Marketing and Communications - they aren't the same thing

People often reference marketing and communications as if it is one thing, even calling it MARCOM.

Marketing focuses on supporting sales with awareness and lead generation while protecting and upholding the brand. A good marketing team has deep understanding of the customer and works towards developing customer experiences to drive sales.

Communications focuses on the employees, making sure they are kept informed and ideally engaged so that they will be productive and keep the company profitable.

Of course both marketing and communications teams should share some of the same skills and competencies:

• they should be strategic and detail oriented
• they should have strong writing and design skills or understanding
• they need to be able to get a message across clearly

Grouping marketing and communications often results in communications being the poor cousin that does not get the attention or resources it needs.

Communications is the first budget cut as value is hard to prove even when the consequences in not having and implementing a communications strategy can be severe and include increase is staff turn over and decrease in employee engagement leading to lower productivity.

Marketing needs to be focused externally with the client/customer and prospect alway in mind. Lack of a marketing strategy can result in a waste of resources as collateral is developed with no objectives achieved.