marketing delivers.

The role marketing plays in company’s strategy and overall success is fascinating. Whether it’s to encourage people to act upon, as done by US Army with its message “Be all that you can be”, or to convey an honest and straight forward message to its customers as done by Avis cars with a message “We try damned hard because we have to”, or being a voice for customers/investors to talk with, as done by Charles Schwab with its “Talk to Chuck” campaign, Marketing takes your business to customers in a way that creates value for both the parties involved.

Marketing also reflects both companies’ overall and short term strategy. With activities like promotions, companies can create instant brand awareness and sales. Similarly with long term focus on value branding company can place their brand in the way customer value.

Customer relationship management, which is one of the marketing mixes of overall marketing strategy, is essential for sustained business success. Marketing works to place continuous value proposition to the customers.

It is said that business has only two functions – marketing and innovation. When a business has an idea to evolve, the rest is marketing.