CEO's FOUR biggest marketing problems
An important question for the success of a business is how to organise its commercial organisation, i.e. sales and marketing. If these two functions do not live in symbiosis, the end result is unlikely to be optimal.
Therefore, the CEO should create an organisation in which the symbiosis of these two functions is made possible. A commercial organisation should be like a team, where everyone has one and the same goal.
I have written before about the problem of marketing as a silo within a company. After further reflection, I decided to classify the marketing problems of organisations into four different categories. These four are, in my view, the major organisational problems of marketing for the CEO.
1. MARKETING HAS DISCONNECTED ITSELF FROM THE BUSINESS
Marketing has managed to make a fortress of itself, very distantly linked to the business of the company. Activities may include interesting content strategies, spectacular brand campaigns or modern influencer campaigns. However, demonstrating business value or building a link to the core business of the company is a long way off. Often this problem is caused by a lack of commercial expertise. The marketing function may have been filled by people whose only skills are very specific to one area of marketing and lack business understanding.
2. Marketing is just the left arm of sales.
Marketing only does what sales thinks up or thinks is right. The function is subordinated to sales, both in the organisational chart and mentally. Marketing is a purely tactical function whose tactics are the whims of sales. The activities that are often carried out are those that sales believe will make their own customers happy, or that sales people themselves come across in their own lives as nice ideas. The only good thing about this model is that marketing can produce short-term sales results.
3. Marketing is the supreme god within a company.
Marketing must not be criticised, results questioned or metrics challenged. Marketing is the only body that can know how to work within marketing, understand the brand, the consumer or digital. Marketing has succeeded in making a science that no other education or background can understand or develop. This is being driven by, among other things, advances in marketing technology, which is enabling marketing to push itself even further beyond the scale of 'normal' human judgement.
4. Marketing is equipped with the wrong skills.
Marketing has skills that are not being used to develop a company's business. Marketing, for example, is full of content clunkers when there is a need for an analyst. The business is crying out for a brand refresh, but the skills are only in lead capture or designing trade fair stands. The company makes poor marketing choices because the skills to buy expert services are not there. Traditionally, marketing has been a rather generic function, and in recent years so many areas have emerged within it that it is almost impossible to find generalists. The suitability of the people who solve an organisation's marketing problems is absolutely critical to the business.
Traditionally, marketing has been a rather generic activity, and in recent years so many areas have emerged within it that it is almost impossible to find generalists.
So how do you solve these problems?
It all starts with the management of the whole company. Often the CEO can look in the mirror. What is required of marketing, and how do you measure its success? Is the CEO letting marketing do what it wants, or is the discussion about the value added by the function genuinely honest? If the sales and marketing directors are rivals, rather than teammates, the situation is inherently challenging.
If I were to build a company now, I would create a commercial organisation with no separation between sales and marketing. The silo problems naturally start as the company grows in size, and therefore this future challenge should be consciously addressed from the very beginning.
Published as a column in Marketing News 8/2021
