Who is involved in marketing?

Answer 1

Everyone in a good organization is involved in marketing. Marketing is largely sales, but is not confined to that aspect of business. It may be better to focus on the customer. Marketing is putting the customer in the center of your picture and keeping him there - no matter who you are or where you work in the organization. You make propane cylinders for gas grills and the like. If someone using a forklift to remove, say, sheets of steel sheet from off of a truck is concentrating on not screwing up the steel so the fabrication guys will be able to use it to build a great product in an efficient way to deliver it to a customer at a competitive price, then he's doing his job. He should see all that. Or the forklift operator could see his "customer" is the fabricator who must work with the steel, if you wish to take it like that. Some do. The fabricator will get the steel and cut it up. (The QC guys are in there somewhere.) He'll then bend and jig it up so he can tack weld it. It is then finish welded by him or by machine. He wants the customer to get a strong tank that doesn't leak. That would be very good. He may see his customer as the inspector and the paint (or coatings) guy if not the weekend warrior who is grilling for his family and friends. Whatever works. With a good finished product, the marketing (aka sales) guys will be looking for places to sell it. They'll need to know who the point of sales people are. The home stores and hardware shops are their customers, if they don't want to look at that weekend warrior we mentioned. In any case, they'll need to see the guy who is the end user of the product and get inside his head to make the product the best it can be as regards effectiveness, safety, economy, and they'll want to trim it out with appropriate features (sometimes just one is enough) that make it "the best" of the pack of competitive units. Display, product placement relative to, say, gas grills (a great idea) and a number of other factors must be considered. Everyone has a customer, and everyone must concentrate on his customer and what thing(s) he (the employee) needs to do to best serve his customer. Certainly if the employee training has that worker looking at the next person in the production line as a customer, he should at least be given some training to bring him to at least some awareness of the end user as his customer. ("What should you be doing right now to build this unit if you were building it for yourself?") The use of the word "guy" or "guys" is not gender specific. Women can drive forklifts, fabricate and weld, perform quality control checks and inspect and paint stuff. Certainly they can sell (market) it. This is just one idea. There are a number of schools of thought on marketing. Anyone with good ideas who wants to prove them out and then write and sell(market) a book (as well as pocket some change from a flock of speaking engagements) has or may be doing so. If your ideas are good, step up and join the fray.