Marketing runs through everything that a firm does…
The idea that marketing is integral to the performance of a commercial organization is not new. However, within most firms marketing is still poorly understood and under valued from a cultural and process perspective. The word marketing elicits notions of advertising and selling. This is unfortunate because research demonstrates that marketing is the key driver of financial performance and customer value.
When I talk about marketing as the key driver of a firm’s success, I do not mean activities such as advertising or promotion in isolation. These are a part of marketing, but are not what marketing is really about.
Marketing is the guide for creating and delivering client value. As Tim Ambler from the London Business School rightly points out, trying to measure the return on investment (ROI) for marketing as a business process in its entirety is like trying to measure the ROI on eating – if you don’t do it you die!
From my experience of working in Asia and on global teams, I have found that marketing is often approached in completely the wrong way. Since most people in firms believe marketing is synonymous with business development, sales and promotion, it is tackled at a tactical level, thinking that new brochures, sales training and a website will solve most of a company’s “marketing” problems.
Let’s take an example, research from various sources shows that responsiveness is a key factor in customer satisfaction. Another way to put this is that responsiveness is at the heart of client value. But what is responsiveness? It’s not just about answering an email within one day.
Let’s say a customer calls you and asks about an impending regulation or technology change in their industry. You are not aware of that change, and you are not sure where to get information about it. Not only is your ability to respond limited by your knowledge of the customers industry/problem and the capabilities of your firm to access that knowledge, it is also affected by your mindset. Most firms believe that technical/product knowledge is sufficient when customers are in fact demanding commercially oriented advice. They want their vendor to understand their business!
Another factor in customer choice of a vendor is expertise and market insight, this also reflects the need to accept marketing as a business philosophy and mindset. To develop levels of expertise that differentiate your firm from competitors requires choices in the way your team is trained as well as the segments you target. It also heavily influences the structure of the firm. A market orientation allows you to develop a market-based strategy which produces customer value and differentiation.
All of this is intended to stress the point that marketing is something that you do before promotion. Marketing ensures you have the right value proposition in place and that your customers, both current and potential, understand and value what you do. It is not an add-on or supplement.
In other words, marketing is a business process and culture that permeates everything that an organization does. It is anything and everything that affects your value delivered for customers. Disagreements about marketing place too much emphasis on the role of promotion. Marketing is about value, plain and simple. Every business is a marketing business whether you recognize that or not.
Strategy & Competitiveness 