Meet the Challenge by Rethinking Marketing

When your business strategy is evolving in response to a changing market or to new market opportunities, it is likely your marketing structure and processes need to adjust too. Knowing where to focus and how to effect change, while continuing to manage the current business, is critical.

The Impact of Marketing Inefficiency
An inefficient marketing structure makes it nearly impossible to execute a market-driven business strategy, much less keep up with dynamic market conditions or take advantage of new technology or trends.

When collaboration within and between teams and outside partners is ineffective, it can also be expensive. Problems escalate when your marketing structure doesn’t align with business needs. This is particularly true if you deal with new platforms, high-velocity product cycles, rapid customer turnover or shifting distribution channels.

Even the best companies are challenged to align their marketing assets so that Product Development, Marcom, Advertising, Sales, Supply Chain, Finance and Customer Service are all working toward common goals. Coordination between areas is too often sporadic or non-existent, resulting in inefficiency or costly program missteps. Signs of ineffective marketing include:

Company lacks a market-driven growth strategy
Customers are not at the center of firm initiatives
There is no end-to-end accountability for Marketing
Finance spends time tracking poorly-directed marketing
Knowledge is captive within marketing and functional silos
Operations should drive efficiency but instead wastes time dealing with bad forecasts
Schedule, cost or margin goals are missed
Marketing is perceived as tactical with no strategic or P&L contribution
Product Development doesn’t know what to design
Solutions aren’t well defined because product lines are developed independently
Sales uses more time figuring out what to tell customers than selling
Agencies are underutilized or mismanaged resulting in frequent rework and renegotiation with external partners.

Without the right Marketing, the result is wasted effort and investment throughout the company.