First, let me say this: I am not a marketer, but after 40+ years, I have learnt something about business and I’ve been in and around the go-to-market end of business for almost all of that time. And that includes having Marketing report to me, and more latterly, working a lot with marketing and sales teams around the world.
I’ll share a few home truths about how ‘the business’ sees marketing:
- A lot of people outside of Marketing have no real clue what Marketing does, and even less idea about how it could be contributing more
- They get that it is good to have a strong and recognised brand, and they probably think that having a great website is a good idea too
- After that, they’re a bit fuzzier about where the real value lies and are unsure how much it contributes to the business being successful
- There is a fairly prevalent view that Marketing spends too much time turned inwards, when it really should be the function that is the most outward facing of the lot
- And this is more prevalent I think in B2B compared to B2C, where Marketing often has a seat at the top table, rather than being bracketed or even subsumed within ‘Sales and Marketing”
- From a financial perspective, Marketing is in the SG&A/Direct Expenses/Overhead part of the P&L so it is viewed as a discretionary expense, much like Sales, IT, HR and, indeed, Finance itself
Businesses are usually trying to drive profitable revenue growth, and I believe that Marketing should adopt this as their overall driver, with the ‘R’ meaning profitable revenue growth and the ‘I’ in RoI meaning the combination of discretionary headcount and external costs which support that growth.
Often this is where it gets fuzzy. In an effort to prove RoI, Marketing tracks the inputs and outputs in an effort to prove that, without them, the outcomes (i.e. profitable revenue growth) would not have been achieved. The problem is, profitable revenue growth is a team sport, so whereas Marketing obsesses, in an almost unique way, about ‘attribution’, Sales just gets measured on ‘hard’ revenue performance ultimately, with all its other measures of pipeline etc. as merely a means to that end.
So, what can marketers do about this?
I would argue that it starts with this little phrase: ‘profitable revenue growth’ – all three words, but particularly the word ‘profitable’ – because then, Marketing can start to take a really business-like, commercial perspective on how it can contribute. Through the application of the strategic marketing management process that Professors Kotler, McDonald, etc., have espoused for so long, Marketing can demand a greater say in how profitable revenue growth can be achieved over the long term for the company overall, and by market segment – whether that is product portfolio, geography, industry segments or an individual or collection of accounts. As I’ve said, the key word here is ‘profitable’, which you might think of as the domain of the P&L owners and the CFO within a business (which is true), but it is not solely their domain.
As a marketer, if you start with wondering how to generate profitable revenue, rather than just revenue, it takes you into the realms of attractive market segments or accounts, but also into the concept of value and competitive advantage, which is a great place for marketers who want to stand out from the crowd, to be. And this is relevant at any level in the company, whether you are the CMO of the whole company, an industry marketer, in product marketing or an ABM-er working with a small number of important customers. It is where competitive strategy and marketing overlap, and it creates the opportunity for truly commercial marketers to be involved in setting direction, making choices about where to play and how to win and bringing their finance and sales colleagues together to a common view of where profitable revenue growth can be best achieved.
And, equally importantly, it provides the lens through which all other marketing activities and investments can be judged. Is what I am doing going to directly contribute to profitable revenue growth and can I explain this to the other functions who have the same profitable revenue growth goals as me? If you start with this, it becomes much easier for Marketing to be seen as a part of the team, bringing their unique experience, data and skills to bear, alongside others like Sales and Customer Success. Questions of attribution become less important, because the team has bought into why we are doing what we are doing, so it becomes a team sport. I know companies where ‘marketing attribution’ has been completely dropped; but I know a lot more where it hasn’t.
Translating this into concrete actions, whatever your role, here are four things you can do:
- Learn about the strategic marketing management process and master the tools of the trade, the technical and soft skills.
- Acquire insight, data and knowledge about the market in your part of the business, and be curious about where the market is going and why.
- Think about what customers in your market truly value and how your company and your major competitors stack up against these things.
- Collaborate with your colleagues and become an equal partner in achieving profitable revenue growth, bringing your unique expertise to bear as you help them figure out where to play and how to win.
Like the great work on the Commercial Marketer that B2B Marketing are currently spearheading, we are also doing our bit in helping marketers on this journey to be more business-savvy and to be leaders with their colleagues in other disciplines, whether it is through our account-based growth advisory work, or through our ABM AcademyTM, where we train ABM-ers in both the technical and soft competences to be both valued and successful.
