2. A holistic approach to online marketing

In the previous blog we talked about the difference between a good and a great marketer. It was said that the difference lies within the approach of any given situation. A good marketer has a solution for every case, a great marketer starts with why. 

To become a great marketer you need to stop thinking from just the field of marketing. You must think: How can I reach the growth goals for this business? Marketing is only a means to an end. You must see the business as a single organism.

Therefore our first step to becoming a great marketer means to broaden our knowledge. We need to have a holistic approach to online marketing, stop thinking from our own foundation of knowledge, and start thinking from the needs of the company.

To be able to choose the best solution for the company you have to understand the basics of how a company works as a whole. This is where we start.

A typical company consists of the following departments:
General Management department
Marketing department
Operations department
Financial department
Sales department
Financial department
Human Resource department
Purchasing department

To broaden our scope it is imperative that we understand the basics of the function of each department. How are you going to grow a company if you don’t understand the components it consists of? You can’t. Let’s go briefly through the functions of these departments.

The General Management department

General Management develops and executes overall business strategies. General Management decides where the company is going and where it wants to head in the future. Hence, I like to refer to General Management as the brain of a company.

The Operations department

The Operations Department is responsible for making all company processes as efficient as possible. Hence, I like to refer to the Operations department as the lungs of a company. As it’s the lungs job to move fresh air into the body while getting rid of bad gases. In itself this is a function that requires efficiency.

The Financial department

The Financial department is responsible for analyzing if the short & long-term goals set by the General department can be met. I see the Financial department as the legs of a company. Without good finance, you don’t have a leg to stand on.

The Sales department

The Sales department is responsible for the physical selling of the product/solution. I refer to the Sales department as the mouth of an organization. For this is the part communicating and convincing others of your product or solution.

The Human Resource department

The Human Resource department is responsible for aligning employees with the company’s mission and vision and to keep employees happy. I like to refer to the Human Resource department as the backbone of a company. Without good and happy employees your company won’t stand for long.

The Purchasing department

The purchasing department is responsible for keeping the company running smoothly through keeping it from having insufficient supplies, both for external and internal components. Therefore I refer to the Purchasing department as the blood of an organization. Each department needs to have sufficient blood in its system, otherwise it won’t function properly. Whether it’s for the product itself, broken laptops or a lack of notepads.

You are now refreshed about the different departments in any organization and chances are you’ve been bored to death. However, it’s time to wake up. Remember the information above, as it is the foundation of our top-down approach. Without understanding of the departments and the way they work together, we can’t become a great marketer. We need to have a holistic approach to online marketing. 

You may have noticed that the Marketing department itself is missing from our analogy above. That’s because we are going through the marketing department a bit more in depth, you may continue reading here in chapter 3 of our blog. The Marketing department as single component.