By Dave Stevens
Google+
I’ve been thinking rather a lot recently about the connection between businesses and their marketing departments. In all too many of the organisations that I come across, there is a regular complaint from execs that they do not know what their marketing department does or how it benefits their business. Frequently I find that the marketing teams in those organisations have lost their focus on delivering the goals of the execs or else are not communicating in KPI language that the business understands how what they do delivers those goals. Marketers frequently assume that business leaders know what marketing is. Business execs do not.
An excellent article in the Cambridge Marketing Review led me to seek out a great paper from the Capsicum Group (www.thecapsicumgroup.com) on the subject this week which was based on in-depth interviews with C-suite and senior marketers from 40 corporates across a representative range of sectors. Capsicum conclude that the business-marketing gap is caused by marketers not being seen as peers by the leaders of the business – something that then goes on to make the gap still wider. This means that marketers are not getting a seat at the strategy table and are focused instead on tactics. The gap isn’t helped by the increasingly back office nature of the marketing team that gets them away from clients and instead focuses them on the things that matter less. If marketing are responsible for brand in such organisations, it’s usually that they’re responsible for the visual elements, but not the way the brand is actually experienced by clients and employees each day. It all seems a bit bleak for marketers then. Could the last marketer out of the back office turn out the light?
What turns bleakness into frustration is that marketing has a lot to offer the top table. Done properly the marketing department can be a critical constituent of doing business well, growing orders, increasing revenue, deepening margins, and driving cash by building and maintaining executive networks, attending business events, identifying pipeline opportunities, growing the pipeline, planning workshops for the business around how to respond to environmental challenges, creating and pricing and testing new offers, developing programmes for key accounts, and engaging with delivery teams to ensure a total brand experience for clients and employees – as well as running a damn fine event.
There is a real need for marketing out there. And in my experience, it is possible to rebuild the link between marketing departments and the businesses they serve. It takes time, care, and proof of delivery to create trust. It requires a brilliant and dedicated team of marketers committed to the cause and it requires the preparedness of a few business execs to go on the journey to provide air cover. There’ll be slip-ups and set-backs along the way that require remedy and re-work. There will be times when the gap feels less bridged than ever. But what a brilliant feeling when things begin to change! And that makes all of the effort so very much worthwhile for the business as a whole – including the marketing department.
Categories: b2b marketing marketing
DaveStevensNow
Dave is an experienced global B2B Chief Marketing Officer / Marketing Director with an established reputation for delivering commercial results in start-up, mid-tier, and blue-chip businesses across technology, and business services and professional services sectors.
Dave has worked for major brands such as Telefonica O2, EY, and Barclays and held posts from Chief Marketing Officer to Director of Online, has run his own business, and managed a P&L for a major corporate. He is chair and co-founder of the Business Marketing Club (www.businessmarketingclub.org.uk) - a network of B2B marketers. In 2019, he was named one of the top 100 B2B European marketing leaders (https://www.hottopics.ht/34199/top-100-b2b-european-marketing-leaders-2019/). He is a graduate of Cambridge University, a Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) Chartered Marketer and holds a MBA with Imperial College, London. Dave is a keen cyclist and adventure traveller, is married, and lives in Buckinghamshire. You can read his blogs at www.DaveStevensNow.com.
DaveStevensNow 
Thanks Dave. An interesting post. I thought the highlighted issue was mainly restricted to the support organisations (particularly, customer service/care) due to them being perceived as entities that are left to do the laundry. I find support organisations continue to feel left out, disempowered and distanced from the board too. However, if you think about it, customer care doesn’t necessarily generate customer contacts – the majority of their workload necessitate from what happens in rest of the organisation e.g. product inception, design, development, integration, implementation and communication decisions. Recently, I have been investigating the roles of a ‘commercial organisation’ within an enterprise that includes marketing, customer experience, sales and customer support organisations… I think to deliver a truly consistent, intelligent, branded and effortless ‘service and experience’ across customer lifecycle and channels/touch-points – such an organisation could play an important role. Thanks again. Z
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A good post. Thanks.
It can also be frustrating sitting at table where other people believe that marketers are there to
a) solve all of their problems;
b) do what they think needs doing without taking into consideration a possible marketing plan, etc.
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You’re right A Londoner from Afar – and it comes from the fact that there is no consistent view as to what the marketing team should do. That means that the expectation is that marketing do everything, that marketing do nothing, that marketing take instructions, and so on. The first job of any marketer is to market themselves.
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You’re right. Easily said than done, though. It is rather easy to annoy people around. Any tips? 🙂
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The answer to that question could be the subject of a whole series of posts and comments A Londoner from Afar! However, I think the starting point is for marketers to remember the need to market themselves. Many marketers – and I would once have included myself here – forget that there is no shared understanding in the business world about what marketing can do. The act of marketing is in a sense the easy bit – we are all marketers after all and we all market in our day job. The hard bit is remembering that we need to do it for ourselves as well as for the firm we work in.
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Reblogged this on C-Suite Mentor©.
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