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The Dispatch
It’s good to be the king.
Let’s put marketing back where it belongs.
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” – Hunter S. Thompson
Every marketer we have ever met loves to solve business problems. Give us a big, juicy, intractable business problem to solve, and we are happier than kindergartners in a crayon patch.
So here’s a question …
If marketing is your organization’s main driver of product innovation, profitability, pricing power, market share growth and share value …
If “CEOs who place marketing at the core of their growth strategies are twice as likely to have greater than 5 percent annual growth …”
If more than 2/3rds of global GDP still depends on consumer spending (actual humans buying actual stuff) …
And if marketing is genuinely responsible for all four Ps …
How do we get marketing back on top? Back into the C-suite, the boardroom … and the shop floor, distribution, product development, sales, customer service and every other nook and cranny of the business?
(Another way to put it is: How do we make sure that when the going gets weird, the marketing budget isn’t the first thing to get axed?)
One “complaint” we hear (and see a lot on LinkedIn) is that finance and sales people don’t understand what the hell marketing is for. Another is that marketers don’t understand where money comes from or how business works. This may or may not be accurate. It also may or may not be helpful.
And then someone will trot out the old quote that retailer John Wanamaker supposedly said way back in the late 1800s, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Ha. Good one.
(Seriously, though, if you believe half your advertising budget is wasted, you need a better strategy, creative and media partner. We happen to know one.)
And then someone else will say something like “marketing has an attribution problem” or “finance people don’t like uncertainty” like that solves anything. But here’s the thing …
As a marketer, you represent the customer.
You’re talking to people, learning
what they think and feel, seeing your products through their eyes, evaluating every brand touchpoint, figuring out what they want and delivering growth by solving their problems. That’s a big friggin’ deal.
Getting marketing back on center stage where it belongs means putting the spotlight back on the consumer. So how do you do that?
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Make friends with finance.
Yep, it’s time to build bridges and tear down silos. Take the finance team to dinner. Bond over beer and karaoke, wine and painting, tequila and bowling, axe throwing or axe bowling. Whatever. Get to know the finance team. Make sure they get home safely.
This is (mostly) not about schmoozing. It’s about putting on your market orientation goggles and seeing the business through their eyes. What are they responsible for? How does their work contribute to the bottom line? How do they feel about it? How can you and your team make their lives easier?
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Learn to speak their language.
Yes, they use foreign-sounding words like Capital Budgeting, Discounted Cash Flow, Weighted Average Cost of Capital, P/E Ratio (not to be confused with the D/E Ratio), Net Present Value, and Internal Rate of Return. The words are mysterious and important. Learn them.
And encourage them to speak yours. Talk about market share, penetration, market orientation, mental availability, physical availability, excess share of voice, pricing, distinctive brand assets, balancing the immediate effects of performance tactics with the lasting effects of brand advertising … and so on.
There are a million definitions of “brand”. Come up with one that makes sense for your company. Help finance understand that brand isn’t “vibes” and that marketing’s primary function is to drive incremental profitability and growth.
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At some point, you will all have to agree on what success looks like … and here’s where the real work begins.
Because you can’t measure everything. Some things aren’t worth measuring. Some data might not be available. Some things can sort of be measured if you pay someone a lot of money and squint at the results in just the right way.
Sources!