How to Elevate the Influence of the Marketing Function

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Many marketers believe that the marketing function in most companies doesn't have as much influence as it should have. In my last two posts (here and here), I discussed why this circumstance developed, and I argued that one of the main causes was the rise of strategy as a business discipline.

Over the past five decades, strategy development has become the dominant process senior business leaders use to create their gameplan for success. Developing a complete business strategy requires company leaders to make several decisions involving customers, competitors, and other market-related factors. 

As a result, the strategy development process essentially transformed a number of "marketing" issues into "strategy" issues.

So, how can marketing leaders increase the influence of the marketing function under these circumstances? To accomplish this goal, the marketing function must perform two core tasks effectively.

• It must create and run programs that support the company's chosen business strategy.

• It must provide the company's senior leaders information and insights that can enable them to make sound strategic choices.

At first glance, these tasks may seem obvious, but they are more nuanced than they first appear. And when they are done properly, they will boost the influence of the marketing function.

I'll discuss the first task in this post, and I'll cover the second task in my next post.

Job 1 - Run Programs That Support Company Strategy

The first job of the marketing function in any company is to create and execute marketing programs that support the company's chosen strategy.

This job may seem easy to understand, but what does "support" the strategy actually mean in operational terms? How can we determine that any marketing program meets the "support" requirement?

In my last post, I introduced the strategy framework developed by Roger Martin, one of today's leading authorities on business strategy. Martin describes strategy as the answers to the five interrelated questions shown in the following illustration:

The answers to these questions constitute the five core elements of a complete business strategy.

• "What is our winning aspiration?" - A description of what strategic success looks like for the company.

• "Where will we play?" - A description of the company's target market.

• "How will we win?" - A description of how the company will deliver distinct and superior value to its target customers.

• "What capabilities must be in place?" - A description of the activities the company must excel at performing to be successful with its "where-to-play" and "how-to-win" choices.

• "What management systems are required?" - A description of the management and measurement systems the company needs to support its other strategic choices.

Martin has also written that the primary job of a company's functional units (e.g. marketing, human resources, manufacturing, etc.) is to provide the essential capabilities and the required management systems identified in the company's strategy.

Martin's approach is useful for marketers because it establishes boundaries or "guardrails" for marketing plans, and helps ensure that marketing programs actually support the company's strategy.

For example, this approach requires that:

• Every marketing communication program should be specifically designed to reach, or create engagement with, potential buyers in the target market(s) identified in the company's strategy.

• All marketing communication programs should describe and present the value provided by the company's products or services in ways that are aligned with the "how-to-win" element of the company's strategy.

• The metrics used to measure the effectiveness of marketing programs should be designed to measure performance in the target market(s) identified in the company's strategy.

The credibility and influence of the marketing function are enhanced when this task is performed well, and when the senior marketing leader effectively communicates the rationale for marketing's activities to the CEO and other senior company leaders.

Performing this job well demonstrates to the CEO and other senior executives that the senior marketing leader and the other members of the marketing team understand the company's strategy and are applying their marketing expertise to make the company's strategy successful.

What the Rise of Strategy Meant (and Means) for Marketing

Many marketers now believe that the marketing function in many companies has less influence than it should have - or once had.

As one example, they frequently point out that the marketing function is usually responsible for creating and running promotional programs, but often has little or no influence over the other three "Ps" of the marketing mix - product, price, and place.

The idea that the fundamental purpose of a business is to understand customer wants and needs, and create products or services to satisfy those wants and needs emerged in the 1950s. As this concept gained traction, many marketing scholars embraced the view that the marketing function in a well-managed company would direct much of what the company does.

In my last post, I explained that the marketing function in most companies never gained the broad authority that marketing scholars anticipated. What actually happened was that strategy development became the primary mechanism senior company leaders used to make major decisions about the future of their business.

Over the past six decades, the strategy discipline has become the dominant method for describing the purpose of a business and creating the "recipe" for its success. In the words of Walter Kiechel:

"Strategy's coming to dominance as the framework by which companies understand what they're doing and want to do, the construct through which and around which the rest of their efforts are organized, eclipses any other change worked in the intellectual landscape of business over the past fifty years." (Emphasis in original) [Walter Kiechel, III, The Lords of Strategy:  The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World (Boston:  Harvard Business Press, 2010)].

The rise of strategy to the dominant position in the hierarchy of business management tools effectively prevented the marketing function from gaining expansive decision-making authority in most, though not all, companies.

To understand how this happened, we need to look at what a complete strategy encompasses and where strategy is made in most organizations.

The What and Who of Strategy

Roger Martin, one of today's leading authorities on strategy, defines strategy this way:  ". . . strategy is an integrated set of choices that uniquely position the firm in the industry so as to create sustainable advantage and superior value relative to the competition." [A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin, Playing to Win:  How Strategy Really Works (Boston:  Harvard Business Review Press, 2013)].

Martin goes on to describe strategy as the answers to five interrelated questions. The following illustration shows Martin's five core strategy questions and some of the subordinate questions that business leaders must answer to create a complete strategy.

Veteran marketers will recognize that answering some of these questions will require strategy makers to use several marketing principles and methods.

For example, the "Where will we play?" question will require strategy makers to decide whether and how to segment their market and select their target market. And the "How will we win?" question will require them to determine how they will deliver value to customers that is distinct from, and superior to, the value offered by competitors.

The rise of strategy also constrained the marketing function's decision-making authority because of who formulates strategy. In most companies, strategy development was (and still is) led by the CEO, and usually involves some or all of the company's C-level executives.*

So, as senior company leaders increasingly used strategy to define the purpose of their business and create their gameplan for success, they absorbed several market-related decisions into the strategy development process. As a result, those decisions became "strategy" decisions rather than "marketing" decisions.

Under these circumstances, the influence of the marketing function across the company will be largely based on the contribution it makes to the success of the company's strategy.

To maximize the influence of the marketing function, most marketing leaders will need to reframe the function's mission and objectives to make clear that the function's first priority is to support the company's strategy and strategy-making process.

In my next post, I'll explain how marketing leaders can use this approach to increase their influence with other senior company leaders and enhance the influence of the marketing function throughout the company.

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*In larger enterprises with multiple business units or brands, each business unit and brand will likely require a distinct strategy. These strategies are typically developed by each business unit leader or brand manager with input from his or her leadership team.

Top image courtesy of  Stefan Erschwender via Flickr (CC).