Five Core Marketing Functions A

Business Organization Blueprint

BY A N D R E W S T E I N O N D E C E M B E R 1 6 , 2 0 1 2 1 1 C O M M E N T S

Like trying to understand an electrical circuit board without the schematic, its hard to keep up with
the complexity and importance of the five core marketing functions without a reminder from time to
time.
And, with the daily hype around the
tactical effort, tools, and constantly
changing environment of social media, its
easy to lose sight of the five core
marketing functions.
As a corporate advisor and successful
turnaround CMO, I regularly discuss the
big picture as I guide CEOs and
executives in building sustainable
organizations for the long-term.
If you are a marketing leader, CMO, VP of Marketing, or Director of marketing, and you havent read
at least a dozen articles in the past 3 months about how Social Media has changed or replaced
marketing, then you might either be incredibly busy or already understand the foundational five core
marketing functions.

Importance of Core Marketing Functions

The five core marketing functions are every bit as important as R&D, operations, and finance and
by many accounts, even more critical to the business. Think back to business school and recall what
you learned. Or, review your most recent business failure. Was there enough horsepower behind
marketing? Were the marketing basics of creating value, capturing value and building programs
and plans for sustaining value put in place before the social media trigger was pulled?
To understand these core marketing functions, one has to relax and clear their mind of the day to day
frenzy of delivering on tactical activities and all the pressures of every other executives demands on
the marketing function in your organization. To do so, will allow this blog post to give you insight as to
how you might need to organize for success. Do it now relax and breathe deep before you proceed
to read.

Oh, yes you will find social medias pervasive role described in context of the Five Core Marketing
Functions at the very end. That way its tactical potential can be integrated into the structure of these
functions more effectively.

Internal Business Process Chain

A good friend, business mentor and coach once told me that every successful business needs three
things.
1.
2.
3.

Make a product or service.

Market the product or service to customers.
Manage the money.
This over-simplification makes a point and helps us avoid being distracted by the most recent shiny
object. My friend also indicated that he has never met the person that could do all three of these
functions. Perhaps there is someone that can do 2 of these, but understand in addition to the
different talent required, there probably isnt enough time in the day to do more than any one of these
well.
Recognizing this fact helps to understand the value of organizational roles differentiated from specific
tactical activities. A model I created many years ago and have successfully used in technology
companies looks like this.

This model will take some digesting and it will be the basis for a number of future blog posts from
me. Briefly, the following describes the five core marketing functions in the business process.

Corporate Marketing
This function has global marketing domain to set and enforce brand standards, define global
infrastructure for public relations (PR), investor relations, advertising, corporate communications,
event strategies, user group community programs and production synergies across all marketing.
Operates on an annual corporate marketing plan calendar assembled from editorial, PR, product
roadmap, and other coordinated calendars to deliver on milestones and objectives.

Strategic Marketing
This function sets strategies for growth, assesses competitive landscape, works with engineering
and product management to perform gap analysis, performs make vs. buy analysis, proposes and
performs due diligence for merger and acquisition (M&A) targets, creates, develops and manages
partner programs, manages key relationships to support technical, business, and other strategic
needs. Strategic marketing operates on an opportunity-based calendar.

Product Management
This function is the owner of the product and its long-term strategy (multi-release through end-of-life)
and current direction (next release), articulates innovation such that it can be built and marketed.
Defines and communicates initial positioning and messaging, pricing strategies, commercialization
strategies, go-to-market strategies and competitive positioning. This function works in a crossfunctional team with sales, marketing, product development, R&D, engineering and operations
functions to achieve pre- and post-launch results. Product management operates on a productlifecycle calendar.

Product Marketing
This function builds and drives launch plans for products and service offerings, refines raw
positioning and messaging (received from Product Managers in MRDs) into crisp value propositions,
drives tactics for product and services sales training programs. Product marketing operates on a
product-lifecycle calendar.

Field Marketing
This functions modus operandi is to execute, execute, execute marketing programs and
campaigns that have a singular focus of lead generation and driving opportunities through the
pipeline. Operates under a quarterly calendar. This function has dotted-line or direct matrix reporting
to the divisional or geographically distributed organizations.

Things To Ponder While Digesting

Each of these functions operates on a unique calendar which is a driver to recognize that
there are many core marketing functions.
Marketing business processes are not linear all these core marketing functions are
iterative, both on a micro-scale and a macro-scale. Micro-scale means that within a product
lifecycle, change can happen through iteration, and on a macro-scale, the process does not end, it

circles back to begin again.

Marketing presents a unique organizational challenge. Just as no one person can be the
R&D (make the product) Marketing and Sales (market the product) and the company accountant
(watch the money) all at the same time, there is no one marketing person that can effectively do all

these functions simultaneously.

Understanding what we mean by innovation, vs. say, product launch, for example, helps
to balance demands on the marketing professionals you have and need by organizing properly and

effectively.
I know a few human resources professionals who fully understand these functions and the
unique demands on each. Engage human resources as a partner and fill any gaps around

marketing as business strategy to engage their support.

These roles may not all be organized under the Marketing VP or CMO in your company.

They may be in silos, in matrix organizations, divisionally structured and/or even globally distributed.
Marketing functions may be achieved through shared roles in non-traditional marketing

organizational structures. For example, field marketing may be organized in the sales organization.
This is not wrong or right, just something again to observe.
Whether your company is a small startup, or a large multi-divisional conglomerate these

functions all exist, and are done at some level of effectiveness.

Understanding now that each marketing function exists, and the activity is done.
Recognizing this from an organizational perspective enables one to coordinate better results.

Pervasive Social Media

Social media fits in each of the five core marketing functions as the anchor to carry on a
conversation with the customer. Each function must be connected with the customer, just as every
group in a modern company must be. Interestingly, my model demonstrates the pervasive demand of
social media in and across an organization. The five functions of marketing are grounded in the
business strategy fundamentals of creating value, capturing value and sustaining value which
effectively drives any social media initiative.
Understanding the pervasive shared responsibility for social engagement, this then becomes the
single argument against hiring one single social media marketing person or social media marketing
agency. It is impossible to expect any effective performance, positive outcome or success beyond
some immediate tactical metrics. Social media efforts, and therefore customer engagement, must be
grounded in the five core marketing functions.

Social initiatives must be integrated into the larger marketing business processes. They must carry
on the conversation with customers, markets and industries that the core goals of the business have
outlined at the highest levels of its vision and mission.
Please leave a comment. Others value your thoughts as they ponder and digest how this affects their
own organization.
Image Credits: avidd via photopin cc

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