Far too often, marketing people treat marketing like it exists in this magical, utopian fairyland vacuum, somehow or another separate from the rest of the business. It's like Uncle Daddy inbreeding. The more inbred it gets, the weaker the DNA.
But marketing goes so much deeper into the intrinsics of a successful business operation. I try to use an abstracted model that gets applied to each area based on a very simple formula. The core formula can then be applied to any tactical marketing area.
I dig even deeper by implementing marketing strategies within a CPI (continuous process improvement) model roughly approximated on proven TQM philosophies like those taught by Deming, Six Sigma, Lean (Toyota Production Systems), Balanced Scorecard, etc...
I am not sure why marketing was passed over in the wild scramble to implement ISO and TQM models in manufacturing and services industries during the 80's and 90's, but the statistical foundation lends itself very well to continuous improvement.
The reason that I use a TQM approach is the firsthand experience of software product architecture and R&D -- which has to not only exist somewhere in the middle of the classic struggle between the technical engineering camp and marketing camp, but actually deliver results for future success of said company. In order to ensure the future success of a business, the entity must continue to develop and release products and services that are matched to its target market. For those of you who are Geoffrey Moore (Crossing The Chasm) fans, this might sound a little familiar.
The Strategic-level/TQM approach bridges the gap between ALL of the stakeholders... customers, sales, operations, finance, senior management, etc... Marketing should be constantly feeding the owners/managers and/or decisionmakers with a stream of information - not only concerning sales numbers, but through each and every step of the business operation... customer service, product & inventory management, and even finance.
Each of these areas have a push-pull relationship between their own domain and marketing. Each and every one of these areas are ultimately affected by, and in return also affect the production and/or delivery of a product or service to a customer (which is the function of a business, correct? deliver a product or service to a customer in a value exchange?)
As for integration into the business operation, it's one thing to make sure your employees can recite your USP verbatim on demand. It's another thing for them to understand how their job and their execution of the job affects the overall marketing process. Further, it's even more complex to be able to identify trends and adapt a product or service mix based on the feedback and analysis of marketing data, and reallocate financial resources within the operation based on the numbers produced by such a system.
How can a business structure its marketing so it can adapt to market conditions QUICKLY from the top to the bottom of the operation?
I will explore more of these kinds of ideas in future posts.