Professional services firms have, at times, had rocky relationships with their marketing functions. Too often, this has led to unrealistic expectations, disappointment and the marginalization of the marketing function.
This is a tragedy. An effective marketing team can have a profound impact on a modern professional services firm. When well staffed and well functioning, a marketing department can drive growth, profitability and a premium valuation. In short, the role of your marketing department in your firm’s success cannot be overstated.
What’s the best way to build such a valuable function? We believe it’s built upon a clear understanding of what to expect from your marketing department and what resources and support it will require. But first, we need distinguish marketing from the sales function.
A strong marketing department is critical for business growth and success in today’s competitive marketplace. But what exactly does a marketing department do? What are their key roles and responsibilities?
In this comprehensive guide we’ll explore what marketing departments do, why they matter, the critical roles they play, and how they collaborate with other departments to help companies thrive.
Whether you’re looking to start a marketing department from scratch or want to better understand how marketing teams operate, this article will provide valuable insights. Let’s dive in!
What Is a Marketing Department?
A marketing department is the team within a company responsible for promoting its brand, products and services. Their overarching goal is to create awareness generate interest and ultimately drive sales through strategic marketing tactics and campaigns.
The marketing department works to establish the company’s brand identity and voice, conduct market research, create messaging and assets to reach customers, build relationships with key stakeholders, and analyze performance to refine strategy over time.
They are essentially the outward-facing communicators for the business – shaping how consumers perceive and engage with the brand through each interaction.
Why Are Marketing Departments Important?
An effective marketing department provides immense value:
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Increased brand awareness – They promote the brand through content, advertising, events and other channels to reach new audiences.
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Lead generation – Marketing initiatives attract prospective customers and drive leads in the sales pipeline.
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Market research – They gather customer insights to influence product development and positioning.
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Revenue growth – Marketing generates revenue directly through campaigns and indirectly by supporting sales teams.
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Customer retention – Content, special offers and loyalty programs all help retain existing customers.
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Competitive differentiation – Strategic marketing sets a brand apart from competitors in crowded markets.
Simply put, marketing departments play a pivotal role in sustaining and growing any successful business long-term.
Key Roles Within a Marketing Department
While specific roles vary by company size and structure, marketing departments typically include some core positions:
Marketing Manager
Marketing managers oversee the department and marketing strategy. They manage campaigns and projects, set goals, control budgets, hire team members, and report on ROI.
Brand Manager
Brand managers shape messaging and positioning. They define the brand identity, voice, design and overall look-and-feel.
Content Marketing Manager
Content marketers create written, visual, video and audio content. They drive brand awareness and traffic through blogging, social media, SEO and more.
Email Marketing Manager
Email marketers build and manage email campaigns to nurture leads and engage customers.
Paid Media Manager
Paid media specialists manage ad campaigns including PPC, display ads, paid social media and more.
Graphic Designer
Designers create visual assets for campaigns including ads, site graphics, branded collateral and more.
Marketing Analyst
Analysts use data to identify trends, optimize campaigns and prove marketing ROI.
Key Responsibilities of a Marketing Department
So what are the day-to-day responsibilities and functions of these marketing pros? Here are some of their most common duties:
- Develop comprehensive marketing strategies and plans
- Conduct market research to guide efforts
- Manage branding including visual identity and messaging
- Create websites, product pages and other owned media
- Produce engaging content for the blog, social posts, videos, etc.
- Run email marketing campaigns to nurture leads and sales
- Develop and manage advertising campaigns across channels
- Plan and execute events, tradeshows and promotions
- Manage affiliate, influencer and partner marketing programs
- Design graphics, ads, brochures, signage, etc.
- Monitor and analyze performance data to optimize efforts
- Manage PR and media relations to secure earned media
- Collaborate with internal teams including product, sales and customer success
As you can see, marketing departments juggle a diverse array of responsibilities critical to promoting the brand, engaging customers, and driving revenue.
How Do Marketing Departments Interact With Other Departments?
To succeed, marketing teams must collaborate closely with other departments across the organization:
Marketing + Sales
Sales relies on marketing to generate qualified leads, provide sales enablement materials to support pitches, and develop campaigns to nurture prospects.
Marketing + Product
Product teams depend on marketing for customer insights to guide development. Marketing promotes new features and positioning.
Marketing + Customer Success
CS leverages marketing content and programs to onboard, engage and retain customers.
Marketing + HR
HR works with marketing to attract and recruit talent by promoting the company culture and employer brand.
Marketing + Finance
Finance supplies budgets and verifies ROI on marketing campaigns and programs.
This cross-functional collaboration ensures alignment on goals, efficient use of resources, and consistent messaging across departments.
How Do Marketing Departments Measure Success?
There are several key metrics marketing teams use to gauge performance:
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Sales revenue – Ultimately marketing aims to drive revenue through new customer acquisition and existing customer retention.
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Lead generation – The number and quality of leads generated through campaigns.
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Brand awareness – Through surveys and metrics like aided brand recall.
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Content engagement – Conversions, downloads, shares, traffic and backlinks.
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Campaign ROI – The revenue return-on-investment of specific programs.
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Customer retention – Measured by repeat purchases and churn rates of current customers.
By continuously monitoring and optimizing based on these metrics, marketing departments can prove and improve their value to the org over time.
Final Thoughts
An effective marketing department is a growth engine that drives awareness, engagement, and sales through strategic campaigns and programs. They shape perception of the brand and promote the products, services, and culture both internally and externally.
