My friend Laura Patterson conducts an annual Marketing Performance Management benchmark study. The current study represented their 15th annual study. After each study, Laura usually writes summary articles for publication on some of the interesting things they found.
A recent article published by MarketingProfs, “Secure Your CEO as a Marketing Champion by Focusing on These Four Area” discusses some of the findings. (I did not link to the article because unless you are a member of MarketingProfs the article won’t open.)
In this article, Laura notes that this year’s study identified three marketing personas and how the C-Suite values each of them. She calls the personas Value Creators, Sales Enablers, and Campaign Producers. She notes that Marketing leaders (including CMOs) can fall into any one of these three categories. The question is, which is most valued by the C-Suite?
As you might expect, it’s the Value Creators. These Marketing leaders focus on producing results for outcomes that matter and creating value for customers and the business. As we say in our book, Value Acceleration, “Marketing’s job is to align the capabilities of the company with the current and future needs of the customer.” Value creation.
Sales Enablers focus on today in support of revenue. Necessary but not sufficient to truly be what we refer to as Marketing.
Campaign Producers focus on the “back-end” of Marketing, and score the lowest in terms of value to the company from the C-Suite.
Given that Marketing Professor Philip Kotler states that the most leverage Marketing can provide is before the product or service is produced, it should be no surprise that true, highly valued, Marketing leaders focus on the value creation in its entirety.
Mitch
