This is going to be a rather short post. Just a couple of thoughts about marketing – just a generalisation, but still some thoughts that every marketer should keep in mind.
It is often that one finds marketing people wound up in their own little worlds of “branding”, “awareness” and other fuzzy marketingspeak which can mean a lot, but often don’t.
More and more though it seems that marketing is being asked to be ore accountable, more transparent, and more….a part of something. That’s not explaning it very well. Let me try again.
It is no longer enough for the marketing “department” to go about doing marketing “things” and not speaking to the sales guys, the biz dev guys, the product development guys or any of the other departments who are responsible in some part for bringing the bacon home.
I’ve noticed with increasing frequency especially in 2009 the notion that marketing is beginning to be seen as a core and integral part of a company’s function – not something that can be treated as a separate function. In the same way, I take reservation in some part to the term “online marketing”. I recently got into a rather stressful argument when someone mentioned that online marketing is a trend that is going to fizzle out soon. That really grinds my gears, even when I think about it today. But I digress, I was talking about marketing being a central, core, integrated part of the business.
And that means that the metrics and measures of success for a marketing person needto reflect those of the business as a whole. And if that means making more money (isn’t that always the bottom line?!) – or generating more data – there needs to be some way – an attribution model of some sort – where marketing can take responsibility for X% of the final outcome.
And if that is not possible to do in the current scenario, then the connection between marketing and the rest of the business need to be reviewed again and again till it is figured out what exactly the hell it is that Marketing is doing for the business!
During a recent consultancy project that we (our University group) did for a major, multinational computer company – we realised just how commonplace this problem is – and how easy it can be to solve if you’re willing to address this as a problem.
Step 1: Ask the simple questions. We’re spending £X on marketing activities, and £X f marketing personnel. So what are we getting in return? Do we know? OK, cool, we think we know that. How do we know that? Is our current method transparent and waterproof? Err…hmmm, no, not exactly. Alright then, move on to step 2.
Step 2: Let’s map out the workings of our money making machine and find out where Marketing slots in. What are the other little components that Marketing works with? Sales? Biz Dev? Are they working with them now? No? Then should they? Are there any common goals between these two components or departments? There are? Alrighty then, are they both looking at the same metrics or performance indicators? Solve these mysteries and then move on to Step 3.
Step 3: We now know what Marketing is doing for us, and we know which other departments interact with Marketing, and we’ve managedto identify some common goals. I guess Step 3 – and this is probably the most important step – is to get buy-in from all the parties involved and agree that Marketing is no longer just a support function but something that is part of all of these other components and departments in the business without which that department is incomplete.
So if you’re developing a new product, get Marketing involved to learn from their experience, find out what mistakes not to make, gain from research that has been conducted – build a product.
If you’re the sales department, ask Marketing for ammo in the form of analytics data, competitor intelligence and new ideas and ways of presenting your product so that you can go out there and sell better than your competitors can.
Conversely, it’s the marketing department’s role to gain insights about customers, the business and the product or service in question, and focus their activities based on outcomes. We did X, and as a result the business gained Y.
There was a discussion we were having the other day where someone mentioned that marketing is muscling in on other peoples’ territories – this particular conversation was with elation to Sales. I’m not sure that’s the precise way to interpret what is happening – it’s more that in an attempt to achieve greater transparency and to improve measurability, Marketing departments around the world are creeping out of their marketing coccoons and figuring out ways to prove their worth to their owners, to show their businesses why they exist, or in other words….their raisons d’etre.
