The State of Marketing 2012: IBM’s Global Survey of Marketers
The IBM Survey states that marketing must to three things:
- Expand its role to lead the customer experience;
- Remove silos and integrate
- Embrace a marketing technology platform
Key points in the deck that resonate:
Marketing must increase their scope across the 4P’s. I’ve found that if marketing is going to lead the customer experience, they need to add the other three P’s to the marketing mix. So in addition to the traditional Product, Price, Place, and Promotion, with Experiential Economy it’s vital for marketing to also address People, Process, and Physical Plant (trade dress in retail).
Marketing’s role must extend beyond marketing. In this consumer trend of sustainability, both internal employees are customers want to know how the company is making a social and/or environment impact beyond simply lining the pockets of the shareholders and management. Marketing’s role in leading CSR and Corporate Philanthropic efforts is vital to ensure the company is gaining the most visibility, focus and transparency to build it’s holistic brand.
Expanded role requires greater visibility as integration and channel complexity grown. Nothing new here. Knowledge is power. Marketing must collaborate closely with IT to ensure they are not only getting the data needed to inform decision making, But the real secret sauce is getting the entire enterprise to capture customer contact information and feed it into a single source.
Integration is a must to deliver on digital’s promise. The highest performing companies are able to deliver the right message to the right consumer at the right time. This is obviously very complex and requires better integration of technology and data.
Keeping pace with social and mobile proliferation is the biggest challenge. The rate of new technology is incredible. And the opportunity to capture consumer behavior trends is phenomenal. But how do you do it while continuing to optimize the more proven marketing channels/tactics. The key to success in continuing to integrate the data.
It’s an interesting read but the story remains the same. Get Smarter by leveraging technology. Stay committed to serving the customer they way he/she wants – eCommerce, retail, just providing information, etc.
Kurt Schusterman 