9 Marketing Department Roles (Definitions and Importance)

Most organizations function by dividing responsibilities between different departments. This allows professionals who specialize in a particular field to focus on that area and may help the company efficiently balance responsibilities between the different departments. One vital branch of most organizations is the marketing department. In this article, we discuss the importance of a marketing department and list 11 essential roles that they may perform for a company.

What is the importance of a marketing department?

Marketing departments are often responsible for a wide variety of business and marketing tasks. This team plans, creates, and distributes the promotion for an organization. They may also take on other business and image-related responsibilities. To function in the most efficient manner possible, marketing teams may divide their responsibilities into different positions. Each of these individuals helps the marketing department to perform well and therefore plays an important role in the overall function of the organization. A few different positions that may make up a marketing department include:

• Chief marketing officer: This position, also known as CMO, oversees all other marketing personnel and helps drive all brand and promotion strategies.

• Vice President of Marketing: The VP of marketing supports the CMO’s efforts to oversee the branding and marketing efforts and strategy of the company overall.

• Director of marketing: This individual works to develop and manage new projects, from research and development to completion. This may involve work regarding budget, schedule, and project team.

• Marketing manager: This individual may oversee the business side of the marketing department, working to budget and market research to help create an efficient plan. They may also hire and delegate to more junior positions.

• Brand manager: A brand manager maintains the image of the company. They ensure that the branding choices are effective and that they match the company’s values.

• Creative director: A creative director may oversee a marketing team focused on making advertising choices like visual branding, slogans, or other creative media.

• Digital marketing manager: A digital marketing manager may combine an understanding of analytics and content creation to oversee a successful digital marketing campaign.

• Product marketing manager: This individual performs the duties of a marketing manager for a particular product or project.

• Marketing analyst: These professionals may work to understand the trends around products, marketing, and customer behavior. They then help determine how to use this information to improve the marketing team’s strategy.

• SEO specialist: An SEO specialist works to improve search engine optimization to achieve a better online presence.

• Social media specialist: This individual may be very familiar with many social media platforms, and able to create content that is well suited to each one. They may also coordinate the social media effort across all platforms.

• Communications manager: This individual may work with the press or take care of other public relations duties to promote proper company branding.

• Marketing intern: Some departments offer internships to help professionals learn and practice their skills in a real-world setting. Interns may assist any of the other members of the marketing department.

9 essential marketing department roles

Here are nine roles that the marketing department plays within the company:

1. Create and manage brand image

The brand image of a company defines how the public perceives them, including who they are, what they do, and what they stand for. A marketing team works with other departments to decide what the brand image of the company should be and how best to communicate that identity to the public. This may involve creating a logo, slogan, and color scheme, choosing font preferences, and selecting a spokesperson.

After the initial work of brand creation, the marketing department may work to uphold that image. They might create marketing campaigns that are in line with the brand and help other departments to make decisions with brand identity in mind. They may also help avert issues surrounding image or public relations. Marketing professionals may even represent the company at events or press conferences. As experts in communication, with an in-depth knowledge of the organization’s desired public image, they can often serve this role well.

2. Analyze marketing trends

Marketing departments may also perform market research to determine what customers are most interested in and what their interests are likely to be in the future. Marketers may look at trends regarding interests or product use across different ages, genders, and locations. They collect data, perform analysis, and create reports regarding what those market trends might mean for their organization and how best to use them to their advantage. There are a number of automated marketing tools designed to help facilitate this type of analysis that marketing departments may use.

3. Create promotional strategy and content

Marketing departments plan and implement a wide variety of different promotional projects for their brand. These may include emails, videos, graphics, social media posts, posters, billboards, pamphlets, fliers, commercials, and in-person events. They may also work with local news and media journalists to schedule feature articles or interviews. Besides planning and creating this content, marketers keep track of how well different promotional tools have performed so that they can revise their strategies continuously.

Once again, there are several marketing tools that marketing professionals may use to assist in these efforts online. For example, there are email marketing tools that automatically track, formulate and implement email marketing strategies. There is also software that facilitates the identification and contact of new potential customers with relevant interests, and others that create marketing pop-ups or help marketers coordinate their strategy across multiple platforms.

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4. Monitor competition

Most brands are aware of other organizations that promote similar goods or services. Marketing departments keep track of these competitors and work to differentiate their own brands. They may also learn from their competitors. If you can identify a competitor strategy that works well, you may use that same strategy for your marketing purposes. You can use this same technique to identify mistakes made by the competitor’s marketing department and work to avoid them.

5. Receive customer feedback

Understanding what customers want and need is an essential part of creating a marketing strategy. Marketers may use customer feedback forms, email surveys, polls, cold calls, or online community-based feedback options. Once they have collected the customer feedback, marketers may use it to measure the success of their marketing strategy so far and make changes as needed. In this way, they might improve their products and services while simultaneously improving their relationships with their customers by showing that they care about their happiness and take their feedback into consideration.

6. Communicate within the company

Companies may function best when each internal department can communicate well with the others. Marketing teams may coordinate with a variety of other departments in areas like budget, image, and schedule. Some departments that they’re likely to work with closely include sales, research and development, production, and accounting. There may also be a variety of contracted professionals like writers, photographers, graphic designers, or editors hired by the company with which the marketing department may coordinate to complete their projects.

7. Manage marketing budget

A marketing department may create a budget to show how much they intend to spend on upcoming or ongoing projects. This can help company management decide how much to allot to them or to the other organizational departments. The marketing department may also forecast the return on interest (ROI), or how much money they expect to make back from marketing spending, for a particular project or timeframe. A few items that marketers may include in their budget are:

• Market research

• Social media marketing

• Video advertising

• Print advertising

• Marketing automation software

• Creative/design software

• Freelance Recruitment

8. Expand the organization’s reach

Part of a marketing department’s duties is to reach more prospective customers and convert them into paying customers with a vested interest in the brand. One way that they might do this is by working to improve the company’s search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, which can help the company website appear closer to the top of a search engine results page. Marketing professionals may also partner with other companies or celebrities for cross-promotional purposes.

9. Manage social media

Social media is a powerful marketing tool, and many companies choose to maintain a social media presence. This can help establish a brand and provide an opportunity to put out regular, topical updates. Social media is also an excellent opportunity to connect directly with customers and may offer insight into what they’re most interested in. Marketing teams may create posts designed to elicit reader responses to help create stronger relationships with their customers. They may also encourage viewers to share their content or tag friends, which can help more new individuals discover the organization.

I hope you find this article helpful.