Welcome to B2B Marketing at its Core
Welcome to this edition of B2B Marketing at its Core, an industry newsletter with news, nuggets, and information on best practices in business-to-business marketing. With it, we hope to share information vital to any organization looking to generate results and accelerate growth through intelligent strategy, branding, marketing and public relations. This month’s topic:  Understanding How Marketing Can Work With Other Departments.

We are often asked what’s the best way for Marketing to work with … and not counter to … other departments – like Product Development, Product Management, and Sales? Many times it seems as if the line separating responsibilities is blurred. While each company has its own twist on what responsibilities fall to which department, here is a simple starting place to understand the typical role these four departments have in an organization and how they work together collectively.

Product Development
In the past, Product Development was responsible for creating a product concept utilizing technology, intellectual property and cost models. Often, not enough thought is given to the target market such as how, when and where the product would be marketed, and what needs the product would address. To avoid launching a product that has a lukewarm reception, build cross-functional product development teams that include Marketing and Research and Development.

Product Management
Product managers are responsible for delivering the entire product solution, and they work side-by-side with Product Development and Marketing. Some of a product manager’s duties include driving the product vision with Product Development and Marketing, maintaining the product roadmap, defining the product plan, testing the product concept, completing the user experience and driving positioning and messaging. Oftentimes marketing includes product management.

Sales
The number one priority for any Sales team, of course, is to sell, sell, sell! But to do so, the Sales team needs sales lead tools and support from Marketing to help meet sales quotas. Marketing helps Sales by generating leads, writing outbound call scripts, training the team on current promotions, and supporting seminars and tradeshows.

Marketing
Marketing is typically tasked with understanding customers and their problems finding solutions that leverage their company’s capabilities and promoting these solutions. Marketing, therefore, is held accountable for market analysis, quantitative analysis, strategic planning, product marketing, promotional and corporate communications, demand and lead generation, internal communication and sales support.

Where to from here?
If you are an executive, talk with your fellow executives and CEO to ensure each department is responsible for the projects that make the most sense based on their employees’ skill sets and job responsibilities.

If you are part of a Marketing team, schedule time to talk with your CMO or VP of Marketing to discuss ways to set up cross-functional teams or regular all-hands meetings made up of key members from each department in order to keep everyone on the same track. And, of course, ask us – we are here to help.

We created Core with the goal of enhancing your marketing practices. We hope you enjoyed this edition.

Sincerely,

Arketi Group
core@arketi.com  

PS. Please visit our website to learn more: www.arketi.com.