5 Ways Marketing Leaders Can Drive More Value in 2022 — Julie Roehm
2022 - the third year in which the pandemic is transforming our business reality, marketing leaders continue to pursue their commitment to accelerating transformation at scale. I stumbled across an article published in Harvard Business Review, 5 Ways Marketing Leaders Can Drive More Value in 2022, by Janet Balis. When it comes to marketing strategies that marketing leaders can take in 2022, this article breaks down the five actions that marketing leaders should take to drive more impact:
“With the widespread recognition of their impact on sales, outcomes, and growth, marketers have a new mandate to take center stage in their organizations, connecting the dots across customer needs and data, business priorities, and the digital agenda to aggressively drive growth and create value.”
1. Your company now recognizes that marketing drives revenue. Seize the shift.
Before the pandemic took a toll on traditional marketing, it was a huge cost center for companies to carry. In today’s day and age, digital platforms are the highest form of marketing and a way of communication to spread your company’s message in a higher capacity.
“Today’s media types, like social, search, and programmatic, are all highly measurable and have positively habituated leaders across the executive team to expect results from marketing spend.
“Attribution, or the math that allows us to know which marketing efforts drove results, continues to challenge us all, as mobile platforms, browsers, and walled gardens in e-commerce and social media continue to change the rules and fragment the landscape.
“The key is to focus less on each individual line of spend and more on the predictive and collective value of them in combination.”
2. Grab the end-to-end growth agenda as the rightful domain of marketing.
“Today’s growth agenda doesn’t respect prior organizational boundaries confined to conventional notions of marketing or other adjacent functions. Marketers must stake an explicit claim to drive the growth agenda and provide cohesive business leadership.
It is about connecting with your customers and understanding what they need when they don’t even realize they need it. Then make the payment process as smooth and easy as possible.
3. Stop ignoring the foundational data work that enables digital transformation, even if it’s not sexy.
“Companies may implement technology like CRM or consolidate sources into a single data lake, but key questions often still need to be addressed, such as the true level of data quality and how to manage the ongoing health of data throughout the organization.
“The work to integrate data into digital technology and process can be daunting, particularly at global scale, but if done right, the value creation will build momentum and belief.”
4. Prioritize talent issues ASAP, and don’t be afraid to try something new or radical.
“To succeed, today’s marketers need both diverse and detailed expertise, breadth, and depth. This is forcing leaders to look at how they structure and train their teams, manage and collaborate with external partners, like agencies, and embrace new labor models, while driving the right balance of consistency and independence. Many leaders are taking matters into their own hands, creating new curricula to transform their current talent to become modern, full-stack marketers. These actions create more consistency, and even mobility, within the company.”
5. As you get more data-driven, don’t lose that creative spark.
“Today’s marketers should spend less time looking in the rearview mirror to analyze prior results, and instead use predictive analytics to forecast the future. These new superpowers allow marketers to drive both growth and operational efficiency in profound ways as they, for example, can not only target advertising, but also make sure that they’re only running it when the company’s supply chain is positioned to deliver the products.”
The art of storytelling will be more important than ever to ensure that creative messaging still connect with humans. New marketing techniques and formats will continue to develop, from media networks in the physical and digital world to virtual branding and transactional experiences.
“In 2022, marketing leaders have the opportunity to connect the customer journey to the full-growth agenda, retaining their creativity while scaling data and technology in more meaningful ways than ever before.”
Nothing inspires me more than a transformation project. My own career has seen its fair share of transformations. What better way to learn and adapt?
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