Towards the 90s, in the boom of marketing, everyone studied this career without knowing what the real job to be developed would be but with the aim of being marketing managers of a company, in reality nobody knew exactly what it was to apply this discipline in the field. business environment in a country like Argentina where barriers to the outside were generally notorious so competition was not a problem. It was certainly fashionable and not having marketing in the company was what it is like today not to have a website, a sure failure.
However, very few companies developed strategic marketing as a discipline to optimize a company's profits or solve underlying internal or market problems. At the multinationals, those of us who worked at that time were only those who put into practice the marketing plan developed in the parent company. Those who worked in smaller and generally national companies were dedicated to events, communication, promotion, etc. I would dare to say that very few companies did marketing… but since the objective was to be managers and marketing was almost mandatory for companies, this raised the cost of the department to unsustainable and unimaginable levels for SMEs and even for large companies that awarded this cost to the sales department to measure the results quantitatively.
In this case, I would stop myself from describing what strategic marketing is and what are some of the typical problems that SMEs face.
"Marketing is a discipline that analyzes, plans and develops strategic actions of the company always in relation to the market, abroad."
The most typical problems faced by SMEs today are:
• Development of new products tested on customers and rejected.
• Lack of recognition of the competitive advantages of the products or services they offer.
• Development of new marketing channels to increase sales or persuade competitors.
• Difficulties in the pricing policy.
• Market recognition.
• Perception of new needs and market trends.
• Communication methods depending on the market.
• Identification of the decision makers involved in the purchase process.
• Development of the four P's of marketing (Product or service, Price that includes cost, Advertising and communication, and Place that are the different marketing channels).
• Brand identity and loyalty.
• Business Vision and Mission.
Marketing provides tools to solve problems and develop marketing plans that allow your company to optimize its work, however it is impossible to keep an employee dedicated to this discipline. This is why the proposal to work with consultants ends up being a definitive and achievable strategic solution for SMEs. In this way, specific projects can be developed that begin and end with the solution of the problem or with the development of the strategic marketing plan, in a measurable period with a reasonable cost according to the capacity of each SME company.
