Marketing Post

Marketing Post

Respond to the post below. READ/REVIEW your classmates postings and respond to them. In your response, you are expected to provide insight and value.

Post From AGBONTAEN, OSAZUWA

Marketing is an important support function in a company, but I’m not of the notion it is the most important function in a company. "Many experts believe that marketing is the most important function in a company". I do not agree with this statement because not all companies require marketing activities, some companies do not have a marketing department or team.

For instance, my Uncle’s owns an investment firm. My uncle (Solomon Agbontaen) started Summa Guaranty and Trust Company in 1999 and didn’t have a website until 2009. During that time, the company was able to gain clients and obtained $1 billion in assets which they manage. My Uncle and partners were able to do this with little to no marketing. His company is successful because of his background (career and academic), social networking skills and the reputation he has built over the years. This usually works well with small companies such as law firms, information technology firms, investment and financial advisory firms, etc. Word of mouth plays a very important role here and a company can be successful without investing heavily in marketing.

Although some functions might be "worth" more to a business, all are important to the success of the business. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be part of the enterprise. Since they are all important, any one of them could cause the business to either falter a little, fail, or something in between. This means you should do three things:
First, understand how your business’ functions work together (as, in a "system"). Build a function "map" and look for the intersections, dependencies and overlaps.

Second, find out which function is the "most important" by assessing for the operating quality level of each of the functions, and their characteristics, you need and use to meet your business’ goals.

Third, build and implement improvement initiatives, keeping in mind that your business functions do indeed act as system. Improving the "most important function" should go hand-in-hand with improving your company’s other "most important functions."

Marketing is essential because it raises awareness for the services or products the company is offering to its customers or clients. Including a marketing plan or campaign in a company’s operations depends on the type of business. For example, companies like Johnson & Johnson, Coca Cola and McDonald’s rely heavily on marketing to retain customers and attract new ones. While marketing may mean many different things to different folks, in the end, it comes down to generating new business.