Why everybody in a company is a marketer? (Really) Posted by Tomi Heikkinen , Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 00:54, in Labels: competitive advantage, copypaste economy, marketing, tomi heikkinen

Why everybody in a company is a marketer, service-dominant logic makes sense and people/competence is a key generator of competitive advantage.

Seth Godin delivers another online gem.

"So, how to protect your ideas in a world where ideas spread?

Don't.

Instead, spread them. Build a reputation as someone who creates great ideas, sometimes on demand. Or as someone who can manipulate or build on your ideas better than a copycat can. Or use your ideas to earn a permission asset so you can build a relationship with people who are interested. Focus on being the best tailor with the sharpest scissors, not the litigant who sues any tailor who deigns to use a pair of scissors."

Godin writes about how to protect your ideas in the online world. His insightful words however touch another interesting topic of how companies should approach marketing from a relational, competence based perspective.

Gary Hamel and CK Prahalad (1996 2nd ed.) talk about core competences and how they drive company’s competitive advantages. In their words, core competencies translate into substantial competitive advantages and are particularly relevant in the current economy. Companies pool these competencies by skilled recruitment and stakeholder network management.

We all know the old wisdom that everybody should be a marketer in a company. But this is especially true for knowledge intensive service organizations. Consider briefly the recruitment criteria of such a company. These organizations hire people of talent and potential, or in other words, for their competence. They are idea developers and results providers. Deriving from Godin’s logic, they have a basis to attract interested people (customers and other stakeholders) and thus create mutually beneficial relationships. If they these recruits are market oriented and capable of two-way communication, by hiring them the companies have just saved a lion’s share of their marketing budget. These organizations don’t have to worry about push sales tactics or brand awareness. They have word-of-mouth and natural pull on their side.

Robert Vargo and Stephen Lusch (JoM 2004) talk about a paradigm change for marketing from a goods-based business logic to a service-dominant logic, where services based on competencies are transacted with goods as mere vehicles for service delivery. I think they are after something right. In an online, hyperfast copypaste economy it is increasingly difficult to succeed with a product leadership strategy. So knowledge becomes an asset, and how you deliver your offering the advantage.

A organization where everybody who creates ideas is a marketer must truly focus on employee retention. These kind of companies adamantly consider their employees and customer relationships as their most important assets, even though as assets they are ungrateful and expensive. But investments in these assets pay off. Benefits diffuse to improve shareholder value through happy, ambitious employees, improved brand value, competitive advantages, enhanced customer experiences and longer, more profitable customer relationships. Take a company like Reaktor Innovations, a growing IT service success story that is constantly awarded as a Great Place to Work.

I’ve researched knowledge-intensive Finnish companies and SMEs like these have the best potential to become such organizations. A few are already and enjoy profitable double digit annual revenue growth rates year after year. So, are you recruiting people who have great ideas and helping them share and spread theirs and yours?