What is the VFP of the Marketing Department?

The VFP is a measure of a team’s performance. It’s important that every participant in the business process understands their VFP — then the company will grow and increase its income. Employees who are unable to state their own VFP and do not know the VFP of other employees and departments cannot be a real team. In this article, we will delve deeper into what a valuable product is using the example of a marketing department manager.

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What is a Valuable Final Product?

The VFP is the result of a company’s or an individual employee’s activities. There are three criteria that define a valuable final product:

1. It’s the final result of work

The term does not accidentally contain the word “final”. No intermediate work can be the VFP. And this is by no means a process, but the outcome, the result of this process. For example, for the sales department, the VFP will not be the sale of goods or services at all, but an increase in the company’s profit.

2. It must be measurable

This is important because some employees often name some “airy”, intangible concepts as their VFP: the company’s image, satisfied customers, and so on. But the VFP is measured in the number of these customers, that is, the valuable final product in this case will be signed contracts or filled-out applications.

3. The product has value

To simplify, the VFP is what someone is ready to pay for. The client pays for quality goods and services, and the employer for the result of the employee’s work.

How to formulate a VFP for employees?

Understanding the VFP of each position and each department is one of the key points in managing a company. Imagine that a manager does not know what constitutes a valuable product for his subordinate. How will he determine the effectiveness and quality of the employee’s work? He simply won’t know what to demand from his department, how to set a task. If an employee does not know their VFP, they lose focus and start dealing with any tasks, except those that are expected from them. Usually, such employees believe that they should be paid a salary just for showing up at work. Here are a few steps that help managers formulate a VFP.

1. Company Goals

Setting the main goal of the company and conveying it to the team is one of the main responsibilities of the owner. He must determine what the company will be engaged in and what it will earn money on. The goal and intent are where building a business begins. Moreover, the goal should be focused on benefiting people. If the company’s owner has not formulated a goal and intent for themselves and did not convey it to the team, the business can quickly become uncontrollable. Essentially, this is a benchmark that everyone on the team should check against and according to which each employee’s VFP is formulated.

2. Org Chart

Any organization consists of seven main departments, each of which performs its functions and produces its own Valuable Final Product (VFP). The departments interact effectively, leading to the successful delivery of the VFP of the entire company.

3. Job Descriptions

The most necessary document that each employee should familiarize themselves with first is their job description. This is a document that describes the processes, functions, and responsibilities of a specific position. An employee may have several job descriptions for different situations. In our company, we use job folders, which also include a description of the VFP for each position.

4. Statistics

As I’ve already mentioned, the VFP should always be measurable. But without measurement tools, it is impossible to evaluate the work done. Therefore, in our company, we use statistics. These are indicators of work done, which employees must periodically record. This way, employees understand exactly what their work is measured in and focus their efforts on improving these indicators.

By the way, during the probationary period, we ask newbies to formulate the VFP on their own. This helps to see how much the person understands their functions in the company.

What is the VFP of the marketing department?

Many managers mistakenly think that the VFP of the marketing department is sales and profit increase. But this is not the case. Sales are handled by the salespeople!

The org chart can help determine the VFP of the marketing department. On it, there is the 6th department — “Public Relations”. In business, the public are people who are somehow related to our field of activity, primarily those who can become our customers. The department’s task is to introduce the public to your product.

Here are some VFPs that marketing department employees may have.

• Leads

Therefore, the main VFP of the marketing department is quality leads, that is, people who have filled out applications and left their contacts.

• Social media followers

As one of the tasks of marketing can be brand recognition and audience loyalty, the VFP of certain employees in the department will be — the number of followers on social networks and audience engagement. So simply “increasing loyalty” is not a VFP because it cannot be measured, but subscribers can.

• Data

Another task of marketers is audience analysis, market research, competitor analysis, and collection of other data necessary for shaping a business strategy. In this case, the VFP will be reported with specific data and figures, as well as conclusions on how they can be used.

• Reducing Advertising Costs

In digital marketing, it’s very easy to measure the effectiveness of advertising — it’s the cost per subscriber or lead. The cheaper each application cost you, the more effective the advertising is. For instance, this can be used to evaluate the performance of a targeting specialist.

As you can see, understanding the VFP is very important for all participants in business processes. When there is no clarity about what the valuable final product of each employee is, chaos and misunderstanding ensue.