This is a return to one of my favorite rants-marketers giving marketing a bad name.  In my 2007 article, Marketing Misunderstood, I described the struggle that many top B2B executives have in trying to understand the value that marketing contributes to their business.  While there is ample blame to go around for why the nature, purpose and outcomes from this valuable role in an organization are unclear, at least part of the responsibility for this marketing value confusion falls on the shoulders of the top marketers themselves. 

Some marketing professionals have a bizarre tendency to shoot themselves in the proverbial foot by displaying one, several or all of the following tendencies:

  • Marketers understand the impact that they are supposed to have on a business (direction, strategies, brand, visibility, leads) and some take themselves a bit too seriously.  I’ve observed marketing leaders that viewed their professional existence as a slightly higher calling than those laboring in other functions.  This elitist attitude comes through loud and clear to the rest of the organization-with obvious impact.
  • Instead of ensuring that marketing activities are transparent to the organization and other executives, marketing metrics are often self-serving, non-existent or confusing.  Additionally, they are often not integrated with other functional metrics to provide proper context.  This is especially common when evaluating lead metrics and attempting to connect them to changes in the sales pipeline.
  • In some organizations, I’ve observed a silo or even bunker mentality where marketing has grown tired of taking shots from the rest of the organization and has retreated into its own world.  An "us versus them" mentality exists from the top of the marketing food chain to the bottom.  This usually spells a death knell for the marketing leaders.
  • The "What Were They Thinking?" trap.  A major B2B technology company recently brought in a new marketing team that immediately identified the most abstract, costly and non-value add thing that they could do–they rebranded the company.  Shame on top management for letting it happen, and shame on the B2B marketer that pulls out the re-branding tactic as their start-up tool.  The effort burned money (a lot of it), time and valuable energy.  Shortly after the roll out of the new identity, the company was sold.  There was no cause and effect.

Before you jump down to the "Post a Comment" button to highlight your disgust with my anti-marketing diatribe, let me give equal time to the other side of this coin.  I’ve had the pleasure of working for, with and around some tremendous marketing professionals that managed to avoid the above bad habits.  Here are a few of the best practices of really great marketers that I’ve observed:

  • True marketing leaders understand that "marketing" is much more of a philosophy and a set of tools than a function.
  • Top marketing professionals work hard to make certain that everyone understands their agenda, their activities and their outcomes.  Metrics are developed in concert with other areas of the business and they are refined to help provide a clear and complete picture of marketing outcomes.
  • The best marketing professionals understand that their role is to cross boundaries not to create them.  Their egos are checked at the door and they understand that they play a valuable role in both educating and learning from others in the business.  Great marketers build bridges.
  • While innovative marketing professionals and teams push the boundaries of creativity and experimentation, they also understand that their efforts must add value to the firm.  For example, re-branding may be a necessary step, but it is  never the step that is chosen as a reflex action or as a means of self promotion. 

Like any profession, there are great, good and lousy practitioners and marketing is no exception.  Philip Kotler, the distinguished professor of marketing at Northwestern University and the father of modern marketing, is reported to have said: "Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department."  Great marketers intuitively get what Kotler meant and conduct themselves accordingly.