Putting marketing on (ste)roids

Written by Dick Patton

Monday, 15 March 2010 18:27

In conversation after conversation, CEOs, presidents and chief marketing officers tell me their companies are looking to marketing to lead their businesses into the customer-centric future. They say they want to supplement the indispensable four P’s of the traditional marketing strategy (product, price, placement and promotion) with some powerful new elements. They describe this potent brew in various ways, but I think its essential ingredients can be summed up in the easily remembered acronym: ROIDs. RESPONSIBILITY MARKETING, including social responsibility, green marketing and sustainability ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP, requiring marketing to touch as much of the value chain as possible INSIGHTS ABOUT CUSTOMERS, based on new analytic techniques that replace yesterday’s market research DIGITAL MARKETING, requiring companies to master an amorphous bundle of fast-changing media Two of these elements—responsibility marketing and digital marketing—are driven by consumers. Consumers increasingly insist that companies behave responsibly, and it’s going to be up to marketers to get the word out about their company’s performance. Consumers are also far more likely to be found these days in a bewildering variety of digital media—and where customers go, marketers must follow. The other two elements—organizational leadership and insights about consumers—are operating principles. Just as responsible corporate behavior will apply to all areas of operation, the customer perspective must be a guiding principle of the entire organization. That means marketing executives must work along all points of the value chain and anywhere the consumer comes in contact with the brand. To gather customer insights they will need to institutionalize analytical skills that go far deeper than traditional market research. All four elements mean bulking up on knowledge, not simply improving marketing technique. In responsibility marketing alone, the required knowledge could range from understanding carbon footprints and endocrine disruptors to microloans and foreign labor practices. Organizational leadership requires knowing how each step in the value chain can add value for customers. Customer insights rely on exacting new disciplines like Web analytics. Digital marketing obviously means understanding an array of digital media, but with social networking it means knowledge of social dynamics, not merely customer behavior. Dick Patton leads the Chief Marketing Officer Practice at Egon Zehnder International, one of the largest privately-held executive search firms in the world.