MARKETING is one of the few management oriented disciplines.
For those that have worked in the field of marketing for some time, they will attest to this fact.
People in marketing would never be successful no matter what position or capacity they were serving in, if they did not possess the basic management skills and abilities.
During the recent years marketing has grown as a profession where non-qualified people have found it very hard to perform.
In my previous article which I dedicated to Kenneth Kunda, I recall giving an account on the growth of marketing in Zambia which could be traced back to the 1980s when a number of Government parastatals began to acknowledge the need and the importance of marketing.
During those days it was common to find non-qualified people holding senior marketing positions in organisations provided one had some kind of training in business related courses.
For some organisations having a collection of certificates of attendance in sales or management would qualify a person to a managerial role.
However, things have now completely changed given that world markets have become increasingly complicated.
The high levels of competition which can be attributed to the opening up of the world as a global village have significantly influenced the way in which business should be conducted and this includes marketing.
Marketing’s emphasis on good management skills could be justified by the need for marketers to be able to plan and devise effective strategies for their business as well as organisations.
I believe that most of you would agree that management was about planning, control and execution.
Marketers were now being required to demonstrate their ability to manage their work professionally, such as time management, managing marketing programmes or activities,
coordination, managing events, managing customers or clients, a function popularly referred to as ‘account management’ in marketing, meeting deadlines and delivering on promises to clients.
I have personally observed on several occasions in my career, that these were not qualities that one could acquire naturally, these attributes were only developed and achieved through formal training and experience.
In marketing there was no trial and error, a marketer should strictly know what they were doing.
To manage oneself, was the ability to lead and manage other people. Most if not all marketing managers had to inspire their team to perform and produce results.
Professor Neil Bolden of Harvard Business School once remarked that ‘marketing is the only function in every organisation which brings profits while other functions are a cost’.
Marketing management involved setting goals for team members and ensuring that these were achieved, most of the marketing goals were profit oriented.
For most organisations success hugely depended on the quality and the caliber of their marketing personnel, as the popular saying goes ‘a company is as good as the people it employs’. Good marketers were simply good managers because marketing was synonymous with management.
One of the critical aspects of marketing was strategic planning and good strategic planning could only be achieved through good management.
This was one area that marketers should always strive to improve, that was through some formal training and refresher courses.
Marketers should not slumber in acquiring and sharpening their management knowledge.
I remember having a chat with some colleagues where we were evaluating remuneration for marketing personnel and we came to agree that marketers were among the highly paid professionals in the corporate sector.
Nevertheless, most marketing jobs were equally highly risky by their nature, since they were assessed based on positive tangible outcomes.
It was this risk element which made marketing management complex.
Another notable factor in marketing was the requirement for innovation. Innovation was one quality that every marketing manager should poses.
The more creative a marketer was, the more likely one was to land himself or herself a good job and position.
I have known some highly qualified marketers stagnant in their positions for years working as mere marketing managers, without getting to a level of marketing directors all due to their lack of innovation.
Organisations rarely reward marketers who could not think ‘outside the box’. Marketers were not and would never be known to be conservative, rather they were known to be change agents.
Marketing management entailed that one should demonstrate the ability to think strategically and creatively, at the same time.
During organisational meetings everyone would be looking up to the marketing person for creative practical solutions to the organisation’s numerous problems.
Good marketing managers were the answer to the organisation’s commercial and business challenges.
Marketers should be able to devise a road map as well as guide organisations on how to get there.
While pursuing my marketing I recall that our management lecturer always emphasized that every organisation’s primary goal was to make a profit. This being the case, we could conclude that marketing managent had a strategic place in every organisation.
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