Marketing Strategy is NOT the responsibility of the Marketing Department

It is our belief - and there is strong evidence to support this - that organisations that practise the "marketing concept" are more successful. This requires an acknowledgement that marketing is the responsibility of everyone in the organisation - and marketing strategy is the responsibility of all senior managers.

As Regis McKenna said:

"Marketing is becoming an integrated part of the whole organization, rather than a specific function. Who's responsible for setting the direction of a business? Who sets the marketing direction for Cisco? For Apple? For Microsoft? More and more, it's the CEO who's becoming the chief marketer."

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Senior managers therefore must understand how to develop marketing strategy. Developing marketing strategy means understanding about:

• segmentation - the "art-science"; effective segmentation is the foundation of all marketing activity.
• differentiation - how it is different from being merely different!
• the components, mechanics and value of brand
• competitor actions
• valuing intangibles -when is advertising "worth it"

Hard Management offers a range of services to assist firms in developing marketing strategy:

• marketing training
• marketing consultancy
• marketing coaching
• marketing projects

For further information, please click here to visit our marketing section.

Finance & Strategy

We also have expertise in finance and strategy. This expertise provides a more balanced approach to our training:

• Finance - much of marketing is concerned with intangibles such as brand and customer relationships; assets which don't appear on the balance sheet and yet are probably the most important drivers of financial performance. Furthermore investments such as advertising that build long-term brand recognition (eg KitKat's pre-eminence is built on half-a-century of promotion) are treated by accountants as expenditure and so depress profits for the current year. So, marketing assets aren't recognised and investments reduce profits - managers need financial skills to make sense of these anomalies; enter value management!

• Strategy - and in particular, the implementation of strategy; using tools such as the Balanced Scorecard.

Please click the link below to find out more about our services.

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