Here is a synopsis of an article by Laura Patterson, President of VisionEdge Marketing, Does Your Marketing Team Have The Right Stuff?:
The current economic challenges and ever-present market dynamics beg the question for companies of all types, “Does Our Marketing Team have the Right Stuff?”
Regardless of company size and industry, marketing teams (whether a team of one or more) are under increased pressure to drive top-line growth and profitable revenue. Here are four skills and four tools, the right stuff that will enable every marketing organization to fulfill the charter to be a business driver.
1. Metrics and performance target setting – with greater demand for marketing to be more accountable, solid metrics, performance target setting, measurement and reporting skills are a must. Be sure your marketing folks know how to set measurable goals and track results.
2. Analytics – the ability to derive insights from data. If growing valuable customer relationships and being able to forecast sales from future marketing activities are important, then analytics ought to be among your marketer’s top skills.
3. Benchmarking – the process of comparing what your company does to another that is widely considered to be an industry standard or best practice.
4. Customer Experience Management – If business exists to produce and serve a customer and marketing’s job is to create, communicate and deliver value to customers, then marketing is your organization’s ultimate steward of the customer experience.
Marketers need to be sure they have the skills necessary to improve customer engagement and touch point effectiveness, respond to changes in the buying cycle, and conduct voice-of-customer research in order to retain customers, create loyalty, and transform customers into advocates for the company.
Driving operational efficiencies
Marketing operations refers to infrastructure, that is, the tools, systems and processes in place to facilitate customer-centricity. For many organizations achieving these operational efficiencies requires infrastructure changes and improvements. With limited resources, where can you get the best bang for your buck? Here are four areas for investment consideration.
1. Operational Process Alignment – When was the last time you mapped your operational processes and verified marketing alignment with the sales, product, service, and other parts of the business?
2. Market/Business Intelligence – There is an art and science to using external information to drive business strategy. Business intelligence applications enable the collection, integration, analysis and presentation of competitive, channel, product and customer information to derive trends and insights.
3. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) – If the marketing organization is responsible for the relationship between the company and the customer, then it stands to reason the organization needs tools to facilitate this relationship. CRM systems automate the processes an organization uses to organize and tracks contact with its current and prospective customers.
4. Performance Management – The ability to use analytics, reporting, and dashboards to assess marketing’s effectiveness, efficiency, financial contribution, and progress toward achieving predetermined goals is performance management. This means marketing needs to be able to report on performance, impact and ROI from the program level up.
Progress doesn’t come without missteps, misfires and failures. Winners look for ways to overcome challenges and continuously improve. They seek outside help, new ideas and new skills.
