By: Michael Palmer
If we are to survive this economic challenge in front of us, marketers take note – we have to start leading our organizations towards the light at the end of the tunnel. What does it take to be that kind of marketing leader? How can marketing assume a leadership role when it is still viewed as a cost versus an investment in many organizations?
ANA studies have found that you can categorize marketing into six organizational roles, each with its own view as to their responsibilities within the company. While each group has its own relevance within an organization, there is a performance difference based on the role the marketing team plays. Growth Champions are 20 percent more likely than their industry peers to exhibit superior revenue growth and profitability. Why?
Very simple; Growth Champions, who currently represent about 10% of all marketing teams, are more connected to their company’s strategic agenda. A survey of 370 corporate marketers from 100 companies in nine industries revealed a significant disconnect between CEOs’ agendas and marketing teams’ activities. Forty-six percent of marketers in the study named driving growth as a priority while over 85% of CEOs indicated that “sustained and steady top-line growth” was their top priority. More alarmingly, only 37 percent of the marketing respondents said “driving the CEO agenda” was an essential objective of the marketing team
So what does it take to become a Growth Champion? An ability to seek commonalities across markets in which your company has a presence, both to find efficiencies and to clearly identify where customized communications or marketing operations are required. Look beyond customer satisfaction to how customers use your brand and what problems they are trying to solve, and then collaborate with sales and product-development teams to develop and deploy products that solve these problems.
Most important, growth champions excel at collaborating across multifunction’s - R&D, finance, sales, and etc. - to more quickly bring products to market. And they have standardized methodologies and metrics that allow them to calculate return on investment (ROI), and to demonstrate their accountability for the entire organization’s results.
What should you do now? In conjunction with Booze & Co., we have developed a marketing profiler survey. It will tell you what role your marketing team currently plays within your organization (we would recommend that several of your team take this survey, then compare the results – does your own team agree on the role you are currently serving, it would be interesting to find out). Once you agree on the role you now serve, should you wish to move up the ladder towards the Growth Champion rung, the ANA School of Marketing has a host of ways to help you and your team. Let us know how we can build the right program for you. We understand you are time-starved and budget challenge, no problem we are flexible.
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