MARKETING AS AN INVESTMENT

Successful companies that become excellent marketing organizations know themselves, their customers, and what they offer that fills the customers’ needs. This requires an investment of time and money to accurately determine whether all three parts of the triangle fit together. As an example, ABC Company is about eight years old and operates in the online professional services industry. The customer wants and needs this service. Most importantly, the customer is willing to pay for the service and ABC Company is the only company occupying this space at this time. One would imagine that ABC Company is generating a strong and regular revenue stream. Unfortunately, ABC Com- pany’s CEO does not believe in investing in consistent marketing strategies and targeted marketing initiatives. Rather, the CEO pays low wages to inexperienced salespeople who have no incentive or support to sell the service. Therefore, due to a lack of investment in marketing, the customer does not even know that ABC Company exists. The fall- out of such poor strategic thinking could be that employees often are not paid in a month, morale plummets, and company reputation lags.