“There’s nothing new under the sun,” says Ecclesiastes in the Bible. So also it is in business where the principles remain the same as are the missteps by those who manage businesses. Nowhere are these missteps more apparent than in the area of marketing.
Marketing is usually a less structured discipline delegated to CMO’s whose corporate life averages between 23 and 43 months, depending on the industry. Marketing has always suffered from waste and accountability in advertising expenditures and, in reaction, has tried to become more scientific and accountable with technologies such as programmatic ad placement. The problem with managing marketing stems from the fact that this is where the “rubber meets the road” for most businesses, the intersection between the company and consumers, which is where the problem is—consumers. They can’t be controlled and they tend to be the free radicals of the marketing ecosystem.
While some marketing departments may employ various financial management programs, the best they can hope for is to manage expenses. When it comes to consumers, those who think they can manage them will be almost certain to fail. Managing consumers in today’s information-based, competitive market is nearly impossible. The optimum hope is to become more fully informed about consumers—both those that are their customers and those who are customers of their competitors, and design tactics and strategies to fulfill their needs based upon advanced analytics. Without a full understanding of the dynamic consumer market, a business will face uncertain performance with up and down quarters often governed by cost cutting driven by financial management. Clearly, the ongoing need for improved consumer knowledge is vital for business growth, but getting the most beneficial insight is difficult.
The C-Suite needs to become better informed about customers and consumers from a consumption value to their firm—not just from the perspective of delivering an ad. New cloud-based advanced analytics platforms make it fast, easy and productive for senior level decision makers to understand the current and future state of consumers, forecast their spending, uncover trends, gauge progress of competitors, plus develop and monitor progress of a corporate strategy.
The old school way of delegating these types of activities to IT and Research departments hoping for an occasional consumer insight that is probably obsolete by the time it reaches the CEO’s office no longer works in a market where change accelerates much faster than businesses seem to respond.
Leaders need to stay in front of the changes and expect their teams to be agile enough to respond better and faster from consumer insights. When it comes to consumers/customers, they are still the greatest asset a business has, they aren’t loyal and they are always changing. However, new advanced analytics can help businesses become better informed about consumers in order to make evidence-based decisions to grow sustainable revenues and profits.
So while it’s true that there may be “nothing new under the sun” when it comes to the basic principles of any business, however, changes in technology have accelerated changes in how consumers behave, making the job of marketing more challenging than ever. Click here to sample an executive insightcenter.
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Gary Drenik is CEO of Prosper Insights & Analytics, a company that prides itself on turning data into evidence-based solutions for the C-Suite. www.ProsperDiscovery.com