Equipped with an understanding of their diverse responsibilities – from branding to analytics and beyond – you can empower your marketing team to maximize their impact and contribution to your business goals.
Marketing vs. Sales in Professional Services
One of the first steps is to be clear about the language we use to describe a marketing department and how it differs from a sales function. The reason that this distinction is so tricky is that many firms do not use traditional language to talk about these concepts. Sometimes the term business development is used to refer to the sales function. In other firms, business development refers to both the marketing and sales function. In this article, we are going to use the traditional definitions.
Marketing is the process of understanding your marketplace and competitors, defining your firm’s market positioning, pricing and services, promoting the firm to your target audience and explaining how they might benefit by working with you. Put another way, marketing is about offering the right services with the right benefits to the right prospects.
Sales is the process of qualifying your prospects and convincing the right ones to buy your services. It’s about turning business opportunities into clients.
While this difference seems pretty simple on the surface, there are a few areas that can cause confusion. In some organizations, for instance, the sales function is also responsible for generating and nurturing leads until they become viable business opportunities. As you will see below, we have some strong opinions about this practice.
So what exactly should be the role of your marketing department? What should you expect from your marketing team?
Whether your team is in-house, entirely outsourced or a combination of the two, your marketing team has five core functions.
Marketing should always start with the market. You should expect Marketing to be able to give you detailed and specific descriptions of your target markets and your key competitors in those markets.
But you already know all about your competitors and clients, right? Wrong. Unless you are already doing systematic, structured research, you are kidding yourself. Anecdotal experiences can lead you astray.
Our research shows that internal staff almost always inaccurately perceive their market and their clients’ true feelings and priorities. In fact, firms that do objective research on their markets and clients grow faster and are more profitable.
A professional marketing function can commission this research and allow you to make decisions based on marketplace reality, rather than hunches and wishful thinking.
Once you have a research-based understanding of your firm and its place in the market, your marketing department should be able to help craft a compelling strategy to drive growth and profitability. That strategy may require adjustments in your target market, service offerings (see the next point, below), and marketing plans.
Your strategy should clearly identify compelling competitive advantages (your differentiators) and a clear market positioning (are you the premium-priced leader or a value-driven alternative?). Think of these as tools to describe your brand. How do you want to be known in the marketplace? As you wrestle with your options, expect to be challenged with new thinking and bold choices.
You will also need a marketing plan. This plan will map out exactly how you are going to build the visibility of your brand and generate the new opportunities your business development (sales) team will convert into new clients.
The Marketing Planning Guide for Professional Services Firms
Historically, many firms have left the key decisions about what services to offer and how to price them to individual operating executives or the finance and accounting function.
Decisions about service lines and pricing are important elements of a growth plan. They should be informed by an overall research-based strategy, not individual client requests. Why? It is too easy to get over-extended trying to be everything to every client. You will soon lose focus and experience, increasing costs as you struggle to provide an ever-expanding array of services.
Innovation and client responsiveness can all too easily become undisciplined dabbling. A strong marketing department plays a leading role in maintaining that balance.
More leads! Better opportunities! Who doesn’t want a steady flow of well-qualified new business prospects? Fortunately, that is exactly what you should expect from marketing. While some firms assign lead generation and nurturing to the sales (business development) function, we think that is a bad idea in most cases. The time horizon for lead generation and nurturing can be a long one. Nurturing leads can take months, even years. Sales are almost always placed on a much shorter operational cycle (“what can you close this month?”).
Your marketing team should turn your overall strategy into a formal plan to generate new leads and nurture your existing prospects until they become well-qualified opportunities. This plan should look ahead at least a year and be guided by clear, trackable metrics (more on this below).
Be careful that you do not continually add new “marketing ideas,” underfunding campaigns, or other unplanned initiatives that may derail the plan. If you fall into any of these traps, you cannot expect the plan to work, nor can you hold your marketing team accountable.
Also, be patient. Lead nurturing can take time — sometimes a very long time. Don’t focus only on immediate results. You will need new clients next year, and the year after as well.
This is the piece that makes everything else possible. If you can’t measure your results, you are likely to lose sight of your progress during the marketing process. Building a strong brand and full pipeline takes time.
With the appropriate tools and cooperation from the Business Development team, Marketing should be able to track lead generation, nurturing, opportunities, proposals, and closes. The entire pipeline can then be optimized over time.
If you are not tracking results, it is too easy to continue unproductive programs or unwittingly discontinue efforts that are working. Tracking keeps you honest and allows you to make the most of your limited resources.
What does a Marketing Department do?
What does a marketing department do?
(With Benefits and Tools) Marketing departments perform a variety of functions internally or externally for companies. Regardless of the industry, these teams can help provide measurable benefits to many businesses. Effective marketing departments can help companies grow and expand to reach their highest potential and return on investment.
How can a marketing department help your business?
To win customers in this business atmosphere, one effective approach is creating a marketing department with skilled experts. A marketing department can help you differentiate your business, attract and retain customers, and grow your revenue. In this post, you’ll learn everything about the marketing department.
What is an example of a marketing department?
For instance, an early-stage startup can have a one-person marketing team, while an enterprise company can have a marketing department with several dozen marketers. Here are examples of marketing department roles: The CMO is the overall head of the marketing department.
How does a marketing department structure work?
This structure works for a one-person marketing team. Usually, the lead marketer is a generalist who knows a little about everything, but is a specialist in a couple of disciplines. This marketing department structure is great for companies having 101 to 1,000 employees.
