Experts in the spotlight: Jennifer Salje, Strategic Marketing Manager
The Strategic Approach
In every company, marketing is handled a little differently; depending on industry, company structure and customers, the tasks of different marketing teams can even vary greatly. One thing always remains the same, however: the importance of these tasks for success. Marketing ensures a positive and uniform perception of the company, provides a pleasant customer experience, and strives to meet the wishes and needs of customers and partners. A complex and diverse objective that involves all areas of the company at Kubota Brabender Technologie.
A comprehensive approach
"For us, the fundamental task of marketing is to keep an eye on the entire company," says Jennifer Salje, Strategic Marketing Manager. "This allows us to pick up on all topics and processes and bring them together into a unified strategic vision.“ Jennifer Salje and her colleague Birthe Kolodzey accomplish this challenging task in close cooperation with all departments of Kubota Brabender Technologie as well as external partners.
Unlike operational marketing – which promotes a specific product by means of short- or medium–term measures - strategic marketing is oriented towards the long term. It is concerned with all measures and processes that have an impact on image and external perception. Thus, it encompasses all areas of the company as well as a variety of topics, including communication, training, personnel marketing, service support – and the product itself.
Appearance with a concept - Marketing
Planning Headquarters Duisburg
The worldwide strategic marketing concept for Kubota Brabender Technologie is created in Duisburg. The creation and implementation of this strategy requires the constant exchange of information and expertise within the company – not only between Germany and the locations abroad, but also between the marketing team and the specialist departments. In addition to sales, these include development and service. In order for the marketing experts to keep a constant overview of all factors and developments that are currently in play, internal communication must work. This allows the marketing goals to be adapted flexibly.
New technical options like the AI program ChatGPT can lead to concept adjustments by providing new ways forward as well as exciting tools. "It is crucial to always stay up to date and continually develop further," Jennifer Salje emphasizes. "And this does not merely apply to technological progress. A great many factors play a role for us, including social developments or changes in the political or legal frameworks.“
Building the right impression
Managing the company's presentation is one of marketing's main tasks. A positive impression is not the only decisive factor here – the impression must also be uniform, because recognizability is the cornerstone of a strong brand. "Everything that leaves the house with our logo goes through the marketing department and is checked by us," says Jennifer Salje. "From business cards, product brochures and presentations to logos on packaging to our ShowTruck and the buildings themselves. In a way, we are the corporate design police.“
One of the most important points of contact with customers, partners and interested parties is Kubota Brabender Technologies' website. Often, the first impression that the company makes is created through a browser window. Accordingly, our presence on the World Wide Web is highly important, and Jennifer Salje devotes a correspondingly large amount of attention to it.
Communication: The beginning and end
Company-wide coordination and cooperation require one thing above all: communication. Accordingly, internal communication takes up a large part of Jennifer Salje's everyday work. Not only is it important to analyze, bundle and forward important updates and news; the individual departments must also be given the opportunity – and responsibility – to actively share their own information.
Together with IT, we maintain platforms that allow all departments to easily share documents and images internally. Our SharePoint page, which we continuously maintain and which is very well received in the company, deserves special mention. We use a cloud solution for internal and external data exchange. As an interface to our international locations, marketing ensures that communication and data exchange run smoothly.Jennifer Salje, Strategic Marketing Manager
Maintaining open lines of communication with customers and partners is another important marketing task. Here, one important measure - among many others - is the regularly conducted customer satisfaction analysis, the results of which are evaluated and passed on to the specialist departments in the form of recommendations.
Focus on employees
The way Kubota Brabender Technologie is perceived by employees is a particularly interesting topic to Jennifer Salje. "In recent years, personnel marketing has become increasingly important for us. Our employees are our greatest asset; it's important to us that everything involving them goes smoothly and positively from the very beginning.“ In close cooperation with human resources, marketing accompanies the measures for finding personnel as well as the onboarding process. The goal is to find new employees who are an optimal fit for the company, and to accompany them from the application process through the first days of work all the way to their everyday work routine, ensuring that a good and motivating working relationship is built.
