Marketing Essentials: Roles, Responsibilities & Interrelations

This report elucidates the pivotal roles and responsibilities of the marketing function within a small college, emphasizing its interrelation with other functional units. It details key marketing responsibilities such as market research, product development, communications, and event organization, tailored to the unique context of a college environment. Furthermore, the report explains how the marketing team's efforts are interconnected with other departments like accounting, product development, and R&D, highlighting the importance of collaborative efforts to achieve organizational goals and student satisfaction. The document uses examples to illustrate how each department contributes to the overall success of the college, particularly in attracting and retaining students through effective marketing strategies and course development.

Marketing Essentials
1

Table of content
LO1: Explain the role of marketing and how it interrelates with other functional units of an
organization.....................................................................................................................................3
P1. Explain the key roles and responsibilities of the marketing function in the small college.......3
P2. You must provide an explanation of how the roles and responsibilities of marketing relate to
the wider organizational context, with reference to the small college.............................................4
2

LO1: Explain the role of marketing and how it interrelates with other functional units of
an organization
P1. Explain the key roles and responsibilities of the marketing function in the small college
Marketing consists of advertisement and selling things and this indirectly links to a
misconception that when goods and services are produced then marketing phase starts, which is
not true, it is more than that. Marketing consists of a broader concept like what are the needs of
consumers, security of information related to design factors and production of goods and service
keeping in mind consumer expectations and maintaining relationships between buyers and
suppliers. Therefore, when it comes to marketing in terms of college, then one has to keep in
mind certain facts such as students should grow their preoccupation nature alongside their
education because they have a tendency or rather an expectation to get job as fast as possible
after graduation.
When it comes to college, the responsibilities of the marketing are as follows:
Market Research
According to Marx and Brettel (2015), like any other business, Market research is important in
colleges. Market research helps any institute to gain a better understanding of customer needs, in
case students. It also helps the institute to know their competitors and their respective strengths
and weakness so that it may help the college to attract more students.
Product Development
The marketing team helps the product development team to come up with new products or
improve existing ones (Feng et al., 2015). When it comes to college, it could be related to
different types of course structures and modules keeping in mind the existing ones and how the
module structures could be improved. Marketing teams help development teams by providing
information about customer needs in this case needs of students such as concrete course modules
and practical structure that could help students not only to understand the theory but also
practical implementation in the real world.
3

Communications
Marketing teams help to plan campaigns and platforms to promote products, services to the
customers. When it comes to college, factors like advertising campaigns, banners, platforms such as
offline counseling and e-counseling programs are created to reach out more students. When
students reach out certain offline counseling marketing team helps to promote their college by
encouraging students to make a free registration in the system provided so that when the admission
dates comes in nearby, the students whose names are registered in the system, they can opt to join
courses. Moreover, marketing team helps students to get a brief overview of the whole campus,
courses and placement assistance.
Events
In some industry, marketing department organizes events to promote products (Clark et al.,
2017). So in terms of college, seminars, events such as robotics, conferences are organized by
marketing team who alongside plan out the displays, handouts that could attract more students,
side by side keeping in mid the feeling of involvement for juniors and seniors. Apart from that,
the marketing team helps to organize seminars and college campus by booking venue to reach
out existing students to give a broader idea about the products or course structure. It could help
the students to not only be educated and also help them prepare for placements.
P2. You must provide an explanation of how the roles and responsibilities of marketing
relate to the wider organizational context, with reference to the small college.
Marketing team working alone cannot help in the growth of any industry. Therefore, there must
be an interrelationship between different units and marketing team (Krush et al., 2015). The
marketing team and the other units depend on each other and works together to gain the
maximum result. In the following lines, the idea has been provided that how they are interrelated
to each other.
Marketing and Accounting department
Accounting department helps to determine the financial condition and thus helps the marketing
team to come with idea about the budget to operate. Thus, when the accounting team helps
management for business profit, the marketing team creates programs through advertisement and
promotions. Marketing team should help accounting team by providing information such as best
4

selling services and products with respect to current scenario. Both the departments should work
together so that can produce future campaigning plans which could help marketing department to
develop strategies for future. Also accounting department should provide information to the
marketing team about advertising costs and effectiveness of it and based on it the accounts
department can study whether the campaigns made are truly successful or not when it is
measured against costs.
Marketing and product development department
The product development department plays a key role to analyze the existing product
(Durmusoglu et al., 2017). Therefore, when the product development team analyzes course
structure and modules for a college, they should always give an update to the marketing team
because if there is a break in the link marketing team cannot reach out students with the correct
form of structure. Moreover, marketing team should also provide information of the current
trends and courses that students are more interested to the development team so that they can
come out with concrete modules.
Marketing and R&D department
When a new product is developed, R&D department makes a full survey and comes out with
opinions to support this project. Before any course, structures are made, R&D department looks
out about the actual need of the modules and if they are relevant enough for students. R&D
department and marketing team need to work together because R&D can be the masters of
“Possibility” but marketing is the master of “Possible”- that customers, here students are willing
to pay for. Suppose in case R&D development has too much power and the R&D department
comes in the end of the process, then it could lead to the development of products that customer
are least interested to buy. Therefore, when the course structure is made, the marketing team
should be informed, so that they can communicate with the students in an appropriate manner.
5

Referencing
Marx, C. and Brettel, M., 2015. The Use of Manangement Control to Guide Marketing
Department Power in Establishing Market Orientation: A Resource Dependence Perspective.
In Marketing Dynamism & Sustainability: Things Change, Things Stay the Same… (pp. 130-
130). Springer, Cham
Feng, H., Morgan, N.A. and Rego, L.L., 2015. Marketing department power and firm
performance. Journal of Marketing, 79(5), pp.1-20
Clark, M., Fine, M.B. and Scheuer, C.L., 2017. Relationship quality in higher education
marketing: the role of social media engagement. Journal of Marketing for Higher
Education, 27(1), pp.40-58
Krush, M.T., Sohi, R.S. and Saini, A., 2015. Dispersion of marketing capabilities: impact on
marketing’s influence and business unit outcomes. Journal of the Academy of Marketing
Science, 43(1), pp.32-51.
Durmusoglu, S.S., Hirunyawipada, T. and McNally, R.C., 2017. New Product Development
Process Implementation in a Business-To-Business Firm: The Driving and Moderating Factors
for Improved Program Performance and Time-To-Market. Journal of Busi
6