Strategic marketing and branding consultancy Prophet has released its 2011 State of Marketing study, which finds that senior marketing executives are grappling with a variety of pressures as they seek to drive growth and build brand equity:
- The primary challenge is successfully driving growth through a brand positioning that is different from market alternatives and relevant to key customer needs.
- A majority of executives still believe, despite increasing evidence to the contrary, that the company (rather than the customer or other stakeholders) is the primary "owner" of the brand.
- Over the next three years, a quality offer (product/service) will continue to be the most important driver of brand equity, but word of mouth is expected to replace advertising in relative importance.
- Effectively targeting customers in this environment is problematic. Most tend to use similar positioning and messages for multiple customer segments - whether they are relevant or not.
- They believe their organizations are not well-equipped with the skills that are needed to build brands in the near future.
Prophet recommends marketing leaders and their teams become more aligned with the C-suite and board of directors by adopting a P&L and operational mindset. It proposes a perspective keyed to the business growth agenda, and being accountable for meeting it – in the short and long terms. And it emphasizes continued development and use of deeper customer insights, particularly as applied in a network-led environment.
The key principles are spot on:
- From creating marketing strategies to driving business Impact
- From controlling the message to galvanizing your Network
- From incremental improvements to pervasive innovation
- From managing marketing investments to inspiring marketing excellence
- From an operational focus to a relentless customer focus
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