6 Modern Marketing Functions

With the burgeoning enterprise tech landscape, modern marketing too is changing at a dizzying pace.

In a recent A16Z Clubhouse, Jeff Samuels the COO of Iterable talked about 6 functions of modern marketing. I found this insightful as it captures the needs that every marketing organization has.

Demand Creation → This function is focused around educating why people need your product or service. Central to this is creating opportunities, driving qualified leads into your pipeline. This may include account based marketing, digital marketing.

Product Marketing → focuses on telling the story of your product. This may include messaging, positioning, pricing, enablement, communication, strategy. Involves thinking about what does the customer wants now, what does the customer might want in the future. This enables different product go-to-market.

System and Operations → focused on the technical platforms that enable the people to take decisions, benchmark performance, customer relationship measurement. Jeff claims this is often size independent. A pipeline-driven growth model can be a leading indicator for growth. It allows you to think of the factors involved such as ARR, sales personnel - basically an input vs output approach.

Corporate Marketing → focuses on strengthening the brand through amplification and activation. This can include AR (Analyst Relations), PR (Public Relations) differences here. Think about it as storytelling in a very material way.

Customer Marketing → typically product-driven. This serves as a pipeline to get customer expansion. Think of it as expansion marketing.

Channel Operations → often the hardest and involves working in the market to create demand through various channels, for eg: on-ground exhibitions.

This was originally published on my website at jasonr.org/6-modern-marketing-functions