Marketing’s brand is broken: we need a relaunch

I was guest speaker this week at a (brilliant) marketing offsite for a listed business. The theme of my talk, entitled “Marketing: where the money comes from” was on the challenge of making marketing a growth-engine for the business, not a cost-centre. The delegates were clearly on the journey to making this transformation already, but were – as so many marketers I meet are – anxious about persuading a marketing-unfriendly wider business of the value they can bring.

There’s lots of reasons for this, some of our own making. Amongst others:

• We’ve allowed ourselves to be relegated away from the product, price, place ‘Ps’ of marketing and remain stuck with promotion as our primary focus
• We don’t measure what we do in a way that demonstrates the returns we drive for the business. We confuse marketing efficiency for marketing effectiveness
• We can’t or don’t explain the connection between marketing activity and sales outcomes when we’re not working on sales activation programmes
• We are no longer the authorities on customer behaviour and insight. There are teams outside of ours that might own customer insight or strategy. We allocate pitiful amounts of budget to customer research
• We allow ourselves to dwell in our own tactical silos, and frequently confuse tactical strategy with marketing or brand strategy
• We (sometimes) obsess over “brand guardianship” – the use of the logo. Fonts!

Clearly we don’t all do all of these things to a fault. But many of these themes ring true when you talk to in-house marketers.

Note I say that marketing needs a relaunch, not a rebrand – renaming the CMO function the “Chief Growth Officer” or “Chief Customer Officer” or – worst – the “Chief Digital Officer” will confuse the purpose of the marketing function. Yes, it’s there to drive growth, yes, digital and customer engagement are some of its functions, and yes, brand guardianship is our job too. But critically – without reclaiming the other ‘Ps’ – marketing is not a strategic function, it is a tactical one. We are the "colouring-in" department.

So, how do we fix that?

Some starting thoughts we discussed, that I’d love to hear other contributions to:

1.      We need to change our vocabulary

We need to talk in terms of revenue and growth. An increase in awareness or an improvement in perception or even a high NPS score – as useful as those are as indicators of our success – need to be translated in the impact they have as you push that through the funnel. The reality is most of us are trapped in tactical reporting by marketing silo as we don’t have this data. We need clarity metrics!

I’ve written before about the need to use a structured funnel as the basis for marketing strategy, and if you come to understand the ‘drop off’ as customers go through your funnel, you’ll understand how driving an improvement in awareness, interest, consideration, etc., will directly drive revenue growth. Using this notion, and the revenue growth objectives of our work to frame our activity, investments, etc., will change our perception in the business.

2.      Change the insights we hold – on customers, the customer journey, the sales process

We need to once more become the masters of customer insight. The people who understand everything about their perceptions of us, their buying behaviours, in B2B their buying committees and professional profile, and more. This insight needs to be drawn from multiple sources; from social media, quantitative data, customer service insight, ethnography and beyond, and it needs to tracked as it evolves – annually at least.

Once you have a baseline, annual updates reduce in cost and complexity, but it’s definitely worth the investment as it will ensure that every other bit of marketing spend is focussed on the areas where you can drive a difference.

3.      Find the champions we need

Repositioning an entire function in a business, if it has lost its way, requires executive advocacy. Even Unilever – one of the most progressive marketing-led organisations in the world – saw tremendous progress under CEOs that valued marketing. Keith Weed’s partnership with his CEOs has seen him become one of the most respected and admired marketers in the world, and Unilever as one of the most respected and effective marketing-led organisations.

Find someone who could understand the potential of what you’re trying to do, and take them on the journey with you.

4.      Ask difficult questions

“Why do we lose”, I’ve said before, is one of my favourite questions to ask business stakeholders and customers in insights programmes. It helps us understand why and where people jump off the funnel and get a greater understanding of the strategic problems the business faces. Is it perceived to be low quality, too expensive, too hard to work with, too limited geographically…? The truth is, people won’t always know the answer (the ‘rational’ answer and the ‘emotional’ – or ‘system 2’ and ‘system 1’ thinking answers – are usually different), but it gives clues as to where the challenge lies. We need to keep asking these questions to get to the core of the challenge we need to tackle.

5.      Break the silos we have

This is one of the longest running challenges in marketing functions. Everyone is rewarded on the basis of hitting KPIs that are specific to their function, so they focus on the tactics they know work, and deliver KPIs that help them get their annual bonus. This model doesn’t incentivise cross-functional working, it doesn’t encourage collaboration, and it forces us down a path of random tactics. “Tactics before strategy is the noise before defeat,” so Sun Tzu said. We need to end this and find ways of shaping and incentivising multi-disciplinary, cross functional teams to work together.

6.      Say no - a lot

You’ll be asked to do a lot of "colouring-in" by the business. Product brochures. Events. Tactical sponsorship. Customer entertainment. Say no, or find ways of delivering this work that don’t require marketing budgets or resources. Outsource it, and make the business lines pay for it, if it doesn’t meet a strategic imperative as identified by customer research. Having data about what does and doesn’t cause customers to buy you will strengthen your ability to do this.

7.      Don’t expect transformation overnight. Target small victories

You won’t reshape marketing’s reputation in a large business overnight. Most big organisations take time to come to terms with change. Unless the CEO is running wholesale, sweeping change and swapping out a material fraction of the workforce, accept that this journey is one that will take time and look for small wins. The first broad-sweeping customer insights project. The first integrated campaign focussed on a measurable outcome. The first brand campaign in a sales-activation focussed business. Take the win, measure the win, evangelise the win, and use it to win more budget, opportunities and advocates.

8.      Confidence

This is a hard one. Confidence comes from a lot of different places. But marketing leaders trying to drive this kind of change need to channel the confidence, refine it, and unleash it in a way that wins over executive and budget stakeholders. CFOs who would cut their budget. CEOs who don’t understand perceived intangibles. For my money, the strongest underpinning points of confidence are knowledge and experience. So do the training, do the reading, and keep on trying. I pointed everyone to the Mini MBA I did last year, which I continue to advocate, and my current favourite marketing book – How not to plan – by Les Binet and Sarah Carter – for additional insight.

I’d love to hear other thoughts on this particular change / transformation effort for marketers – how can we effectively reposition marketing as a profit centre in the business. Please share thoughts in the comments, or send me an InMail.