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Categories - Copywriting - Shopping - Free Online Business Help - Telecommunications Services Category: Marketing Marketing is sometimes looked upon as a resource that can, somehow, make pigs fly, but in real life, pigs don't fly very far and it is marketing's job to make sure that companies don't get into a situation where they're waiting for the pig to crash. Marketing covers two main areas. There is Marketing Communications (MARCOM), which is usually what people think of when they think of marketing, and Product Line Management (PLM). In additon to creating flashy ads, glossy literature, catchy lingos, and making public announcements, marketing is tasked with studying markets and making sure that products are defined so that they will be accepted by possible buyers. While MARCOM departments, because of their contact with the public, may be tasked to do marketing studies to find out if the market exists for or is large enough to support the next bright idea, PLM takes MARCOM input and writes the specifications for a product, including the introductory target price, to be handed to engineering to design and imagines what bright ideas might look like in their finished form in order to put initial configurations down on paper for MARCOM to do their studies with. Before taking on the task of defining a product or possible product, PLM will talk to many industry leaders and experts in order to educate the imagination as much as possible. After a product has been designed and is in production, PLM keeps track of things like industry trends that may eliminate a product's market and new product developments that may cause the next bright idea to be obsoleted. If a company is involved in building mini-computers or in the servicing of mini-computers and the world is switching to PCs, the company is about to go out of business. The same thing can happen to a company manufacturing tape cassettes when something like a CD is introduced or if you are involved in the production of radiation treatments when a cure for cancer is discovered. Besides defining the product and making sure that a market exists for it, PLM is responsible for making sure that each individual product is and remains profitable. Market forces can drive prices down or component shortages can drive costs up to the point where continuing to offer a specific product is suicide. Sometimes, shortages on components used in the manufacture of a product will make it wiser to pull a product from the market until suppliers have inventory on hand. PLM can also be invaluable when a company is involved in bidding for huge deals by estimating how much costs will drop as sales and purchasing volumes increase. While PLM isn't responsible for the total profitability of a company, it makes a major contribution. MARCOM, on the other hand, just mostly spends money while imagining how much the money that it spends will add to a company's revenue. Usually, the mount of money that MARCOM spends is determined by overall budgets prepared by PLM. MARCOM will negotiate with and convince PLM that a little more money will improve the numbers for everyone's benefit. One successful ad campaign can make a company. One ad campaign that is a flop can break the same company. Besides brilliant ad campaigns, some of the other things that MARCOM spends money on and develops include literature, industry trade shows, mailings, videos, websites, employee communications and moral, letterhead and business cards, logos, presentations, sales training, marketing studies, and company documentation. All of these things add up to visibilty and a successful MARCOM department will design and control each item so that, combined, they present a consistent message and create a well liked personality for the company. MARCOM wants the public to smile and think of a company whenever it gets a flash of a color, logo, or hears a tune. If people recall your phone number while they're thinking, MARCOM has done its job. One other thing that MARCOM is responsible for is PR. Public relations has become so important, as evidenced by the number of companies strictly engaged in PR, that most people think of it as an individual entity, but it really is part of a successful MARCOM department. Public realtions is where a company tells the media and the public what a company's products, literature, letterhead, and employees stand for. As in all of the other things that MARCOM controls, the message must always be the same. Since a company might not want to present the same image in rural America as it does in big cities or in one country verses another, its image may vary slightly, but its message should never change. Good donuts have to be good donuts no matter where you sell them, but you might want to have mom or machinery cook them depending on where they're sold. If you choose a career in marketing, whether it's on the PLM or MARCOM side, you will get to use your imagination and depending on how educated and intelligent your imagination is, your peers might even call you creative. Marketing departments own a company's entrepreneurial spirit and a creative entrepreneurial spirit is what makes companies successful.
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