Marcom Marketing and Communications, which managed to correctly craft a crisis communications plan two years ago, has managed to maintain its position in the market during the pandemic.

According to the executive director of the company, Jeyhun Farzaliyev, the services created in 2018-2019 are currently most in demand by companies.

“The issue of creating alternative services on the market has always been relevant for us. We try to analyze not only the current marketing trends of market participants, but also the risks they may face in the future. This helps us create new services for these situations. Experience has us shown that in 2015 and beyond, during the global financial crisis, the vast majority of companies firstly began to significantly reduce marketing costs, including firing employees in that department. This has seriously affected the market position of these companies. The recovery process took both time and a hefty budget. To prevent these processes from happening in companies, we have formed such services as outsourcing, marketing audit, content marketing as part of the crisis communications plan."

Jeyhun Farzaliyev said that the period of having an in-house marketing department is over.

“Today, maintaining a marketing department is an additional expense, waste of time and risk for small and medium-sized companies. Our research shows that many companies are unhappy with their marketing teams. There are both objective and subjective reasons for this. We analyzed these issues in 2018 and introduced an outsourcing marketing service to the market. This service allows companies to save on their marketing costs and not keep marketing staff within the company. In many cases, companies make mistakes when it comes recruiting employees or cannot afford to transfer the required employee to their company due to high wage requirements. This makes the company go on the wrong track or fall behind. The outsource marketing service prevents these kinds of negative things from happening.  The operating mechanism of an outsourced marketing service is very simple. Two sides have a meeting. During the meeting, the sides go through the work that has been done and areas in need of improvement. Later on, an audit is conducted on what has to be done and the overall workload is determined. Based on the work that needs to be done for the company, a roadmap, types of services, a work plan and an annual price list are formed. The prices we provide to the client may vary depending on the current state of the company, audit results and the volume of work needed to be done. This service is more convenient because you can handle the client's work comprehensively and promptly."

The CEO of the company also raised the issue of auditing the work of many marketing companies during the pandemic.

“It is a normal process for companies to audit the work of the marketing department as they do with financial issues.  During the pandemic, many companies turned to our marketing audit service to check the effectiveness and correctness of the work done in the field of marketing. While this service often creates tension between us and some agencies and individuals working in the same market sector, we made it clear to them that our goal is always to protect the market and entrepreneurs."

Jeyhun Farzaliyev emphasizes that content is the main reason why many market participants can't fully transition into the digital marketing era.

“Content has always been the most important factor in marketing. Before the pandemic, many companies in Azerbaijan paid more attention to offline communication tools. Now we see the complete opposite. We took this into account and created a content marketing service. For a company to fully and effectively use digital marketing tools, it first needs content. Imagine that you are selling some kind of a product or service. To do this, you must first create a website that complies with customer behavior and Google's standards. To create a website, you first need to create useful content before designing it. This service will help you save money in the future when using marketing tools like social media, Google ads, Google SEO service."

We want to note that Marcom Marketing and Communications operates in Azerbaijan and Georgia. The company offers 31 marketing services for the two countries. The company is also a marketing consultant for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.