Operations, manufacturing, R&D and even sales are well understood functions across all organizations. However, the one function that struggles to have its value well understood is marketing.

And here’s why. Aside from providing marketing collateral, marketers have a fairly large and complex task. They are responsible for generating brand awareness, amplifying its message and instilling trust in its products, services and people. In short, they paint the world.

Brand Awareness is one of the primary strategic functions of marketing. It is the very first step in a sales process is for that prospective customer to become aware of that product and if not known, that company. The importance of brand awareness can not be understated. While there are many bright technical individuals that believe that if you build it, it will sell itself. Unfortunately, the chances of that happening are very low. The fact is that the world is a noisy place, crowded with an overwhelming number of competing products and services. So how will the thousands of customers who should be buying your product, know that they should be buying your product? Through brand awareness. They must first be made aware that the product/service exists.

When marketing employs various amplification strategies to help promote the company or its products, it further generates brand awareness.

Finally, brand awareness provides air cover to sales professionals. The job of marketing is to provide general brand awareness whereas the job of a sales professional is to close deals. If marketers are doing their jobs, then they can reach thousands if not millions of customers at a time while sellers can continue to work on a one-to-a-few selling strategy, providing high touch engagement and interaction with the customer, establishing rapport and trust. When sales and marketing arms work together, the brand awareness helps to cut down the initial trust and rapport building needs of sellers. This helps advance sellers in the buyer’s journey and closer to closing deals – hence helping to shorten the sales cycle.

Therefore, one of the most important functions of marketers is to instill trust.