Marketers as Growth Champions: Three Questions for 2007

Most marketers in a recent ITSMA survey agreed that marketings primary objective is driving growth and profitability. It’s not exactly a shocking revelation. After all, profitable growth is the business of business, so presumably all corporate functions are ultimately focused in that same direction. Indeed, one has to wonder about those marketers in our survey with a different idea of their ultimate mission.

How best to contribute to profitable growth, though, raises all sorts of questions about marketing roles, responsibilities, and priorities. The most interesting finding of the ITSMA study suggested that those marketers with more strategic roles in the business—such as charting business strategy, developing new offers, and ensuring customer satisfaction and loyalty—have a more significant impact on the business than those focused mostly on traditional marketing communications functions.

This finding dovetails with a broader study completed earlier this year by Booz Allen Hamilton and the [US] Association of National Advertisers (ANA). That study, which surveyed marketing executives across multiple industries (compared with ITSMA’s focus on technology services and solutions), found that only an elite 9 percent of marketing organizations could be classified as “growth champions” based on their strategic responsibilities for areas such as product innovation, new business development, and investments in new markets or products. Most important, teams in this category were 20% more likely to exhibit superior revenue growth and profitability for their industry than any of the other types of marketing organizations.

Clearly we all want to be considered “growth champions.” But how can we get from here to there? Looking toward next year, I’d like to suggest that three questions are essential to the vitality of the marketing organization in technology services and solutions, and to its ability to contribute more substantially to profitable growth.

1. What is Marketing’s Proper Role in the Business? The ITSMA and the Booz Allen-ANA studies both suggest that marketing organizations with broad responsibilities for strategic business roles have a greater impact on the business. I guess that might be self-evident, but the fact remains that only a minority of marketing groups in tech services and solutions have such a strategic role. One can’t simply demand that marketing suddenly take over business strategy or new offer development, but, if you are not already in those roles, articulating a broader vision and finding opportunities to contribute more directly to them could be useful next steps. If marketing truly has deep customer and market insight (which it should), then leveraging that insight to identify strategic growth opportunities is one obvious way in the door.
2. How Can Marketing Strengthen Relationships Across the Business? One of the more troubling findings of the ITSMA survey was the fact that less than half of the survey respondents felt that the most senior strategy executive would rate marketing’s impact as “significant,” and that rating was higher than for any other type of executive. Only 41% felt that CEOs would say “significant;” 27% said that for the most senior sales executive; 25% for line of business leaders, and a mere 8% for the chief financial officer. Given that most marketers (although not all) believe they do actually have a significant impact on the business, either we are fooling ourselves or, ironically, we are failing to communicate. Strengthening these internal relationships on the basis of mutual respect for everyone’s contribution to profitable growth must be an ongoing priority for marketing leaders.
3. How Can Marketing Better Demonstrate Its Contribution to the Business? Five years into the post-downturn push for greater marketing accountability, marketers in ITSMA’s survey admitted that they’re still not doing a great job in measuring marketing performance. Better metrics for brand, leads, and sales support will all help, as would increasing fluency in the CFO’s language, but the bigger challenge is tying marketing programs and performance more broadly to overall growth and profitability. This goes beyond traditional metrics (important as they are) to marketing’s vision of itself and its role, and to marketers’ ability to build stronger peer relationships across the firm.

Although these questions are daunting ones, the trends are positive. More marketers are taking on strategic roles in the business, and CEOs increasingly highlight priorities that should play to marketer’s strengths, such as deepening customer insight, enhancing customer relationships, and accelerating business innovation. Keeping our eye on the big picture objective will serve us well in the year ahead.

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ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions more effectively. We work with the world's leading technology, communications, and professional services providers to generate increased demand, strengthen customer relationships, and improve brand differentiation. ITSMA annual program clients include business leaders such as AT&T, Cisco, Deloitte, EMC, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and Tata Consultancy Services, among others. Our comprehensive research, consulting, and training on topics including ITSMA Account-Based Marketing℠, Brand Positioning, and Solutions Development provide the insight and experience companies need to improve business results. ITSMA is based near Boston, and has offices in London and Tokyo. Learn more at www.itsma.com.