Marketing is an engine of growth, not just a cost.

Marketing enjoys different levels of support in different organizations. In some, the CMO / VP marketing sits at the board level and has a team of marketing managers and executives with KPIs to meet, and internal or external creative resources to bring campaigns to life. In others, a relatively junior staff member organizes items such as the conference booth and brochures, updates the website, and posts to the LinkedIn or Facebook page.

Why do some organizations treat marketing as an investment in success while others aim to minimize its cost?

It depends on the perception of the role. Some see it as the team with crayons who do the brochures, others understand it is a business driver that is fundamental to the growth of the organization.

It’s time to get serious about marketing

Your business may be very good at doing what it does and have a great reputation. Marketing will ensure that more people know about it.

At the academic level, as taught in any MBA program, the renowned Harvard professor Michael Porter places marketing and sales as one of the core disciplines of an organization’s success — see the value chain* model below.

A lot of a business’s success is based upon hard work and providing a good product with good service, which leads to the long-term building of a strong reputation. This is the foundation of a strong brand, and organizations who do this are inadvertently performing the primary activities of Porter’s model — whether they have studied it or not.

This prompts some CEOs to say, “we don’t need marketing, our reputation sells.”

But is it a good idea to leave business growth in the hands of customers who may or may not refer your business to others, depending on the mood they’re in?

Or is it a good idea to proactively go to market with the reputation you have rightly earned, and find customers who would otherwise not hear about you?

An effective marketing strategy will drive the business more rapidly than an organic, slow-build approach.

The ROI conundrum — and how technology is solving it

Marketing does cost. But which costs can be cut back and which should be invested in?

A marketing conundrum that businesses face is uncertainty over how to tell what is working and what isn’t. There is an old adage that “50% of a marketing budget is wasted, if only we knew which 50% it is!”

This saying is over a century old, but today it is decreasingly relevant. The wastage rate is significantly lower than even two decades ago thanks to the immediacy of feedback in digital channels like:

• Website tracking platforms like Google Analytics.
• Social media and other digital media that are able to deliver to targeted audiences.
• Traditional formats moving online (such as Spotify delivering radio commercials and YouTube delivering TV commercials).
• Customer relationship management (CRM) platforms like Salesforce.

There are a multitude of targeting, delivery and tracking tools available to a professional marketing department to maximize results and minimize wastage. This mechanical side of marketing is complex when done correctly and it shouldn’t be separated from other “more serious” parts of the organization.

There is more that should be expected of a professional marketing department, however.

What the CMO / VP marketing does

Essentially, your CMO should be converting your business plan to a marketing plan and developing tactical ideas to make it happen.

This must include more than Facebook ads and organic posts. Your CMO should uncover the key business message to deliver to consumers, in the right channels, and with the right frequency for them to act in accordance with your business plan. The message should be tied to truths about what your organization does and what the consumer desires.

They will also need a team of people, either internal or external, because an individual who can do everything in marketing simply doesn’t exist:

• Develop strategy
• Write website code
• Shoot videos and photos
• Design marketing collateral in inDesign and Photoshop
• Plan and execute complex digital and traditional media campaigns
• Create infographics and illustrations
• Stage street activations and events
• Write blogs and press releases
• Present at conferences
• Improve website SEO

If you have a “CMO” who is doing a couple of these activities but has no broad strategy for unifying it all into a coherent and long-term direction, then you probably have an operator with a title rather than a professional with a plan.

Your company will be much more prosperous if you hire an experienced CMO who fits at the board level and can accelerate your way forward, rather than giving a title to a fast-talking or narrowly experienced junior.

If you know you need a real CMO but haven’t found the right person or budget to hire one, you can consider a fractional CMO who will bring experience and direction at a level to keep your CFO and HR department happy.

• Porter’s value chain states that a company is a collection of activities to design, produce, market, deliver and support a product or service. Its goal is to produce them in a way that has greater value to the customer than the cost of producing them — this is the profit margin to maximize. The function of marketing is to make sure the consumer knows about and is excited by the product, and that the organization is distributing it to them at the right price.