Pickens Technical College’s Marketing Pathway: The Changing Role of the Marketing Director

If you’re considering the Hospitality Marketing program at Pickens Technical College, you probably already know the opportunities available to you upon graduation. Instructor Courtney Tanguma first builds a strong foundation of marketing concepts, then applies them to the hospitality industry. At the end of the course, you’ll gain experience working with a real hospitality company as a part of your capstone marketing cooperative learning experience.

You’ll be prepared for how the hospitality industry is changing and how hospitality marketing directors are adjusting to the changing marketplace. One way the marketing aspect of hospitality businesses is shifting in recent years is how the Marketing Director works and builds value for their brand. 

Marketing Director vs. Revenue Director

The ever-increasing use of the Internet to drive sales in all sectors has forced businesses to rethink how they invest in marketing initiatives. These days, it’s not uncommon to find hospitality companies with both a Marketing Director and a Revenue Director. They sound like completely different positions, but they’re both essentially concerned with the same thing: bringing in customers to increase revenue. 

The difference is that the Marketing Director is focused on future revenue and returns on investment. Money spent now on advertising, particularly offline advertisements like flyers or billboards, is more difficult to justify with ROI numbers right away. Chances are, if you have a smart offline marketing strategy, you’ll see plenty of returns in the form of more customers, but that won’t be clear when you present the marketing plan to the CEO. The Revenue Director, meanwhile, is all about the present. Since online marketing tools like Google Adwords give you a better sense of your end ROI with the ability to track the success of specific online ads, these ROI numbers are more immediate. 

Why We Need Both

With a multitude of online tracking systems able to give Revenue Directors a better sense of advertisement ROI, why do we even need a Marketing Director? Because the Marketing Director can look at the long-term and anticipate opportunities to expand. While the Revenue Director is concerned with the day-to-day effectiveness of their online marketing campaigns, the Marketing Director can come up with online advertisements they believe will be effective in the future. They can anticipate changing customer attitudes and preferences and prepare the business for the future. When they work together, the Marketing Director can stick with identifying and creating demand, while the Revenue Director can work on just how effective each advertisement is. 

The Pickens Hospitality Marketing course will teach you how to build advertising budgets and use them effectively to drive demand without breaking the bank. You’ll learn how to penetrate new markets and create demand where there was none previously. You’ll also learn how to set prices and offer services customers will want. Working together to manage advertising costs while still building and expanding a customer base is where the hospitality marketing industry is heading. No matter how you want to work in the hospitality industry, you’ll be prepared after Pickens.