Get rid of your “Marketing Department”

Most companies have marketing division, a product development division and a customer service division. Most companies think of these as three separate and distinct functions.

Very often the product development people never talk to the marketing people and the marketing people never talk to the product development people. Meanwhile, the customer service people have almost no stature in the company and are thought of mainly as clerks.

There are also administrative people who do things like accounting and make sure the elevators work and that everyone has a computer and a desk. The administrative people often have little idea what the company even does, much less have any sense of the marketing strategy.

What a catastrophic mistake this is.

Marketing should never be a “division” or “department” within a company.

Instead, the entire company should be about marketing. Everyone in the company should be involved in marketing. A receptionist is not a low-wage worker; he or she is one of your most important marketers. Your receptionist and those who answer the phones are the voice of your company to your customers and clients.

Your accounting people are not bean counters, but should be integrally involved in making your marketing more efficient. Everyone in every company should understand that their paychecks come from one and only one source: customers.

Without customers, without sales, there are no paychecks.

Everyone in every company should be thinking all the time about how to create happy experiences for customers. Everyone in the company should be first and foremost a marketer.

The Chairman of the company should think of almost nothing else but marketing. The product development people should think of marketing first when they develop their products. What good is it to develop a great product or provide a great service that no one wants?

All products must be developed with the market for the product at the forefront. “Do our prospects and customers want this thing we’re making?” is the question the product development people must always ask.

Meanwhile, the finance people, the accountants and the lawyers should not ask, “How can we make our lives easier?” Instead they should ask, “How can we make it easier for people to do business with us? Do we really need to require our customers to fill out all these forms when they buy? do we really need to require our customers to sign long agreements that no one reads? Do we really did these awful disclaimers in tiny print on our order forms?”

The janitor is not a janitor. A janitor is a key marketing person, whose job is to make sure the place looks neat and clean — like a company people will want to do business with.

No matter what business you are in, your company should be a marketing company first — because marketing by definition means “creating happy customers and clients.”

Making cars, windows or widgits is not the mission of your business. “Finding and nurturing happy customers” is the true mission of all business. Solving your customer’s problem is your mission. Supplying what your customer wants is your mission. Making great and wonderful widgits is just the means to that end.

So now we’ve dispensed with the need to come up with a mission statement for your company. The mission statement for every business should be: “We are dedicated to creating wonderful experiences for our customers.” In other words . . .

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Happy Improved Marketing,

Ben Hart