Organizations are finally starting to see the benefit of cross-functional approaches within management. Marketing is no different. The David Packard quote “marketing is too important to be left to the marketers” is not only shared, but also put into practice as the business landscape continues to evolve. Why? It is not to diminish the role of marketers. Rather, it is to drive attention to the fact that today, everyone needs to find their inner marketer. It is important for all of us to drive value for customers across the board. Cultivating this mindset at an organizational level leads to success in our fast moving, competitive world.
With things moving so quickly, we can all benefit from a good understanding of marketing fundamentals. Embracing the fundamentals can help you:
- Increase internal alignment
- Bring clarity to your customer value proposition
- Develop engaging and value-added touch-points with internal and external stakeholders
- Strengthen a business case with a solid understanding of the outside environment and your product/service attributes which speak directly to customer needs
Irrespective of the new channels or devices arriving at our doorstep, marketing fundamentals never change. The changes are really the avenues we have at our disposal to deploy those fundamentals.
eLearning is a great method to access this knowledge. Engaging visuals, situational inline quizzes, along with practical frameworks can help to create a holistic understanding of the fundamentals. We advocate using a marketing planning process as a guideline to keep a consistent structure around marketing efforts. The StratX Marketing Fundamentals course introduces our 5-step framework which addresses:
- Situational analysis
- Customer insights
- Need to create sound objectives which tie to a well-planned marketing strategy
- A method to document the learning which results from campaigns
If you are ready to refresh your marketing fundamentals, take a look at our course. How do you use elearning to enhance your marketing plan?
Erna Alfred Liousas is a consultant with StratX International, a management development company. As an advocate of customer-centricity, Erna maintains a keen eye on the evolving needs of customers. Her goal is to create and facilitate engaging environments which increase knowledge, efficiency and strategic know-how.