"Strategic" Growth Marketing, what's next?

Marketing has never been more challenging.

In the past, companies had to market their products using only a small number of distribution channels. Today, they must adapt to new realities, finding meaningful ways to connect with customers through up to a dozen different channels. This has presented challenges for many companies, but overcoming these hurdles will be worthwhile in the end.

Change

Company centric acquisition marketing with annual planning was not effective in responding to the shifting trends of modern marketing. Consumer centric, evidence based marketing allowed sustainable long term growth through measurable efforts. Tactics must stay agile to respond to changes in the environment.?

Be innovative and stay ahead of the curve. Use what you have to think up new ways to capture your audience's attention. Always be on the lookout for new ideas and approaches to apply to your business so that you can continue growing and keep your customers coming back.?

The marketing function can serve as the voice of customers, generating knowledge by using data science in the process. More established techniques like customer-needs assessments and sentiment tracking allow marketers to track user needs, but newer technologies provide opportunities for additional customer intelligence.

Experiment. Take risks. Push boundaries. Do something different.

Strategy

Marketing strategies have to adapt and respond to sweeping changes in consumer expectations, technology, and regulations. The modern marketer is a mix between a classical marketer and a digital strategist. Leaders struggle with transformation for three main reasons. They focus on changing technologies and structures rather than thinking about how a changing environment can enable the function to create new types of value. They typically frame transformation projects as a transition from one state to another—for example, from brand to performance marketing, or old to new. As a result, their efforts are often fragmented across teams or functional areas without having a holistic operating framework to guide them.?

Advertising has changed significantly over time. Traditionally data was used by advertisers to create relevant messages, but as advertising has become more advanced, data collection and analysis has also evolved. Today advertisers collect even more information on their audience and target customers with messages that are appropriate for them. The best customer experiences are delivered by a unified process that takes place across an organisation and allows real time data to be used by all parts of the process.???

Strategic ideas

Malcom McDonald defined Marketing planning as? a logical sequence of events leading to the setting of marketing objectives and a formulation of plans for achieving them.

Task

In 1990, Mc Donal identified 10 major barriers to effective marketing planning. Are they still applicable today? (Read)

It is difficult to undertake world class marketing planning because it involves a deep understanding of complex markets and the competitive landscape; but also because it can only work if those in the organisation charged with delivering value to the customers are committed to putting the firm's objectives ahead of their own.

Marketing tactics in the short term may be necessary to meet immediate challenges, but a long-term strategy is also necessary to account for longer term challenges that may arise.1 2?

A survey of more than 200 Fortune 1000 executives revealed surprising results. The results indicate that firms with a strong marketing-planning capability outperform firms without such capability. They found that firms are less likely to use improvisation from their approved marketing plans when they have strong marketing-planning capability. The concern is that, when firms engage in improvisation from an approved marketing plan, they can enhance their performance. Although others have shown the concurrent benefits of rational problem-solving in organisational settings, they support this conclusion but also indicate inelasticity associated with planning capability. In addition, they discovered a point of diminishing returns at which very strong marketing planning capabilities might have negative effects on a firm’s performance.?

Specialised marketing units are being replaced by a philosophy or concept that is used to permeate all functions and processes of an organisation. The implementation of marketing recommendations must be managed, resourced and monitored.3?

So what.

Marketing leaders have recognised the need to evolve their organisations and have attempted to update their practices accordingly. Most of them, however, have struggled to bring about changes in a way that truly advances marketing operations. Thus far, few have succeeded in creating a framework with which to build a coalition capable of not only generating value and driving growth but also transforming marketing into a leading-edge business function.

You disagree? Great! Please comment below.

1 Marketing plans: An interview with Malcolm McDonald. Emerald Publishing. (n.d.). Retrieved March 15, 2022, from https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/archived/learning/management_thinking/interviews/mcdonald.htm?

2 McDonald, M. H. (1989). Ten barriers to marketing planning. Journal of Marketing Management, 5(1), 1-18.

3 Slotegraaf, R.J. and Dickson, P.R. (2004) The Paradox of a Marketing Planning Capability. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 32 (4) 371-385. Available from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0092070304265217?

? Rodriguez-Vila, O., Bharadwaj, S., Morgan, N. A., & Mitra, S. (2020). Is Your Marketing Organization Ready for What’s Next? Harvard Business Review, 98(6), 104–113.

? Hammerman, J. (2020, April 2). The convergence of advertising and marketing. MIT Technology Review. Retrieved March 15, 2022, from https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/11/18/131922/the-convergence-of-advertising-and-marketing/?

? How marketing strategy and execution can fuel sustained growth. VisionEdge Marketing. (2019, September 4). Retrieved March 15, 2022, from https://visionedgemarketing.com/marketing-strategy-execution-can-fuel-much-needed-growth/?

? Rust, R. T., Moorman, C., & Bhalla, G. (2010). Rethinking marketing. Harvard business review, 88(1/2), 94-101.