21 Reasons why marketing will make or break you in 2015 (3)
This is the third part of the 21 reasons why marketing will make or break you in 2015. The following pointers should be used in conjunction with the earlier ones discussed to achieve optimal organisational results.
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9. Excellent marketing means understanding the Product Life Cycle
Products matter because products help you track your performance. As a marketer, you will need to understand where you are going from a marketing profitability standpoint. As earlier mentioned, you need to find out where your product is in its life cycle. Each product has a limited life and profits rise and fall at different stages of this life cycle. Whilst one stage may require the introduction of additional distribution channels as a strategy, an improvement in product quality may be more appropriate for another. The treatments vary depending on where you are in your life cycle. It really matters!!!!!
10. Relationship marketing must be profitable marketing
Relationship marketing does not only refer to end-user relationships; it also refers to long enduring profitable relationships with all your stakeholder audiences in the value chain – so that even in procurement you can have relationship marketing. It also matters at the employee level.
Firms that have the most vibrant marketing systems are those that can employ marketing to get the best employees – internal customers. A company’s strength or weakness is dictated largely by the quality of its employees. In organisations where employees are extremely dissatisfied, there’s a lot of acrimony, disenchantment, unhappiness and aloofness.
In the years when I worked under Mr Joel Nettey, we rarely lost a customer because we spent time on them. We did whatever it took because at the end of the day, the targets had to be met.
Your solutions must be composite solutions – sometimes extending beyond your core mandate. This emphasis is made because sometimes the marketing function fails not because of the core marketing team.
For instance, your colleagues at the logistics department may be messing you up, the customer service officers may be misbehaving. The problems may have nothing to do with you at all yet they affect your target. In 2015, it will matter.
11. Companies that will excel must learn to manage problems with customers
Customers whose problems are satisfactorily resolved often become very loyal. If organisations are to win and retain loyal customers, they must effectively capture and manage issues that arise during service delivery.
Some weeks ago I did some work for a financial services firm and we were discussing the centrality of the customer and customer value management. The issue about how to properly manage defaulting customers came up – sometimes hostilities are developed because the customer is unwilling to pay back a loan.
When it comes to customer conflict, the single most important reason why you have a positive or a negative outcome is the antecedent issue before the conflict. If you and the customer had no issues before the problem arose, it’s just a simple matter of saying that “please you have defaulted, please, can you pay my money and when will you pay”, “I will pay”.
If the customer, however, has received particularly lousy service from you, felt as if they have been molested, cheated over several months or years, then they are actually waiting for the problem to occur so that they ‘take their pound of flesh’. If the customer is central to your thinking, then from the MD to the cleaner, everybody will be oriented towards delighting them.
12. Marketing helps in delivering competitive advantage
I have had the misfortune of coming across situations where managing directors have claimed in the start-up phase of a business that marketing will only be considered after the company has broken even.
In contrast to this, there exists four decades of empirical research that points to the fact that companies that use marketing strategically, tend to outperform those that do not. Fifty years ago, Peter Drucker, an accomplished management thinker, noted that, “Marketing and innovation are the most important things in not just longevity of every organisation but their profitability as well.”
If you deploy marketing in an astute manner, you have the opportunity to determine where you are strong and develop competencies for utilising that competitive advantage – having a competitive advantage is like ‘taking a gun into a knife fight’. It provides your business with the skill and tact needed to survive local and international competition.
13. A focus on goals and objectives
In 2015, a lack of clear objectives could break your company. In an era with great environmental challenges such as erratic electricity supply and an attendant increase in the cost of running businesses, a lack of an astute focus on quantifiable goals and objectives would invariably mean low performance in 2015.
A set of clearly established objectives is essential to the success of any business unit; be it the customer service, accounting or human resource function. High performing organisational units will aggregate into high performing institutions in 2015.
In spite of the urgent need for a strong focus on goals and objectives, some marketers will take on the let’s-try-this-and-see-how-it-goes approach instead of setting quantifiable goals whose outcomes can be measured. This is one of the biggest challenges of the marketing function in Ghana.
Business owners and MDs will always get on the case of the marketing function because its objectives are sometimes fuzzy at best; with the proposed returns on financial investments into the marketing function never being made clear ab-initio.
Some marketing professionals have unfortunately developed the habit of working without deadlines and timelines and this ultimately results in a delay in the achievement of strategic objectives.
Time is a currency that must be budgeted for and spent with as much diligence as any other resource is spent. Unfortunately, MDs themselves are under pressure from investors to produce a solid bottom line so this necessarily translates into high expectations from teams such as the marketing department.
Investors want high returns for their INVESTMENTS and, therefore, need an unwavering focus on goals and objectives to ensure that early corrective actions are taken anytime it would seem like organisational and marketing goals may not be met.
Every single resource spent must be accounted for especially in these times of intense competition.
If you are a real estate company for instance, there should be a clear sense of expected revenues/inflows in any financial year and this budget should inform the form and cost of marketing communications activities you embark upon.
Robert E. Hinson is an Associate Professor at the University of Ghana Business School and writes for the Centre for Sustainability and Enterprise Development (CSED) at the same School. He can be reached at [email protected]
