10 ‘extra’ responsibilities you have as a Marketer

by Maria Pergolino on April 8, 2009

Marketers have responsibilities broader than their typical job description. While you may not do all the things listed below, it’s likely you will do some. Read below to know what to expect, and to be prepared to help. It’s the tasks below that allow you to give 10% more than the typical 100% and to really help you stand out as a helpful employee.

1. Company Party Planner

You can coordinate a large trade show with little effort; you can schedule a flawless road show in every city in the country, so obviously you can handle Dylan’s birthday party. And the company holiday party. And Mitchell’s retirement party. And…

2. IT Security

As a marketer you are getting comfortable with cloud computing. Often your emails and your CRM data are held on servers outside your firewalls and accessed over the web. Unfortunately, the head of IT security is not as comfortable. Make sure that when you are working with new SaaS vendors that you loop your IT security mangers in on the decisions and provide them with all the documentation that shows why your company’s data will be safe.

3. CRM Optimization

As a marketer you may rely on a CRM tool to pull data about the success of your campaigns, demographics of your prospects and customers, and sales by product. Since you need this data you will be responsible for make sure the system runs properly and that all users are trained on how to enter data into the system.

4. Powerpoint Pro

It is somewhere written in a sales handbook that all marketers know PowerPoint including how to over-animate, add animal sounds, and incorporate cheesy slide transitions. Since you have the ability to do this, and nothings makes a salesperson happier than tacky moving slides, you will end up helping.

5. Microsoft Office Trainer

Got computer skills? You are going to need to share them. As soon as people find out you know how to use software like Word, Excel, and Outlook you will be helping with fonts, creating formulas, and setting up out-of-office messages.

6. Copyright/Trademark/License protector

Typically marketers are used to protecting brand standards and monitoring how sales uses company content, but marketers also end up watching out for other people’s property and rights as well. This means reviewing sales emails and presentations to make sure pictures used and customer details listed are accurate and are legally allowed to be utilized in your sales promotions.

7. Customer support

Each day there will be the potential for tens to millions of emails to go out in your name with your email address listed. And the people that receive them won’t necessarily care that you are in marketing and don’t know how to help them with their technical need. This means they will hit reply and ask you their question. At this point you have two options, to either forward the email along or to ask support for help and reply back with the personal service that your customer deserves. I suggest doing the best you can to help every customer possible, because they are the reason you are there to begin with.

8. Salesperson

See customer support above. Sometimes people will email you sales questions. Help as much as you can while engaging sales support. People will be used to seeing your name in emails. Make sure you know you can be reached and that you will help them. Purchasing decisions are often hard, and people want to feel like they are making the right decision so be supportive and helpful.

9. Sales Training

You will be creating materials for sales and they won’t use them unless you train them how to. That means attending sales meetings, sitting in on sales calls, and creating training materials. It also means putting the materials where they need them, and emailing them to them when they ask.

10. Counselor

Often, in Marketing, you are the one common person that works with product development, IT, service and support, finance, and sales. This means when one group doesn’t like what another group is doing you are the one person that will understand the entire situation. This means you will have to play group counselor and team therapist from time to time.