Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association: Marketers Need to Reflect and Change

More on the CMA National Convention held last week in Toronto.

A few speakers highlighted the challenges that marketers are facing in the new decade:
-The 2009 consumer recession triggered significant job losses in marketing;
-Marketing is under siege; and
-Marketing budgets were cut but are starting to rebound in 2010.

Ken Wong from Queen’s University outlined two key challenges:

1. Marketing has a perception problem - Ken bluntly told the audience that research indicates that Senior Execs don’t value marketing. Marketers are perceived as “margin sucking maggotts’. They are seen as cost centers that don’t like to measure. But the key to “C-Suite” credibility is proving that marketing is a profit (or margin) driver.

2. Focusing on the tactics rather than strategy - marketers often change tactics randomly which Ken calls “schizophrenic” marketing. Changing tactics confuses customers and dilutes the impact on strategy. Companies need to build their marketing strategies around their overall business strategy and stay focused on key outcomes (not blindly chasing market share).

On a positive note, those marketers who can correlate their marketing efforts to generating profits will win big. Marketers just need to think more broadly in a business perspective and less narrowly about your business model and how you can manage customer segments and profitably change customer behavior. Profits will follow.
Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association by Geoff Linton