In the B2C company, the role, importance and scope of a marketing department are well known and in a way almost “standardised” from one consumer company to another.
A more difficult to define perimeter
The situation is very different in the technology company, for several reasons:
- Marketing in its principles, concepts, tools and means of action is generally less familiar, less well known and less well understood in technology by teams composed mainly of engineers and technicians.
- It is also less valued than anything else in technology
- The profound difference between consumer markets and B2B/B2G technology markets means that marketing is sometimes dismissed as irrelevant to technology, sometimes to the point of being called irrelevant:
- fundamental issues for B2B are almost absent from consumer marketing, even if B2B (non-high-tech) marketing addresses some of them: key account and customer portfolio management, product co-development, business development, the importance of the internal part of the product life cycle, government or defence markets, direct technical promotion to customers.
- Conversely, certain communication, influence and mass promotion techniques, which are vital and widely used in B2C, are of little or no relevance in B2B and even less so in high-tech B2B/B2G
- The mix between ‘product innovation’ and ‘marketing innovation’ is very different between the two worlds: there are of course B2C companies or B2C divisions of both B2B and B2C companies built around product innovation (3M, Dyson, Apple, Michelin or Loreal are examples) but a very large number of ‘innovations’ in B2C are more ‘marketing innovations’ related to packaging or branding than product innovations and even these are often minor product innovations
- To parody a famous phrase about war and the military, aren’t innovation, products and technology “too serious to be entrusted to marketers” … or at least let them get too involved?
- The tasks required by marketing in the technological world, especially product marketing, clearly require technical skills to be both effective and credible internally and externally. These skills are not initially possessed by pure marketers. Even if it is sometimes possible to bring pure marketers into the technical field, the reverse is more common. These tasks will therefore most often be entrusted to engineers who will acquire valuable dual skills over time.
- In project or product-project companies, project-related activities further distance the necessary marketing activities from the schemes proposed by mainstream marketing
Distinguish between marketing function and marketing management or department
As a result, in the technology:
- It is necessary, even more than elsewhere, to distinguish the “marketing function” (all the tasks to be carried out in the area of customer markets, products and competition and possibly projects) from the marketing department.
- Some of the marketing function’s activities in the area of customer markets, products and competition may legitimately be carried out by departments other than the marketing department: strategy management, technical management, sales management, corporate communication, etc.
In any technology company, this makes it difficult to define the exact scope of a marketing division or department and to position it within the organisation.
Marketing skills and marketing scope
This difficulty is compounded by the difficulty of finding men or women with marketing skills who are able to adapt them to operate in a technological world and be accepted as legitimate.
The scope and status of the marketing directorate or department (the name chosen being significant in itself) will depend to a large extent on the general management’s belief in marketing. This can lead to very different situations:
- The very word marketing to describe market, customer, product and competition strategies may be accepted or rejected
- The scope of a marketing department may
- either cover responsibility for all marketing actions, both strategic and operational
- or be confined to operational marketing and promotional and communication activities
- either cover responsibility for products and processes linked to product marketing or be excluded in favour of other departments
- The status of the marketing directorate or department may be
- either a strong status with participation in the management committee
- or a weak status, with “serious matters”, especially technical matters, being the responsibility of other departments
Marketing tasks and marketing organisation in technology
As is most often the case in organisational matters, there is no right or wrong way to organise marketing in the technology company. There are, however, many, many ways in which the necessary tasks are not carried out. It is much more the way of functioning, the coordinations and the way in which important tasks are fulfilled that matters, rather than the structure adopted per se.
- The important thing is that the tasks of the “marketing function”, whether strategic or operational marketing, are clearly identified, adapted to the company’s business, coordinated with the other functions, and carried out effectively with clear responsibilities.
- In the end, it does not matter whether the marketing department is strong or weak, whether its scope is broad or limited:
- in all cases, care must be taken to ensure that a minimum strategic and marketing culture is shared throughout the company, especially and including in the technical spheres, so that everyone can work together effectively and intelligently
- if the marketing department is strong and has a broad scope, we will ensure that there is good understanding between the marketing department, the innovation department, the technical department and the sales department
- if the marketing department is weak and has a limited scope, care will be taken to ensure that all strategic marketing tasks are properly identified and taken care of, regardless of where they are located, without there being any “holes in the carpet”, which is often the case in this situation.
