Marketing Energy

Marketing energy is characterized by three interlinked competencies that drive and support growth: strategy, cost management and the organization (see figure). For many companies, the efficiency and organization of marketing are suboptimal and do not support the firm’s strategy. As a result, there is a lack of understanding of the value of marketing, a high rate of staff turnover and, ultimately, disappointing customer and revenue growth.

From this perspective, marketing can often be addressed in a similar manner to other SG&A functions, such as finance and human resources. Looking “under the hood” of many of our clients’ organizations, we find the following operational challenges in marketing:

• Senior managers are performing tactical and transactional tasks rather than core activities
• Roles and responsibilities are not clear within the organization and in relation to other functions
• External agencies are selected due to long-standing relationships rather than solid performance
• Data-intensive and repetitive marketing activities are performed without sharing resources and information
• Internal talent pools are stretched and constrained by minimal training and professional development.

Greasing the Gears

FIGURE: Drivers of “marketing energy”

A well-run marketing organization supports the corporate growth strategy, helps address complex customer needs and allows for rapid decision-making, which is vital in fluid market conditions.

As part of, or alongside, an SG&A transformation effort, we work with companies to answer two strategic questions related to marketing.

The what: What marketing model is best suited for your current and future business growth needs? This encompasses the organizational structure, functional interfaces, partnerships and service models.

The how: How will you make the marketing organization work? Here we focus primarily on process efficiency and effectiveness, external agency spend, systems support, skills management and performance metrics.

Above all, an effective marketing organization should help companies fulfill their brand promise to their customers, improve the impact of marketing spend and support ongoing profitable growth.

With this in mind, the marketing model should do the following:

• Embrace big ideas from marketing as part of the brand or category strategy
• Gather marketing insights and support creativity that can be implemented quickly
• Possess a solid organizational structure that instills healthy tension among key players
• Employ clear processes and roles across businesses, marketing and sales to identify synergies and sharing opportunities
• Provide clear decision-making criteria to reduce the costs of reworking and control
• Balance local flexibility with the need to control risks and profitability

Obtaining Results

We have identified the following actions to design the optimal marketing model:

Align cost structures to strategy and business model. Many organizations struggle to define the strategic role of marketing. They often fail to realize how important it is to adapt the organization to market challenges and growth expectations. We help clarify marketing’s role to allow executives to be more strategic, to find opportunity for economies of skill and scale, and to ensure resources are aligned with market potential. For example, we help create centers of expertise in innovation and customer insight, or we suggest outsourcing noncore activities, such as media buying and advertising production.

Establish flexible, effective structures. Once we segment into strategic, transactional, internal and external functions to generate economies of skill and scale, we can clarify the specific activities that can be better completed by outsourcing to external parties.

Apply lean principles. Marketing is at the center of the customer-facing business processes within the company. In many ways, all roads lead to marketing. We integrate and align marketing processes to increase efficiency, including seamless, collaborative processes with internal partners (such as aligning resources appropriately across geographies and aligning the go-to-market strategy and execution roles with sales) and external partners (such as optimizing resource management with agencies).

Invest in technology. Technology is an important enabler to the marketing organization, and companies need to figure out where to make sensible investments in technology. Examples include using resource management tools to manage disparate marketing processes and activities and reduce spending on external agencies, and using customer resource management and database management to drive better use of customer insights.

Case Studies

Global cleaning services company. We helped the company increase its focus on customer requirements and market trends, and repair its marketing processes. Our first priority was to centralize marketing leadership to improve communication between field representatives and corporate, and to link marketing to other functions, including sales support. We introduced a formal, annual process for converting the marketing strategy into plans and calendars to prioritize and synchronize activities. As a result of the organizational redesign, the company realized incremental sales growth and savings of more than $2 million.

Global retail and industrial supplies firm. We helped the company revamp its marketing organization, including redefining roles and functions, improving processes, introducing cross-functional performance indicators, and defining systems requirements.

Medical supplies company. We helped the company develop a global model for managing advertising and marketing spend, and created a streamlined consumer promotions process for all categories. The company reduced creative agency fees and marketing spend by 12 percent, and improved performance in meeting timelines and budgets.

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