Around 95 percent of women working in productive families are unaware of the basics of marketing, a marketing specialist revealed recently.

However, trainer and specialist Rou’a Abdul Halim said that the overwhelming majority of productive families are eager to learn marketing skills in order to develop their businesses.

Her remarks came during the free training course organized by the Makkah Chamber of Commerce and Industry which was attended by 500 women of productive families.

The course included introducing the concept of marketing in the society, the concept of administrative and physiological marketing as well as the challenges faced by the productive families.

Abdul Halim told Arab News that 98 percent of marketing is an acquired skill that can be taught stressing that any successful project depends on the ability to market the product.

“Productive families need to know how to meet clients’ needs,” Abdul Halim said expressing the need to intensify training in this sector through NGOs and Chambers of Commerce.

Abdul Halim said that people can excel in marketing even without a university degree in this field as long as they are willing to learn and have the ability. She explained that marketing specialists have the highest salaries because they help solve marketing issues which are considered the most problematic in the commercial sector.

Hasan Kansara, the supervisor of employment tracks in the Makkah Chamber stressed the need to find ways to develop the abilities of productive families, as well as finding marketing opportunities for them. “Around 90 percent of productive families enter the market only three years after the beginning of their projects, which is an administrative and a marketing mistake,” he said. Kinsara said that studies and research data that were carried out in the past three years showed that financing and training are the two main challenges facing these families. He added that all bodies need to support these families that can add value to the Saudi economy.