Is the marketing of the company you run stuck? Here's some emergency help.
In the first two months of my company's operation, I have had twenty conversations with CEOs, business leaders, founders and owners of Finnish companies. Common to all of these discussions has been a reflection on the role of marketing as a driver of business growth. Often the aim of management or owners is to drive marketing in their own company more in this direction, to ensure that marketing is really an investment. In what follows, I will go through the key challenges that emerged from the discussions in more detail, and summarise my own thoughts on how to go about addressing them.
1) Management does not understand or know what marketing does.
This is a fundamental problem that often requires outside help to solve. The way marketing is done may have become so divorced from the real business challenges that simply discussing the objectives and the content of what is being done internally is no longer enough. A reorganisation of marketing may be in the offing, where it is not enough to refocus what is currently being done, but the whole marketing strategy, resource allocation and organisation needs to be rebuilt from scratch.
2) Marketing does things that are understood, but not seen to add value to the business.
Marketing is also unable to verify how the resources used will sooner or later be converted into euros. It is often a difference of opinion as to what the objective of marketing is and who defines it. A strong or experienced marketing manager may push things in a direction that does not allow criticism or is labelled as a criticism of marketing skills. In this type of situation, the first priority is usually to define what the objectives of marketing are, how they are measured and how the organisation is incentivised to move in that direction.
3) Marketing and sales do not play to the same goal.
Usually, sales want results immediately and marketing takes much longer.
This is a subset of the previous problem, where marketing is often hoped to support sales, but has a different view of its role. This situation calls for a strong sales-marketing alignment, bringing marketing objectives closer to sales. There may also be a need to merge these parts of the organisation if it is felt that they are too siloed.
4) There is no clear model for organising and resourcing marketing.
Especially if marketing as a function is to grow or change its operating model, the model and roles of the marketing organisation become a key issue. Modern marketing today involves so many different roles and competencies that it is difficult to quickly find a view on their prioritisation and responsibilities. Here again, organisational design starts with objectives and an understanding of the customer. What should be expected of marketing, what is required to deliver it and how can it be best resourced? How can marketing help solve customer challenges? Questions about internal capabilities or the skills that partners bring are often central to these discussions.
5) In the past, companies have focused on sales and found that marketing development has been left in the shoes of the child.
In these cases, it is often thought that a company should take a big leap all at once. However, there are risks involved. A company that has never had a marketing function before, or has not needed one because of growth anyway, may not be ready to take the big leap. This is particularly the case if big leaps are being taken in other parts of the organisation at the same time, as is the case in growth companies, for example. In such cases, the key issues include identifying the quickest gains to be made and focusing on capturing them first. For example, bringing in a competent partner may be a smart way to do this if you are looking for a quick competence boost.
This list highlights the key issues that I am helping to address. Often you may find yourself in a situation where you need to evaluate your marketing approach, partners and resources, and it may not be easy to do this as an internal exercise when you have been used to doing things a certain way for a long time. Asking for external help in these cases is not a sign of helplessness, but rather a sign that management has recognised a willingness to evolve and has identified the potential of marketing.
