What activities do you have filed under "marketing", which call on your budget or time? I just thought it would be a good idea to see if we could compile a comprehensive list of all the things a marketing department in an industrial or scientific company has to deal with nowadays.
I've been searching around the web recently for a list of the various items which make up the "marketing mix" for a typical industrial or scientific company. However, I can't find anything which seems that relevant, so I wondered if we could put something together here. Can you help? Below I've made a start, but it's a bit of a first draft. What activities do you have filed under "marketing", which call on your budget or time? If there's stuff which isn't here, or improvements you can suggest, I'd love to hear from you. Just add them in the comments section.
1. Content Production
- Articles (General)
- Articles (Case Studies, Application Notes)
- Blogs
- Brochures
- Catalogues
- Digital Magazines
- Ebooks
- Email Newsletters
- Mailshots
- Podcasts
- Press Releases (Company News)
- Press Releases (Product News)
- Printed Magazines
- Printed Newsletters
- Social Media
- Supporting Websites
- Videos
- Webinars
- White Papers
2. Distribution of Content
- Emailing
- Mailing
- Outsourced (e.g to a PR agency)
- Printing
3. Events
- Conferences and Seminars (organised by others)
- Conferences and Seminars (organised in-house)
- Customer Hospitality
- Trade Exhibitions
4. Advertising
- Broadcast Media – Creation
- Broadcast Media – Placement
- Calendars, Diaries, Year Planners
- Directories (Printed)
- Directories (Online)
- Magazines and Newspapers: Advertorial (inc. 'colour separations')
- Magazines and Newspapers: Display Advertising – Creation
- Magazines and Newspapers: Display Advertising – Placement
- Online: Display (e.g banners) – Creation
- Online: Display (e.g banners) – Placement
- Online: Pay-Per-Click (e.g Google AdWords) – Creation
- Online: Pay-Per-Click (e.g Google AdWords) – Placement
5. Website Maintenance
- Addition of Content
- General IT (inc. hosting)
- Redesign
- Search Engine Optimisation
Naturally, only a proportion of these will be things you're involved in, but I just thought it would be a good idea to see if we could compile a comprehensive list of all the things a marketing department in an industrial or scientific company has to deal with nowadays. So any additions, please add them in the comments. Please help, and let's see what we can come up with.
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…no wonder we are all tired! Our Marketing department is also responsible for – new product development, re-seller support and data work, e.g customer data base management, customer profiling and segmentation. Oh and I also clean the fish out!
Corporate branding across the physical site – trying to make sure every time a department wants to put up a sign, it's in the corporate font, shows the logo right, and so on – we have some serious education to do on that aspect, but it's an aspiration for us…
We also have responsibility for CRM in our department, mainly because we were the ones that wanted a clean contact list for e-mail marketing.
Also everyday Customer Technical Support (but that is mainly because I was so involved in the technical content of published information, it made sense to include my complete job role in Marketing).
I'm sure there must be others – each day seems very full!
Wendy – Technical Marketing Engineer for Harwin
Telemarketing
Don't forget that we need to maintain our data e.g.
Maintain
Add
Clean
Measure
As well as Liaise and plan local marketing activities with our channels
Andy Walker
Someone's also just mentioned "internal online marketing" – e.g. maintenance of local and worldwide intranet (including online shared drive for images, documents etc).
The main omissions as far as we are concerned, (because this is what we do for clients!) are market research, strategic marketing, customer analysis and sales/market forecasting.
Graphic-related activities, from the initial photo shoots, to graphic content for the plethora of marketing materials.
Presentations, e.g. for display at tradeshows etc
Distributor marketing, essentially materials to allow Distributors to more easily/more effectively sell or market your products, but could also be activities such as sourcing & branding of promotional items, Distributor awards etc.
What about MARCOMS reports, not just by campaign but by group/territory?
And of course there is planning!… the campaign and/or the year!
Translation of marketing materials (the administration of) is also a time-consuming activity, then you also have to create/manage the localised content.
Look forward to seeing the final list. I KNOW that most people don't know just how much work we marketing people do. But should I spend my precious time "marketing" our own activities?!
Product and package label approval (links to corp. id)
Recruitment seminars, fairs, open days.
Customer research, new product development, recruitment, industry monitoring, and reading Chris Rand's newsletters…
There's Twitter updates and Facebook updates too. Getting the company involved in LinkedIn and making sure all our information is out there.
Along with the comment on market research should be tracking competition and their activities through the web and printed publications.
Missing is interfacing with the sales department, both to tell them about marketing activities and find out what they are finding out from customer both positive and negative.
Great to see just how many jobs we do and are expected to do in our small but very busy marketing department. Seeing the variety of jobs in one list was a bit of an eye opener. So were the extras suggested in the last few days.
I'd like to add a section on Images. Gathering new product images from manufacturers or arranging our own photo shoots through to maintaining our image library.
Also product header cards, point of sale materials and creating new barcodes…
This is turning into a great list – to which I would add managing the boss / client (depending on which side of the fence you sit) and helping them to manage / communicate to colleagues.
Will you re-publish a new list that includes the new topics presented in the comments? I know that it is simplistic, but I sometimes organize marketing tasks according to the marketing mix: Product, Place, Price, and Promotion (these days some have added a 5th P: People).
Watch this space Bryan!