Many marketing pundits and practitioners now believe the marketing function in most companies has less influence than it should have.
Marketers often describe this loss of influence in terms of the 4P's of the marketing mix. They frequently observe that in many companies, the marketing department is responsible for running promotional campaigns and programs, but has little influence over product, price, and place.
More broadly, many marketers complain that senior marketing leaders often don't have a meaningful role in the formulation of their company's business strategy.
Recent surveys by Marketing Week and McKinsey & Company have shown that one or both of these situations exist at many companies.
Virtually all marketers agree that rebuilding the strategic influence of the marketing function is important, but it's not always clear how this goal can be achieved.
As I wrote in an earlier post, the ultimate solution is for the CMO* to be seen as a trusted source of the market, customer, and competitor intelligence the company's senior leaders need to formulate a sound business strategy.
However, this level of trust doesn't develop overnight. Therefore, a critical question for the CMO of an organization where the marketing function has little influence on business strategy is: "How can I begin building this level of trust?"
The short answer is that the CMO should identify the elements of their company's business strategy that are based on inadequate information about markets, customers, or competitors and begin providing that information to other senior company leaders.
To execute this approach, a CMO needs to perform three tasks.
Describe the Strategy
The first step is to describe the major components of their company's business strategy. Every company's competitive situation is unique, so every company's business strategy will also be unique. However, all complete strategies will address a core group of issues that are common to most companies.
For example, a complete strategy will describe how the company segments the market for its products or services and identify the company's target market. The strategy will also describe how the company's products or services will deliver value to customers that is superior to the value provided by competitors.
A complete strategy will also describe how the company will price its products or services and why its current pricing levels are competitive in the relevant market.
The goal of this step is for the CMO to develop an accurate and detailed description of the elements of their company's business strategy that collectively determine competitive success.
Identify Sources of Information
The second task the CMO must perform is to identify the information that was used to make the choices embodied in their company's business strategy.
For example, what information did company leaders rely on to define the company's target market? What data or information did they use to determine what the company's primary customer value propositions should be? How did they determine what new product or service features or capabilities to develop and bring to market?
The goal of this work is to enable the CMO to identify areas where more accurate or comprehensive information about relevant markets, customers, and competitors will enable company leaders to make more informed strategic choices.
Share Strategy-Critical Information
Once CMOs have identified the areas of greatest need for better insights about markets, customers, and/or competitors, they can begin to gather relevant information and share that information with other senior company leaders.
The most effective way to share this information will largely depend on the nature and quality of the CMO's relationships with the other senior company leaders, particularly their CEO.
Most CMOs will probably want to avoid any suggestion that they are criticizing their company's current business strategy. Instead, CMOs should position their work as providing information that may be useful and valuable during the next strategy development cycle.
This low-kay, indirect approach is primarily intended for situations where a company's CMO is not playing a prominent role in the development of the company's business strategy. When they have strong relationships with other C-level executives, CMOs can use a more direct and aggressive approach.
The approach described in this post will require a fair amount of work, and it won't always produce immediate visible results. But, the long-term payoff more than justifies the effort.
When a company's CEO and other senior leaders view the CMO as a trusted source of the market, customer, and competitor insights that will help them formulate better business strategy, they will place greater value on, and give greater weight to, the CMO's views and perspectives.
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*In this post, I've used the term "CMO" to mean the senior marketing leader in a company regardless of the specific title that individual holds.
Image courtesy of SMcD22 via Flickr (CC).
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