Marketing must be a player in your company boardroom, connecting the dots between strategic objectives, operational execution and financial criteria. To do this, Marketing must fulfill its traditional responsibilities, and evolve to become an investment advisor to the business. For better performance, Marketing must help define:
- The overall investment strategy: What is sold, where and to whom.
- The strategic path to maximize return on the company's assets (ROA).
- The cost justification for how to get there, the return on investment (ROI) numbers for your scarce marketing dollars.
Marketing can also be an early detection system for how changes in the market lead to changes in products and services, selling strategies or even more far-ranging operational elements of the business. For example, sudden drops in response rates for traditionally successful marketing efforts could mean competitor pressure, market shifts and/or revenue trouble down the road.
Marketing has the responsibility for defining, understanding and leading five core areas of the company's decision-making for better performance management:
- Market opportunities: What is the profit opportunity?
- Competitive positioning: What are the competitive risks to achieving it?
- Product life-cycle management: What is our value proposition?
- Pricing: What is it worth?
- Demand generation: How do we reach and communicate value to customers?
