Too many top executives in B2B organizations still equate the function and value of marketing with marketing communications.  While the field of marketing has advanced considerably in the last two decades, the view that marketing equals leads, tradeshows, press releases and a web site is still fairly commonplace in the B2B world.  This narrow view of marketing leaves money on the table in terms of what organizations should be deriving from a properly conceived approach to marketing.  It all starts with setting the right expectations.

Earlier in my career, I remember sitting  with a CEO of a small division company inside a big conglomerate, talking about his team’s marketing efforts.  My observations on obvious areas of improvement were met with a remark that has been burned into my brain ever since.  He commented, “You should have seen what things look like before we drained the swamp.”  I realized that my youthful and naive view of the optimal state did not take into account where the marketing efforts were before the CEO had taken over and invested in new marketing talent and approaches.

When working with clients, I am always curious to gauge the “maturity” of two functions: HR and Marketing.  If HR has a seat at the strategy table and is active in helping move the business forward, I am usually dealing with a progressive management team.  (Most often, HR is managing administrivia and focused on traditional silo tasks.)  I also look for how top leaders portray their marketing function and how they gauge the contribution of marketing to achieving their objectives.  Most often, the role of marketing is narrowly defined, with discussions about marketing’s contribution focusing on leads, events and collateral content.   I will stick with my youthful and naive perspective: marketing should deliver a whole lot more than qualified leads, well-run events and great collateral content.

Raising the expectations bar on marketing

My swamp-draining CEO friend described above would be quick to highlight that if marketing was only now just beginning to deliver qualified leads, quality supporting tools and great events, this would be tremendous progress.  A client-friend of mine would agree, especially after struggling for some time to realize a quality web presence with supporting content to help build out her thought leadership strategy.  Progress is great, but keep draining the swamp.  Don’t settle for marketing communications excellence as the sole contribution of marketing. (It’s important…reference my posting on Relentless Promotion. It’s just not the sole function of marketing.)

Areas for marketing improvement and expansion include:

  • Establishing a clear dichotomy between tactical and strategic marketing.  Most small, B2B marketing functions remain tactically focused, with individuals pulling off heroic outcomes in the communications arena.  That’s good, but who in marketing is looking at the bigger picture and identifying new courses of action or new areas of investment.   A mature strategic marketing function is constantly assessing  market forces and working to turn emerging threats or opportunities into new vectors or defensive programs.
  • Bridge-building across the organization.  The marketing role must include pro-active creation of key relationships and processes between functions for the purpose of increasing market awareness and improving internal execution around strategic market (not marketing) objectives.  Too many marketing professionals remain hunkered down inside their marketing silos instead of recognizing their role to create systems and processes to engage the broader organization.
  • Active involvement in strategy development–not just execution.  This one tends to come in two extremes, and the answer is in the middle.  Either marketing is absent from strategy development or it is given the unholy burden of being responsible for managing the entire strategy program.  Neither extreme is appropriate.  A firm’s top marketers are accountable for contributing big picture market perspective (forces, competitor strategies, disruptive signs, market trends etc..), and helping the management team synthesize this information down to strategy decision points.
  • Pro-active strategy creation and execution planning for brand strengthening. Consumer companies don’t have a monopoly on branding.  B2B companies have a distinct need to differentiate from competitors and reinforce a value proposition in the eyes of their target customers and markets.  A mature marketing team should work tirelessly to strengthen current and desired-state brand perceptions. In the current time frame, marketers must understand why clients buy their offerings and what problems they are solving (e.g. the old adage: no one buys a drill to own a drill, they need holes).  Armed with this understanding, a firm’s messaging should constantly be thrifted to showcase a differentiable (versus competitors) value proposition that clients understand. As for the future, as part of strategy execution, marketing owns the task of developing, implementing and measuring response to the messaging and programs that help the firm move towards the desired state.
  • Partnering with Sales without mortgaging Strategic Marketing.  The sales/marketing relationship issues are legendary, and in my opinion, a function of poor top management of the respective leaders, including misalignment of objectives.  Neither is subservient to the other and the two respective leaders must be partners in key common areas.  Marketing and sales must be aligned around lead generation, sales tools delivery to support the sales process model and overall current market strategy.  Their incentives in those areas should be aligned as well.  The two functions diverge as sales moves towards executing its core mission and marketing moves into the strategic realm.  However, both functions and functional leaders should understand and respect the independent work that each area must perform to fulfill their mission. Goals, key progress measures and deliverables should be transparent across both functions at all times.

The takeaway:

Great leads, quality communications and well produced programs are important, but table-stakes tasks for any B2B marketing function.  The real value from marketing comes when marketing matures to the point of developing a strategic vector that offers insights, guidance and key decision-choices to the firm.  Mature marketing organizations function as bridge-builders, offering education, insights and developing processes and programs to draw the entire organization into executing around strategic market objectives.  And you know the metaphorical swamp has been drained and the soil dry enough to build your organization upon when marketing assumes responsibility for branding and has the maturity to partner with sales.

Expect more from your marketing function, add people that look at the bigger picture and hold marketing accountable to strategic deliverables and  you might just be surprised about the good things that happen to your organization.