Marketing the Last Frontier Marketing plays an important role in business. By definition, marketing works to inform customers of the value created by an organization. Extending further, marketing also complements the sales department by acting as the mechanism for collecting customer data, determining why customers buy, developing a comprehensive value message and matching a company’s product/services to various customer groups. In years gone by, Distributors sorely lacked marketing knowhow. When a marketing person was on staff, they were most generally described as event coordinators and keepers of the trinkets. I’m not saying they didn’t work hard. Nor, am I implying these early marketing folks weren’t an asset. But they certainly did little to actively direct the Distributor to higher sales or greater gross margin. Happily, those days are gone. Last week, I attended the National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED) AdVenture Marketing Conference in C...