So What is a Full-Service Marketer?

This is a question that I seem to have been asked a lot recently. When people hear of Full-Service Agencies there is an understanding that they will offer clients a full range of services including advertising, direct marketing, media and public relations, websites and online marketing. In the marketing world it means something rather different.

A full-service marketer is someone who is experienced in all aspects of marketing. This includes;
* Market Understanding and Market environment
* Customer Understanding
* Marketing strategy
* Marketing planning, this may direct any promotional, communication or advertising plan as a tactic of the marketing plan.
* Depending on your organisation it could include product/service development and life cycle management.
* Messaging, equity and brand building
* The four Ps, Product, Price, Place, Promotion
* The marketing tactics, which I have already eluded to marketing communications, plus eMarketing, CRM and Sales - yes Sales is a marketing tool.

As you can see Marketing is very broad and this is what makes it so fun. In a large organisation you might only get to handle some parts of the marketing mix, whereas in a smaller organisation you might end up getting to manage it all. Over your career you should be able to undertake almost all the marketing activities and see what best suits you and most interests you. What you will find is that if you don't do part of the full-spectrum of marketing, then someone else will. I have heard of operations doing product management to sales doing launches and support materials. Really that isn't an issue if you as the marketer have fed in the customer needs and market information, and set the positioning clearly, the philosophy should touch everyone in the company. If you remember whatever marketing role you play, you are the champion of the customer internally, and your role is to meet the unmet needs of the customer, profitably.

One could say that marketing is so broad because it encompases the whole business, the customer focused delivery of products or services to meet or exceed customer needs, better than the competition, to meet the corporate goals. I have been very fortunate to cover all aspects of marketing over my career, so feel free to ask me any questions, or if you want to challenge my definition I'd love to hear your thoughts.

VikiB