The reality is that many organisations – especially C-suite executives – don’t give marketing the respect it deserves, viewing it as a cost centre rather than a crucial part of the business.
For the most part, the marketing department is allocated a budget which allows you to produce a cool-looking ad or brochure that gets your message across and elicits a positive response from your staff and marketing contemporaries.
When times are good, you get some dollars to rub together to create the kind of marketing campaigns that are often perceived as “nice-to-haves” in a business.
But if times are tough and profits are down, the solution is to reduce expenses. And the number one target for cost-cutting will always be marketing. Why, you may ask, when the marketing team is the one bringing home the bacon – looking after the customers you already have while generating new leads to help grow revenue?
The reason is because the true value of marketing, and what it brings to the business, is all too often misunderstood.
Marketing as a revenue generator, not a cost centre
Many companies have lost sight of the fact that marketing is a proactive growth driver that produces real results.
The marketing team often doesn’t have a seat at the table with the executive team, and can be bundled together with other functions. Marketing is often viewed separately to sales, and the heavy lifting that marketing does for the sales team is often not attributed back to the source. In the absence of an advocate in high places, there’s no one to keep promoting marketing’s undeniable worth.
But the fact is that if you have a solid, strategic marketing plan that is geared towards driving revenue, you can not only earn a seat at the managerial table, but you can end up being given more budget in tough times in order to help fill the revenue gap.
If your marketing plans are robust, you should be able to turn that lead generation tap on a little or a lot, to become the revenue generator, not the revenue guzzler.
Using results to prove marketing’s worth
Ensuring that all your activity is measurable, tracked against your goals and reported on is the best way to change the perception of anyone who needs to be convinced of marketing’s effectiveness.
As marketers, we know that we drive revenue, so it’s time to prove this and take greater ownership of our skills, insights and expertise. This includes reminding the right people of the essential role marketing plays in so many key areas of your business, such as:
• The company website that your existing customers visit regularly, and prospective customers check before they choose your services
• The sales tools, presentations, reports and collateral that help the sales team spruik your services, and get new customers and business partners to trust you
• The events, roadshows and trade shows that drive awareness and consideration of your offering
• The advertising, direct and digital marketing that promotes your brand, products and services, and gets customers to respond in the way you want.
In short, you need to make sure all the ways marketing contributes to your business revenue are reported on and acknowledged.
How we can help marketers reclaim their role
At the Pure Agency, we’re passionate about working with marketing teams to help them deliver highly targeted and effective strategies, plans and ultimately campaigns to get the results they’re after.
We’ve helped many clients boost their marketing budgets, grow their marketing teams and improve the perception of their achievements within their company.
To put it another way, we can take you from the team that takes orders to the team that delivers solutions.
For more on how the Pure Agency can partner with you to overcome your marketing challenges, call Margot Cotter-Melton on 8042 6980.