Sales and service support
Of course, Jennifer Salje and Birthe Kolodzey also take care of the "classic" marketing tasks: supporting service and sales. To this end, they create materials such as brochures and presentations, coordinate and supervise trade fair appearances – from planning and stand construction to support and follow–up - and ensure suitable advertising measures.
Kubota Brabender Technologie's website, which includes both general information and technical details about devices, plays a special role here, as well. In order to relieve the service hotline, the marketing team has developed the service module page as well as brief technical instructions, which are available online and allow customers to answer many questions themselves. The organization and planning of the in-house training courses that Kubota Brabender Technologie offers to customers and partners are also a marketing matter at Kubota Brabender Technologie. Here, Jennifer Salje finds it important that the customer does not merely gain technical information, but also a positive impression and insight into our company.
"You can say that we have our sensors everywhere in the company," Jennifer Salje sums up with a smile. "We keep an overview, bring a uniform line into everything and are active wherever we are needed or asked for support.“
What is marketing?
In the past, marketing - also called sales management - referred only to business activities geared towards offering products and services in such a way that buyers found the offer attractive. In this definition, marketing was a purely operational technique for influencing purchasing behavior and purchasing decision. However, we now see marketing as a much broader and more differentiated task. In today's definition, marketing includes all processes that involve customers, build and strengthen customer relationships, and create customer benefits within the framework of holistic, market-oriented corporate management. Marketing is closely interwoven with other areas and functions of the company – such as procurement, production, administration and human resources. The goal of marketing is to meet the expectations and needs of customers, partners and other stakeholders; a complex and multifaceted task that can only be accomplished in the long term and requires a strategic approach.
The history of marketing
Marketing is anything but a modern invention. As long as there have been products and services to sell, entrepreneurs have been developing methods to convince customers of their products' merits.
History of marketing
- 15th-5th century BCE
In Mediterranean trade, amphorae provide information about contents by their shapes and markings - 11th-7th century BCE
The earliest surviving form of advertising is played with bamboo flutes in China to sell sweets - 4th century BCE
Mass production of consumer goods begins in Mesopotamia; seals imprinted with images indicate manufacturers and lend products personality - 2nd century BCE
Packaging in China bears manufacturers' names and promotes product quality - 35 BCE
A fish sauce manufacturer in Pompeii brands products with messages like "The flower of garum, made from the mackerel, a product of Scaurus" - 79
Branding and labeling are common in Pompeii and Herculaneum; for example, wine jugs bear names such as "Lassius" and "L. Eumachius", and loaves of bread are stamped with bakers' names - 10th-12th century
Consumer culture in China leads to brand maintenance, branding and brand protection; a copper printing plate advertises Jinan Liu's fine needle shop as the oldest surviving print advertisement: "We buy high-quality steel bars and produce fine quality needles that are ready for use at home in no time at all" - 12th century
In European market towns, goods are sold with the help of criers; signs and trademarks (e.g. moon, stars) are also used - 16th-17th century
Newspapers and magazines change the European advertising landscape; the first advertisements are for books and questionable medicines - 18th century
Porcelain manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood invents direct advertising, the money-back guarantee, self-service, free delivery, "buy one get one free" and illustrated catalogs - 1893
Oetker's invention of baking powder marks the birth of marketing in Germany; for the first time, mass advertising promotes a product that the customer did not previously realize they needed - 1908
Thomas J. Barratt becomes the father of modern advertising by devising ad campaigns for soap; he creates the famous slogan “Good morning. Have you used Pears' soap?” - 1920s
In Europe and the USA, the first radio stations are created by radio manufacturers and dealers who want to sell more radios - 1990s
Marketing via the Internet begins in the form of text ads on search engines and advertising banners on websites - 2000s
Search engine optimization (SEO) creates a new area of online marketing - 2012
Coca Cola's "Share a Coke" campaign integrates Facebook advertising and highlights the possibilities of social media marketing - 2023
AI data analysis makes its way into marketing
