A Critical Trend for B2B Marketer Success: The Expansion of Marketing's Role
As the co-producer and co-host of The BusinessCast Podcast, I am fortunate to hear the thoughts and business insights of presidents, founders and CEOs of some of North America's most innovative companies. Across many of my most recent discussions with these leaders, I've noticed an important trend that is having a tremendous impact on all B2B marketers.
That critical trend: leaders' definition of marketing has once again evolved, or more accurately, extended into more areas within business including, Operations, Finance and Human Resources.
This isn't completely unexpected. After all, over the last few years, marketers have been stretched into taking on different roles and responsibilities. For instance, many of the nation's fastest-moving and most innovative companies call upon their marketers to be grouped within or tightly aligned with sales departments. In response to this re-framing, successful B2B marketers have modified their programs and campaigns to incorporate sales metrics targets, technologies and functions.
Now, with the tail of the recession still hanging on, leaders are increasingly demanding their B2B marketers be more closely aligned with the demands of their business' core operations. The result: B2B marketers are on the hot seat to bring new value to their companies by taking actions that identify operational efficiencies. This compels B2B marketers to demonstrate a real impact on the bottom line. One method for achieving this goal is for B2B marketers to gather (and make sense of) customer and prospect feedback -- from online and offline sources -- and identify opportunities for process improvement.
At the same time, B2B marketers are being increasingly expected to develop campaigns that accommodate the financial ebbs and flows of their companies. For example, B2B marketers must speak to issues that directly impact the income statement (e.g. when cash is realized) and issues that shape the balance sheet (e.g. whether investments in marketing technologies are better allocated as fixed or variable costs). Finally, B2B marketers are now expected to be knowledgeable about aspects of human resources. For example, it is increasingly common for B2B marketers to have a hand in shaping and measuring recruiting methods since widely used recruitment tools (e.g. LinkedIn, websites, Facebook, etc.) and core messages are associated with marketing.
Over the last several years, B2B marketers have made great strides in being included at the Executive table. With leaders expecting B2B marketers to have a vastly expanded range of business expertise, now is the time for B2B marketers to demonstrate that they do indeed bring value at the most strategic level.
Andrew Brown
1 Comment
Garrett Taylor said
This extension of "marketing" into other functional areas of business is similar to what LEVEL5 Strategic Brand Advisors has been advocating for years. We believe that an organization's brand should unite an entire organization's business system - from HR to ops to sales and marketing - around their promise to the market that guides every decision and action. When properly developed, understood and implemented across the organization, it should guide the priorities and decision-making of every department, not just marketing and communciations efforts.