Short-termism in Marketing. Best practices and what Marketing ends up doing

I have various discussions in consultancy projects, trainings or during my MBA classes with different people, some of them in management positions, about what marketing is, should be, or ended up doing. 

Not all of the managers work in marketing, or in companies where marketing is an embedded business philosophy. Leaders without technical background form their opinion based on mainstream media articles, the PR campaigns, or B2B targeted communication. The "share of mind" was dominated in the last 15 years by the digital hype. As a result, based on non-marketing managers, marketing has mainly two areas, both tactic:

1. Sales Support (through Performance and by managing the conversion funnel);
2. CRM (relationship with clients using different digital tools).

Chart 1. Non-marketeers perspective about Marketing:

These is the generic perception of non-trained marketeers about the Marketing craft. Some of them are going to become next CFOs, next Sales Directors or CEOs. Changing their believes should be mandatory, to avoid Marketing becoming the commercial Cinderella. Short-termism and brands commoditisation are somehow sourced within this superficial view.

What Marketing Should Do (Best Practice) ?

There is a super-long discussion. In my humble opinion, marketing should have 4 areas: Strategic Leadership, Developing Relationship with Clients, Sales Support and Managerial.

1. The Strategic Leadership area should consider Brand Architecture (the mix of benefits and reasons to believes), Segmentation & Customer Insights (what do we know about clients and competition does not know), Positioning (how do we articulate our common ambition for our target group; how do we differentiate). Based on Pareto (20/80), strategy is paramount for the future success. Done well, a company will experience the benefits in 3-5 years. Done mediocre, as usually happens, brands will become commodities and the company performance will slowly erode. In this area one can fit also the Activity Planning, Innovations and Revenue Management. In my opinion, Building Team Commercial Capabilities should be treated as a Strategic Leadership. Because it will influence the most the future development of the organisation. 
2. Developing Relationship with Clients is the bread and butter of Marketing. Any brand building & customer related campaign should be on this area. Brands should have a Creative Big Idea (or Communication Organising Idea) that leads to branded communication and branded experiences. Marketeers should consider Community Building, which is larger than just posting things on Social Media. Why? Because Communities engage on common interests, and do not respond to Performance budgets. I am not saying Performance is not important or does not help, I am just saying Performance is short term, not enough, and should be treated as such, even Google and Facebook PR says something else. In this area one can include developing activities and project management of third parties (e.g. managing the agencies).
3. Sales Support. Yes, marketing should support sales. In traditional companies, there is the Trade Marketing department, which creates the strategy and the support of the Sales department. In new companies you have the mighty Performance. Any seasoned marketeer can tell you that there is no conceptual difference btw. Digital Conversion Funnel and the oldies but goodies Brand Attitudinal Conversion Funnel. Both measure how potential clients transform into loyal ones. The thinking behind is longer than a century. Please also do not confuse "lead generation" (short-term sales activity, part of the Sales Support) with "brand building" (long term consumer's attitudinal change, part of developing relationship).
4. Managerial Time should relate to Performance Reviews, crafting presentations and influencing different stakeholders, alignment meetings, and paperwork (in marketing, building presentations and alignment takes a lot of time).

Chart 2. Marketing Best Practice:

What Marketing Ends Up Doing?

I work with many different people or different companies and I can have a view. Some organisations are very lucky and still hold their Marketing activity aligned with best practices. However, in many cases, Marketing became another victim of short-termism.

Chart 3: What Marketing ends up doing:

The majority of time is spent on Project Management for tactical projects, Performance and Sales Support and of course, time consuming alignment meetings with management. Nothing left for Strategy and only a bit for building relations.

I wouldn’t enter into the discussion why a strategic department became a tactical one. And why it slowly lost its professionalism in less than two decades. I have my theories, it is another topic. I would concentrate on the outcomes of this increased tactical approach:

• Brands and companies are sucked into the black hole of marketing: doing the same things, in the same channels, for the same people, but expect different results;
• Brands have the same internal looking objectives (e.g. grow market share or grow profitability), but expect consumer loyalty;
• They lost the track with clients, miss proper consumers insights. Therefore, erode their ability to progress through relevant innovations or meaningful differentiators. Lacking thought leadership (see once again the Strategic Leadership impact of Marketing), they cannot assume the risk to act differently. 

As a result, most brands became commodities. Mediocre leadership nurture mediocre brands that are not able to differentiate. End up to competing on price, calculating cost per lead. Few brands can articulate in an elevator pitch why a consumer should choose their product, based on a story and a competitive advantage. This is the spiral death of marketing short-termism: brands and companies discount their future, behaving like sardines in a shark-infested area. 

Who are those sharks, what is their impact on short-termism and what is their relationship with remoras and sardines, in another blog.

#Marketing #BestPractice vs. #ShortTermism