Is the marketing profession still sustainable?

I have had quite some cups of coffee in the last few weeks whilst in between I am taking my rest focussing on other things like visiting places I have never been before and do some rebuilding at home. All these cups of coffee help me to determine the market needs in the context of our marketing profession and everything related to that. I am talking with business founders, executive search agencies, corporates and investment firms. Most of them want to grow the business. All are in different stages. Scale-ups that has proven to have a proposition that gains traction but want to take the next step into a growth modus. Corporates that are still hitting the wall with old-school mindsets and cultures and businesses that have missed the boat once we talk about digital, whether that is digital marketing or making digital contribute in general to the business. They all ask me the same question: 'Mark, can you please help us grow as you did with Exact...'. Then I tell them they are too late, well, if they would do it the way I started back at Exact 8 years ago.

The importance of digital

Back in 2012 when I started at Exact we were not talking that much about everything digital. We identified a huge opportunity for the online software proposition and developed some ambitious growth plans. With myself as a digital adept, it was a no brainer I started to determine how technology could help us do that marketing job. At that moment it was called marketing automation and it felt like we were the first exploring these routes. Not so much experience and knowledge available in the market so we had to do a lot ourselves.

Expanding the base of companies on the online platform from 50.000 to 450.000 companies in 8 years and tenfold the turnover

That had one big advantage: you learn extremely fast. From that moment on until today, the marketing guys and girls from Exact where and are the frontrunners in digital B2B marketing. Everywhere I presented at seminars and congresses resulted in 2 or 3 invites to other businesses to explain how we were building our marketing growth engine. No surprise it was such a great story to hear about: expanding the base of companies on the online platform from 50.000 to 450.000 companies in 8 years and tenfold the turnover.

Yes, digital marketing was THE accelerator for all of this making it happen. But during the last 2-3 years this was changing. The gap between us as digital frontrunners and our competition became smaller and more like us were able to target very specifically and serve the right relevant message at the right time across different media channels. The market was less forgiven for not so well thought marketing programs and brand and communication skills became more important.

Traditional brand and communications professionals need to transform into 'performance communicators'

And I think we are at that moment right now realizing that we need to rebalance the online and offline efforts and making them blend with each other. In my opinion this means the traditional brand and communications professionals need to transform into 'performance communicators'. Which means every activity needs to contribute to the overall revenue goals. Adopting the digital mindset into the heads of the traditional brand and communications specialist.

But that is not enough: sales, customer success and product need to participate

But what I explained in the previous section is a hygiene factor, that needs to be done anyway in order to make sure that marketing remains to perform across the entire buying journey from top to bottom. There are other elements required in order to surf the next wave of marketing or maybe we should call it customer experience. Customer experience covers the entire lifecycle of a prospect becoming a long term customer. The help and support provided to that customer specifically serving the needs of that customer in the different lifecycle phases.

There are other elements required in order to surf the next wave of marketing or maybe we should call it customer experience

In many organizations it is about marketing generating the leads, sales closing the deals and customer success making sure the customer remains a customer. In some organizations, some elements are more or less integrated like sales and marketing or marketing with customer success but overall, at least what I noticed, is that these departments are operating next to each other and less with each other. Not talking about product development, in may organizations quite a disconnection between what is being built and the needs of the market.

But it looks like we are at the forefront of some major shifts in the marketing profession or should we say customer experience. Customer experience implies already that it has something to do across all lifecycle stages of that customer. It starts with the fact you need to treat every known contact as a customer having a distinction between non-paying and paying customers. In each and every lifecycle stage there are automated touchpoints and if needed or required human touchpoints. These humans could be business development reps, sales reps and customer success reps.

It starts with the fact you need to treat every known contact as a customer having a distinction between non-paying and paying customers

However not so much based on if the customer is at an early or later stage in the lifecycle but purely based on their needs. This already means a lot looking at how most of the organizations are set-up right now. In the most extreme situation, it could be that a customer success rep is providing help to a non-paying customer and that a sales rep is paying attention to a long term customer. If you want to make a split maybe between growth teams and engagement teams with a certain emphasis on a typical lifecycle stage.

Early signals of change

Since my interest as of mid-October is for scanning the needs of the market in terms of roles and positions I notice the first signals of change looking at positions being asked for. Chief Revenue Officer, Head of Growth and Chief Experience Officer are some examples. The market itself didn't decide yet which route to go. A Chief Revenue Officer responsible for revenues generated by new business (growth) and existing customers (engagement). A Head of Growth reporting into a Chief Experience Officer taking care of growing the business with new customers. A Head of Engagement, being a former Customer Success Manager responsible for growing the business within the existing customer base.

This means agile teams with a mix of what we call today marketers, sales reps and customer success reps

The names of the roles don't matter so much, it's more about the mindset and approach that a company is taking to build a sustainable business for the future. Building teams serving a segment of customers in a specific lifecycle stage with the ability to automate relevant touchpoints to help and support and if needed involve human execution touchpoints to sell to or support that customer. This means agile teams with a mix of what we call today marketers, sales reps and customer success reps. I have seen some organizations that are entering this stage right now and expect that in the upcoming year's many organizations will follow.

The product = marketing

Still, an area that I didn't cover is product development. Even offline products become online by brands that offer useful apps that enlighten the life of a consumer or make it more comfortable. To me, the website of today is already your product or even the display banner on a non-owned website. This is where a first automated touchpoint is created which leaves a first impression and where you can prove that you can mean something in somebody's life. Marketing and product are so much interwoven, a hard split between these two professions is simply not sustainable anymore.

To me, the website of today is already your product or even the display banner on a non-owned website

We were scratching the surface at Exact being able to treat the online application as a media channel for serving valuable messages and help but again just scratching the surface. Once you are able as a team to mix and match behavioral data coming from campaigns, websites, apps, web applications and the touchpoints generated you become the orchestrator of an entire customer lifecycle. A perfect blend of product and marketing.

Frontrunners

Yes there will be frontrunners in this area and the leaders of tomorrow are the followers of today. It's great having the ability and freedom to talk to so many people about these changes in our profession, dream about it and at the same time determine how to bring things into action. A great journey to be in which challenges constantly to think out-of-the-box, reflect and stay open for new insights and market developments. So much more to say so stay tuned! Tomorrow I will have my next cup of coffee with Koen de Witte. The guy who introduced me 10 years ago at Dreamforce into the world of marketing automation. Really curious about what he will come up with tomorrow.