Even today, when you look at a lot of organizations, marketing is an afterthought whereas sales teams receive priority. One of the primary reasons that this happens is that marketing is not seen as a revenue generation stream. A little bit of post mortem on that reasoning, shows that marketing teams operate very differently in different organizations.
If you look at it, the question is never about the effectiveness of deliverability or the accountability of the marketing teams but about the clarity on what to deliver. Once I had an opportunity to be a part of a quarterly meeting at an energy company, where the marketing team presented a report showcasing the increase in market share compared to their competitor and all that the country manager asked was “Are we talking growth by brand value or sales numbers?.” I will never forget that day.
Expectations from the marketing team are different in different organizations. The question is – Are the marketing teams in sync with those expectations?
Consider a typical content marketing team for example; they generally have very little information about how the content generated by them is being used. So, in most cases there is often a gap in the understanding of the type of content that is working in favor of their organization.
Imagine, the CEO wants to see the sales opportunities generated, for every dollar spent; whereas you present a report showcasing the increase in brand presence. It will not really appeal to them though you see a lot of value in it and have put in lots of efforts to get there. In fact, the mismatch will directly reflect on how much budget the CEO would allocate for marketing.
Successful start-ups over the last few years have shown that independent marketing departments are becoming smaller and smaller. The objectives of marketing must seamlessly integrate with the overall organizational goal and enable sales in more than one way.
Synchronicity is the need of the hour. Being in sync means, all your teams working together as one, knowing – really knowing – what goes on in customer’s mind, working together and complementing each other on achieving clearly set organizational goals, adapting yourself to the dynamic business ecosystem at large.
To get you marketing in sync with your organizational goals, you need to ensure that marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) are stemming out of your organizational strategy. Being in sync with the customer means you understand their preferences, their culture, their goals and you enable them in pursuing their goals. It is also equally important to understand the current business ecosystem in which you operate and realize that collaboration is more important than competing.
To enable a synchronicity focused marketing drive, ask yourself - Does your every product or service, every marketing activity, every objective connect to how the product adds value to the organizational goal or customer goal? Does everyone in your marketing team know why they do what they do?