Breaking the Vicious Circle to Build the Marketing Future

11 February 2004—We all know that marketing teams across Europe lived with tremendous pressure during the last few years. Budget cuts, staff reductions, and constant demands to demonstrate greater return on marketing investments have taken a serious toll. Few marketers have been able to avoid the personal and professional impact of losing colleagues, losing budget, and facing increased pressure to prove that their efforts really matter.

The simple reality is that a great many marketers are now overworked and overstretched as a result of picking up the workload from colleagues who have been let go and from doing more work in-house since budgets have been cut for external agency support. This means that these marketers have lost their work/life balance, have little time to think anything through, and, because they are almost always in meetings, have little time to implement their programs. At its worst, some marketers are so demoralized that their effectiveness is limited; they are just biding their time until the job market picks up and they can take their talents elsewhere.

Along with program and agency limitations, budget cuts have had a particularly strong impact in two key areas of marketing effectiveness. First, deep cuts in travel have made it extremely difficult for marketers who work on international teams to meet and develop common language and understanding among colleagues. As important, travel reductions have made it harder to get field sales and operations people fully engaged with the company’s brand, capabilities, marketing campaigns, and value propositions.

Second, while services marketing needs to become more sophisticated to achieve results in today’s market, cutbacks in travel and training mean that marketers are less able to increase their skills and stretch their minds, hindering both performance and morale.

Meanwhile, the pressure to demonstrate greater return on marketing investment is complicated by the fact that we have our own jargon which doesn’t relate well to the language of our peers. What goes on in marketing is typically mystified and not clearly linked with shareholder value, revenue, profitability, or other key business drivers. This last fact alone, if not addressed, guarantees the continual journey around the vicious circle.

So, how can we dig ourselves and our teams out of this situation? How can we build the creativity and ingenuity back into marketing to drive better business results while accepting that resource constraints and the pressure to demonstrate value are most likely here to stay?

I see three challenges to address. First, to combat the issue of overworking, the answer is focus, focus, focus. We all need to choose the top three priorities that will drive results this year—and give them the right amount of time and energy for creative thought, analysis, and full implementation. How focused and achievable is your team’s list of priorities for 2004?

Second, to address the issue of limited resources for travel and training, we need to develop more creative ways to build skills and knowledge on the job (perhaps by increasing coaching and mentoring), by making better use of available technologies (for example, video conferencing, Web briefings, and online resources), and by carefully choosing our battles for only the most important occasions for travel and face-to-face training.

Third, to better respond to the pressure to demonstrate results, we need to accept that cause/effect measurement is an essential part of our marketing professionalism. We must learn to communicate results in the language of the CEO, CFO, sales, and delivery staff. This should be the focus of some of that on-the-job coaching for you and your teams, and the beauty is that you should have existing, in-house resources to help you!

We know that firms are looking to achieve top-line revenue growth in 2004 and are expecting sophisticated marketing to drive that growth. For this to work, we need to break the vicious circle that has left many marketers in Europe tired, demoralised, and unimaginative and instead create a virtuous circle that supports marketers and marketing teams that lead the way to a more successful—and liveable—future. Who knows, we might even have some fun along the way!

—Bev Burgess, info@itsma.com

For more information on how ITSMA Europe can help your organisation grow and succeed in 2004, contact our main office in London at +44 (0) 1892 523060 or by email at info@itsma.com.

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ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions more effectively. As a membership organization, we provide research, consulting, and training to the world's leading technology, communications, and professional services providers to generate increased demand, strengthen customer relationships, and improve brand differentiation. ITSMA is based near Boston, and has offices in London and Tokyo. Learn more at www.itsma.com.