Following some challenging and satisfying stints as a marketing leader in recent years, and coming up on my one-year anniversary here at Opus Research working with many clients, large and small, I thought I’d share some thoughts for marketing leaders as they enter their strategic planning cycle for next year.

I’m using the term “marketing leader” (ML) to cover a person with the title of chief marketing officer (CMO), VP of Marketing, or anyone else who leads marketing teams. The distinction between titles is irrelevant based on title inflation, range of responsibility and other factors within a company. So I’m going focus on the strategic and tactical responsibilities of the all-encompassing “ML” sobriquet.

This is the first of a two-part series that focuses on three key actions marketing leaders (ML) must take to increase his or her team’s impact and contribution to the company.

It’s a great time to be a ML. And it’s a horrible time to be a ML
Companies are expecting more and more from its marketing efforts every day. Expectations on company growth are bigger than ever. Competition is increasing. The way customers buy is changing rapidly. The way sales people sell is changing. Technology, especially mobile technology, is changing everything.

Marketing leaders are deluged with data, and only sometimes receive real information. The sales team is constantly looking for new products and services to sell. The promise of innovation isn’t delivering growth fast enough. Change is accelerating, and MLs need to embrace it or get out. These are just some of the issues MLs face.

The Prime Directive: Growth
Focus on growth (in revenues, market share and, ultimately profit and market cap) is the singular objective of successful MLs. The good news is that MLs today have a tremendous opportunity to impact positive results at their business.

Too many MLs lose focus, distracted by the latest trend or urgent business needs, ultimately losing sight of the most important goal: growth. MLs who do not focus on growth will join the ranks of ‘former MLs’. And there are plenty of those.

In a recent study, IDC noted that of CMOs surveyed in 2014, over half (51%) of those CMOs held their jobs for less than two years.

MLs can impact company growth, particularly revenue and market share, in many ways. But the types of growth the ML must focus on include the following:

1. Organic growth – MLs can positively impact growth through successful demand generation (“demand gen”) programs, both inbound and outbound; managing product and services teams that deliver based on understanding customer needs, and through great customer experience post-sales. This type of growth also includes incremental improvements to core product and services.

2. Geographic growth – MLs need to understand the markets they serve, look for additional markets to move in to, and again, understand the needs of the customer in those regions, building programs to deliver on the success. It’s critical to understand the distinct language and culture in each region to generate positive results. It’s import to know how customers buy, how the sales teams operate and other such distribution activities.

3. New growth initiatives – The successful ML must have a clear understanding of the company product/services portfolio, and how the company can compete in its defined market segment. Following analysis of gaps, product maturity, and market dynamics, the ML must look to deliver products and services that address underlying and compelling needs. The ML also needs to understand how technology is impacting buying behavior. 

4. M&A – The successful ML must understand the gaps in their portfolio and their lack of ability to deliver the right product at the right time. The ML must have the market sense to acquire solutions to fill in the gaps.


When you look across these growth strategies, there are three common actions a successful ML takes:


• Be, and be perceived as, THE expert on buying behavior and customer experience
• Align on strategy, tactics and measurements with other internal organizations: sales, finance, IT, HR and operations
• Embrace technology for customer facing and workflow process effectiveness

These three critical actions form the foundation for the ML to deliver positive results to meet growth expectations. To take a deeper dive, MLs should focus on:

Understand the category
As Geoffrey Moore says in “Escape Velocity,” category knowledge “…is the number one predictor of economic performance.” Thus, Job One for a successful ML it to foster deep understanding of his or her category.

All too often MLs don’t understand their categories, their product portfolios, the changing landscape of buyer behavior in the category and customer experience following the sales. When the ML is not communicating customer needs for the category clearly, others in the organization will attempt to do so. Knowledge of the buyer in a market category is a fundamental trait of the successful ML. Additionally, the ability to wield that knowledge at a strategic level across the organization is mission critical.

The successful ML has intimate knowledge of the company’s product portfolio — those products that are growing, those slowing, those that are meaningful financially, and those that are not. A successful ML needs to know where their company products fit in Moore’s category lifecycle, and whether they are emerging, growing, maturing, declining or dead.

Translate needs to solutions
Successful MLs can articulate the compelling reason to buy, and most importantly can translate those needs into new products and services to fulfill growth expectations. One key measure of the ML’s ability to do this is to measure the profitability of new products in a predefined timeframe. Many companies use time measurements such as 24–36 months to measure successful introduction of new products. Today, that time horizon is shrinking, and the successful ML must employ strategies to contribute faster based on listening and translating.

Understand how buyers buy
Successful MLs know the way buyers behave, and the way the company sales team operates is changing. It’s a far cry from the days when the marketing team did product definition, pricing and messaging, and turned it all over to the sales team. According to Forrester, 70%-90% of the buyer’s journey is complete when engaging a vendor. Additionally, the buyer will engage with 11.4 pieces of content prior to making a purchase. And according to Nielsen, buyers are five times more dependent on content than five years ago.

Marketing leaders need to understand how to build consistent, fresh and compelling content. They need to understand the communication channels their customers listen to. And MLs must understand that at its core, their content marketing program must address the core problems of potential buyers and communicate how company solutions address those problems.

In my next blog I’ll discuss the next two actions a ML must take to increase marketing’s impact on the business.

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Tags: marketing, CMO, Chief Experience Officer, Opus Research