Insights Blog

The Levels of Marketing Maturity

To read part 1, click here.

In considering where your organization stands on marketing maturity, it’s important to understand what a maturity model is—and is not. It is not a rigid structure of prescribed processes. Rather, it has three dimensions. First, it describes the differences among typical marketing organizations, from the least mature to the most mature. Second, it provides a marketing framework that the people in the marketing organization can use to understand how and where their day-to-day work fits in the overall operation. Third, it offers an aspirational model, drawing the organization upward as well as a roadmap for getting from one level to the next. This is what it looks like in broad outline:

Every day in large corporations around the world, hundreds of decisions are made about products (what is offered) and marketing (the customer experience). Individually, these decisions may seem benign, but in the aggregate, they are bet the company decisions.

Are you struggling to keep up with the frenzied pace of the changing digital landscape? Have you run a series of digital "pilots" on Facebook, Twitter, Mobile, and others but don't know how they all relate to each other? Are your digital campaigns smart, snazzy, and even productive from a demand gen perspective but one-off events rather than a scalable digital presence?

Every day in large corporations around the world, hundreds of decisions are made about products (what is offered) and marketing (the customer experience). Individually, these decisions may seem benign, but in the aggregate, they are bet the company decisions.

Times have changed. The power in a B2B transaction has shifted dramatically to the buyer. Gone are the good old days where if you had good sales people, you typically won the deal. Back then the salesperson drove the sale because she had the customer relationship, the information on how to solve the customer’s problem, pricing authority, and the ability to manage the sales cycle from lead to deal.

A high profile marketing mainstay was recently dropped by a well-known brand. Hawaiian Tropic has officially retired their famous bikini pageants. Considering Hawaiian Tropic’s target customer, this move was a long time coming. Even without detailed purchase information, it’s reasonable to guess that the majority of people purchasing suntan lotion are women in the 20-45 age range. How many of these women are big fans of bikini pageants?

This story got us thinking: Why do brands often wait so long to change when something is broken? Because an event is popular? Because they’ve always done it that way? Because they’re celebrating a significant milestone (5 years, 10 years, etc.)? None of these are good reasons, but we’ve heard them all. We’ve also seen brands make seemingly arbitrary changes to investments that are performing flawlessly.

No CMO will want to miss a recent report from The Economist Intelligence Unit entitled “Outside Looking In: The CMO Struggles to get in Sync with the C-Suite.” Based on a survey of nearly 400 executives around the world and in-depth interviews with leading CMOs and marketing experts, the report provides many insights into the challenges that CMOs face, but one challenge in particular screams out to us. In section 2, “CMOs Are Swimming Upstream,” the researchers note that “fully half of all CMOs say their ability to play a more strategic role is limited by the lack of relevant skills among marketing executives.” We aren’t surprised by this finding – we encounter this problem among our clients all the time.

One of the biggest obstacles in achieving marketing-led growth is having the right talent with the right skills in the right positions. The only way to ensure that the organization can attract, retain and manage high-quality marketing talent across the globe is by creating a competency model for marketing.

The authors discuss a new approach to consulting which integrates training with the solving of real business problems. It simultaneously moves the business forward in real time and deeply embeds new, sustainable skills and competencies to your organization. Delivered through a genuine collaborative model and a “learn-by-doing” approach, the methodology ensures your organization gets the traditional benefit of solving your immediate business problem.

2013 is a tough year for marketers. Competitors are slogging it out in insipid growth markets. And marketing budgets are under pressure, getting downsized just when they are needed the most to drive demand and pull ahead of competition. If you own any portion of a marketing budget you are likely starting with a number lower than what you expected and living under the gun for further cuts if top-line numbers are soft during the year. Here are some ideas we are seeing some marketing leaders use to defend their marketing budgets: