Marketing

I have a bias here, because I take care of our marketing activities along with my other hats.
We don't have a formal marketing department, per se, although personally I think we could use a dedicated marketing manager and I would like to see a more planned and valued emphasis on marketing. (Again, there's my bias.)

We do not have a marketing plan in writing, but we have core concepts that guide what we do. Our underlying core concept is that we market solely business-to-business, which helps us focus what we choose to do and what media we use.

Our marketing activities include chambers of commerce membership and support, donations with selected clients and community organizations, trade credit with selected clients (including radio), direct mail on an as-needed basis, open houses and seminars, web, selected community trade shows, selected telemarketing, and selected print advertising.

We do not do email newsletters - we investigated this for a while, but the reality is you must follow the CAN-SPAM laws very carefully and there is quite a bit of work to be done. We did not feel the ROI was there.

I have a background in journalism and take care of our inhouse graphic design for our materials. The only thing I outsource is our web site. I don't spend time on measuring results matrixes - my results are happy, confident sales reps who actively want to use the materials because they save them time and make their presentations pop (in other words, I can help them meet their sales goals). The time I have available to spend on marketing activities varies depending on my other responsibilities.

We do rely quite a bit on our co-op funds from both our vendors, but the restrictions that have been put in place over the last few years have been disappointing. For example, I had to cancel a web banner ad a year ago when Ricoh's co-op program decided to stop allowing those.