Seven Steps to Create a Stronger Growth Engine in Marketing

The Capiscum Group recently conducted a study of more than 40 business leaders who run service companies across Europe, including CEOs, managing directors, managing partners, and profit and loss owners, as well as those responsible for marketing, to explore their company’s objectives and the role marketing plays in meeting them. What we found was a disconnect between CEOs and their marketing teams. Business leaders are under pressure to deliver business growth, but they are unclear about how marketing could help them.

What’s more, marketing is painted as out of step with the rest of the business and unaccountable in terms of delivering the business results they need. Marketers are not seen as peers by the leaders of these businesses, often because they lack commercial acumen and general business experience. This is compounded by the fact that they don’t speak the language of the business.

The Capiscum Group believes that marketing can do much more to drive growth and add value—without increasing investment. To build marketing into a stronger engine for growth, we recommend seven steps to get the foundations right, get the focus of the marketing investment right, and add value through the right functional activities. These steps are:

1. Make sure marketers are business people first, and marketers second. Give high-potential and senior marketers a business role for at least six months, so that they gain an understanding of business pressures and how a P&L works.
2. Reconnect marketers with clients. Change your marketers’ responsibilities to include contact with clients, first through basic marketing events and programs and then through client advisory boards and workshop facilitation. Marketers should have the same objectives around building executive networks that P&L owners, sales, and account managers do.
3. Use business key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure marketing. Build a marketing dashboard that contributes to business KPIs, answering the question, Why should we spend money on marketing rather than adding it to the bottom line each month?
4. Rescope the function to deliver strategic value. Refocus marketing investment on higher value-adding activities, such as developing a market-led strategy.
5. Use new product development techniques for services. Task marketing with embedding proven new product development and portfolio management techniques to increase service profitability.
6. Create a business development value chain. This value chain should have clear roles for integrated marketing, sales, account management, and delivery teams. Allocate strategic marketing resources to your most important accounts and opportunities.
7. Invest in your reputation, not your logo. Link brand and reputation management in a single program that aligns everyone behind what you want to be famous for. Create a cross-functional team to deliver the reputation program.

If you do nothing else, Capsicum recommends you take these seven steps, reallocating the existing investment you are making in marketing today to build a stronger growth engine for your business tomorrow.

Read the Viewpoint: http://www.itsma.com/research/from-support-to-strategy-how-marketing-can-increase-its-value-to-the-business/

Get the full report: http://www.thecapsicumgroup.com/insights.php.

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