What Is The Role Of Marketing Activities In Business Development?

What do business leaders think of marketers? Is the CEO of your business adequate for you and your marketing department? Many marketers are trying to prove their value to the board of directors, but there seems to be a doubt: how much marketing activity has played on business development?

Many non marketers believe that marketers are at a loss as to whether they are facing a pile of data, or they stare in astonishment. When they fail to really understand the investment return, they will spend a lot of money on social media.

A business executive who has worked in several enterprises said: "in recent years, marketers have lost a bit of direction.

After the recent recession and budget tightening, the image of marketers is no longer so large, and its role has been questioned.

Other businesspeople believe that corporate marketing is not as large as it used to be to rely on large sums of money for advertising. Today's marketing activities focus on understanding the target audience and using digital media more effectively, so that marketing activities are more influential.

They believe that in the marketing activities of enterprises, marketers are unable to link up creative marketing methods with the business bottom line of enterprises.

A member of the board of directors of an enterprise said: "the older generation of marketers and marketing agencies are now striving for better.

There is another view: "they must fully understand the digital channels, because they do not do well in this area."

A well-known brand managing director, who does not want to be named, said that customers had mastered the right to speak in the "digital revolution", which could damage the marketing department.

He said: "the digital revolution has had a huge impact on marketing activities, and marketers are in danger of losing the decision-making power of digital revolution.

But many innovations in customer experience marketing are very technical driven.

When it comes to the development of an enterprise, it is not the marketing department that controls the voice, but the IT team or the digital team.

If other departments take charge of consumer insight, then the marketing department is in danger of losing its status in the enterprise. The director general said: "if the marketing department wants to keep its position, it must ensure that it can guide the innovation activities and solve the consumers' ideas."

We must attach importance to the work of other business departments of enterprises, and do not neglect their influence on customers. Therefore, marketers must communicate with technicians instead of acting alone.

"Everyone wants to have something that belongs to us, but if the IT department and the marketing department can not work closely together, then the two sides will show an exclusivity in the process of cooperation, which is very unfavorable for the development of the work."

The director general said, "this requires marketers to have a good understanding of the functions of the IT team."

There are other evidence that IT departments and marketing departments have differences in who controls digital communication strategies.

In a survey published in 2010, Accenture Interactive showed that the board members believed that the digital marketing strategy was jointly controlled by the IT department and the marketing department. This is a phenomenon that is obviously divorced from reality.

Accenture investigated 600 chief marketing officers and chief information officers, and then found that 58% of the chief information officers called themselves the merit of the enterprise's digital marketing campaign.

However, only 19% of the chief marketing officers affirmed the status of the chief information officer. In contrast, 70% of the chief marketing officers considered themselves to be the masters of digital marketing.

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For Michael Svilar, a marketing analyst at Accenture, chief information officer and chief marketing officer can become leaders in digital marketing, but they need to work together quickly and flexibly.

He said: "now that decisions are becoming more real-time, people must keep in mind that business strategies are more flexible, rather than just making an annual plan for people to follow them step by step. This is relatively slow."

If marketers do not learn how to disseminate information through technology, their performance will be much worse. "The key to the problem is how to use data instead of spending 3 months to analyze data and draw conclusions," he warned.

This requires marketers to have a different mindset and need to know more about technical knowledge, because marketing is no longer limited to understanding the market.

Since marketers are not able to understand technology well, they should pay more attention to teamwork.

IT experts and marketers are usually trying to cultivate a mutually beneficial working relationship, but because marketing teams fail to communicate with other departments well, they may bring some difficulties to other departments.

Lack of business sense

There is another complaint against the marketing department. The director of the marketing department of a financial services company said that the marketing department could not well understand how to turn consumer insight into useful business information, which could not benefit the business.

Most brands measure customer satisfaction, but the director of marketing said, sometimes, the marketing department lacks the business sense and does not know how to make use of the data obtained from the survey, so it can not apply the data analysis conclusion to practice.

"When the business is at its worst.

Obviously, the revenue of visualization means additional sales.

As a result of previous economic recession, enterprises regard investment return as a priority.

Therefore, as far as marketing departments are concerned, financial departments and purchasing departments will be more involved in marketing.

The director said that since the recession, new board roles have emerged in enterprises, such as chief risk officers, so marketing directors seem to be less important.

He said, "there are only a few directors in the board, and in terms of the current market climate, the risk control officer will have the right to speak."

For the above view, Mark Bloxham, marketing director of consulting service Teletext Holidays, agreed (Mark Bloxham).

He believes that the financial sector will now be more involved in marketing activities, which helps to better establish customer relationships.

He said: "this recession has made consumers cautious, in this context, the marketing department can use the understanding of past markets and brand trust and build relationships with customers."

Working together with the finance department enables marketing personnel to understand what benefits the larger financial expenditure projects can bring to the enterprise, and also to carry out marketing activities more closely around the market objectives.

Marcus Leyden, formerly the head of purchasing at Somerfield, a supermarket chain, is now the director of Bright sourcing, a consultancy. He said marketers should think more carefully about how to do more with less money.

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"The real challenge is whether they can complete the sales task with less than 70% of the budget.

However, many people do not spend time doing market research, better understanding the market, and ultimately fail to win a better return on investment.

This is what the procurement department helps to win reputation in marketing.

For the latter, marketers have been accustomed to offline purchasing activities, but now they must be accustomed to online purchasing methods, while online procurement is entirely under the supervision of the purchasing department.

He explained: "as marketers' offline purchasing activities are more" technical, "I think marketers can win their credibility through online shopping.

The cooperation between marketing department and finance department and purchasing department is more and more closely. Peter Williams (Peter Williams) was formerly the chief executive officer and chief financial officer of Selfridges, a fashion department store. He said that marketing team can coordinate with financial team more harmoniously, but now all marketers must understand what benefits their budget can bring to every department of an enterprise.

Williams, now a non-executive director of ASOS, an online fashion retailer, talks about marketing activities that are not budget conscious. He said, "over the years, I have dealt with various marketers, and one of them thinks that budgeting is a matter of insignificance in marketing strategy. He said," don't worry, it can always be solved. "

Such sloppy attitude towards budget considerations may sometimes lead to friction between departments.

David Smith, former director of human resources at Asda, admits that marketing budgets are sometimes a topic of jealousy.

"Marketing directors are usually seen as the richest people in the board because people think he controls a lot of money," he said.

For all business sectors, the debate over budget allocation is becoming more and more important.

The difficulty is that marketers eventually get the money that is known as the marketing budget, but it seems to let the marketing department and other departments separate from each other.

If the marketing department closes itself and does not cooperate with other business departments, this approach will not be conducive to establishing customer relationship, a managing director of a famous brand commented.

Marketing departments must strive to protect the interests of customers, so they should be more focused on playing their role as gatekeeper.

But he cautioned: "marketing departments are facing the risk of losing" business sector disputes ".

Therefore, in addition to protecting their customers, they must strive to achieve the overall objectives of the enterprise.