Make sure that management understands that "marketing is too important to be left solely to the marketing guys." Marketing cannot exist and operate in a silo; it should interact with the rest of the organization. The head of marketing should ideally help the executive team develop the company's business plan and strategy. Equipped with this big picture thinking, marketing is in a better position to help drive revenue and add to corporate value.
Investing in marketing earlier rather than later can offer strategic value. Choosing to invest only in a sales force over marketing will only lead to unhappy salespeople later. Highly compensated sales reps should not and do not want to spend their time doing marketing.
Likewise, investing only in research can cause problems if there's no thought put into how to market a new product, or even whether there will be demand.
"Entrepreneurial companies are always resource constrained," says Sean Murphy, vice president of Sales, Marketing, and Business Development at NeoNova Network Services, a Morrisville company that manages IP services. "Development's effort is best leveraged when you understand the voice of the customer. Our executive team has recently made visits to our customers throughout the U.S., not to pitch new products to them, but to really understand their needs and pain points."
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