Most companies who sell merchandise of any kind employ a marketing director, or marketing manager as some companies call this position. It's a big job to sell any kind of merchandise to the public, including services, so companies enlist the aid of a marketing director who creates, coordinates, and directs the advertising campaign of the company. Often the marketing director will work with the advertising director to come up with a current campaign slogan or sales brochure, depending on the type of business.



It is not always the retail business that enlists a marketing director. In fact, many other types of businesses also use marketing directors including credit card companies, which actually employ an entire marketing department in order to obtain new customers. The type of marketing campaign that a company use is contingent upon the recommendations of the marketing director, past experience, the type of product or service they sell, and what they hope to accomplish with that particular advertising campaign. For example, a retail business may have a sale at the end of each season in order to get rid of the previous season's merchandise so they have room for the next season. The strength of their campaign will be contingent upon how much existing inventory they wish to sell and how much of a profit margin they are willing to cut in order to clear inventory from the sales floors.

The marketing director is in a position to conduct research that will slow the company what advertising campaigns will work with their customer base. A marketing director must know the target audience, what is selling now, and what the company has to do in order to meet their sales goals with the current advertising campaign. The marketing director knows it goes deeper than putting a sales ad on television, radio, or in customer's mailboxes in order to make it work, and it is his job to know what will work and what won't. Following the competition to know what they are doing is only one way of doing that, and a good marketing director along with his staff of marketing professionals will find the right way to make their company's product or service outsell the competition. The marketing director may indeed be one of the most important employees a retail or wholesale merchandiser has because without him, the word on their products will not get to the largest audience of potential customers.