Marketing’s role over the last decade has been pretty simple. Focus on your brand and identify new potential sales. Granted, there have been several new tools and processes introduced to help us identify, track and communicate with potential new customers. But the ultimate end game was to differentiate your brand and help identify and create good leads for sales to follow-up on.
That is about to change if you buy into a recent article in eMarketer that said branding and lead generation in a few years won’t be marketing’s top priority. The article claims that the top 3 current responsibilities won’t even be on their list. What does that mean to current marketing teams? It means major changes will need to be made to support these shifting priorities and responsibilities.
According to the article, less than 20% currently have fully integrated customer data across their organization. That leaves a lot of work for the rest of us.
I think we all need to look at marketing tools that can help us work smarter. I also think most of us with our sales counterparts are trying to get a better handle on what our customers want. But what we sometimes overlook is one of the basics – talk to them and see what’s up. Isn’t that our ultimate end game?
What are your thoughts? Do we spend less time on brands and developing leads?
