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Marketing
Function Dynamics
The Marketing function is at a critical crossroad. For many organizations, the glory days of market-defining, bold new product successes have settled into quietly desperate battles to resist commoditization and preserve profitability. This market dynamic spotlights as never before the need for a Strategic Marketing orientation. The goal of Strategic Marketing is to establish a base for sustainable differentiation and integrate the necessary parts of the organization to implement it.
Most companies are founded on a big product success. Often, their basis for strategy never moves from product-driven to market- or customer-driven, even though maturing markets require this evolution. In such companies, Marketing groups often devolve over time, focused mostly on promotional tactics of declining effectiveness. Creation of an effective Strategic Marketing capability is essential to success in both dynamic and mature markets. Marketing functions that can address both tactical and strategic marketing will make the difference as their companies struggle to compete in increasingly challenging markets.
Business Challenges
To provide their companies with more strategic leadership, Marketing groups need to develop new competencies and processes. Most companies do market research, yet relatively few have the capability to see in the data unmet customer needs and opportunities to own clearly defined market niches. As such market segmentation becomes more sophisticated, product portfolio management becomes a critical core process and competency. A balance must be struck between short and long term development risks, ensuring future growth while maximizing short term results.
The Marketing function must also take the lead in establishing an overarching value proposition and an umbrella strategy for bringing it to life in the global marketplace. This value proposition guides the development of strategic growth platforms, which in turn frames R&D, L&A, and portfolio management activity. R&D must create product platforms and develop product lines that match the needs of targeted market segments, as opposed to developing products in a vacuum and lobbing them over the wall to Marketing to sell. Similarly, Marketing must refocus from tactical sales support to a function that sets strategy and works with Sales to implement it. Aligning and integrating decisions from new product development through sales with marketing strategy is the key to shaping a market-driven organization.
Our Depth of Knowledge
Success in today’s marketplace requires both great strategy and an integrated approach to its implementation. Over the last 20 years we have helped clients in a wide variety of industries address both the "what" of strategy and the "how" of implementation. Our engagements are intended to help clients develop competencies and implement Marketing systems that enable organizational performance aligned with strategy. And we help Marketing leaders build departments capable of delivering on their value proposition.
Our work with Marketing clients has involved multiple engagements and encompasses a broad range of projects, including the following examples:
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Integrating an external analysis of market opportunities with an internal assessment of organizational strengths, creating realistically achievable strategy that results in defendable market positions.
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Identifying industry thought leaders and conducting primary research with them, providing insight into unmet customer needs beyond the scope of currently available products.
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Developing a customer and product portfolio segmentation process enabling prioritization and focus on the most profitable and defendable market niches.
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Building marketing team competencies to align the rest of the organization with strategy, and developing mechanisms to track and report on progress toward goals.
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Creating a process for integrating and managing a global marketing claims strategy.
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