I regularly see CMOs and Marketing Directors posting on LinkedIn bemoaning the fact that marketing is seen as a cost centre and not a strategic business driver, that they’re given a task but don’t have any say in whether that’s the right thing to do. What I don’t see often enough are marketing leaders showing why they should be treated any differently. The fact is, there isn’t a single business problem that can’t be solved through marketing, but the majority of us seem content to accept this passive, order-taker type role.
Now I recognise that there’s plenty of business problems which (at least on the face of it) don’t seem to be solvable with marketing. But marketing, properly understood, is so much more than ads and logos. It’s about diagnosing problems and coming up with creative solutions through Product, Price, Place and Promotion. And I’ll repeat my big claim: there isn’t a single business problem that can’t be solved through some combination of these Ps.
Let me give you a few examples to show what I mean. I’ve tried to come up with some business problems which appear to be someone else’s problem, but then I’ve shown how to solve them through marketing.
“We’re struggling to recruit and retain skilled technical staff”
Feels more like an HR or operational issue than something marketing can solve, right?
Well not if you reframe it in the context of the 4Ps. Consider why you need to fill roles in those locations. If it’s a question of being physically proximate to where you sell then you could explore other Place opportunities where these roles would be easier to fill. If it’s a technical product needing these staff then you may even find there’s more of a market for the product itself in the urban, higher salary regions where these candidates are more commonly found.
If moving isn’t an option, whether that’s due to infrastructure, contractual obligations or community ties, approach it as a Promotion challenge. Promotion isn’t just about advertising your products, but also why it’s a great place to work. Those community ties and long-term investment could form the basis for a recruitment drive which encourages people to relocate, especially for high salary technical staff who may be fed up of working in a city, where their salary is diminished by the far higher cost of living.
Sure, your C-Suite colleagues can probably come up with a number of other pushbacks to treating this as a marketing challenge, but applying that broader understanding of marketing at least gets you a voice at the table and recognition as a strategic player.
“Margins are being squeezed by rising raw material costs”
Again, the instinct would be to treat this as a Finance or Procurement problem, but a smarter approach would be to use marketing as a strategic lever.
There’s a fairly obvious Price consideration here, where you could pass some of this increased cost onto the end customer, although it’d be a rare market where price sensitivity wouldn’t play some part.
If your pricing power is entirely limited then you might well have a Product issue, not in terms of features but in how well your offer is positioned. Are you genuinely differentiated, or just another supplier in a sea of sameness?
If you can raise prices but you fear losing volume, that’s a segmentation challenge. Some of your customers will absorb the increase, others won’t. Marketing helps you work out who’s who and build tiered propositions so you don’t throw margin out with the bathwater.
There’s also room to innovate around how you charge. Think subscriptions, bundles, loyalty incentives. All of this falls under Price, but that’s rarely owned by marketers. It should be.
“We’re being sued for breach of contract and it’s going to court”
Now this one really doesn’t seem to have a marketing answer at all, at least not the legal aspect. But if it’s public, then you’re going to face a perception problem, whether that’s with customers, partners, investors, or your own staff. And that is a marketing issue, where PR definitely needs to play a role.
Even before that, marketing may well have been able to avoid the issue in the first place. Nurturing client relationships, setting clearer expectations, and spotting signs of dissatisfaction early all relies on a deep understanding of your customer, which has to be at the core of all your marketing. If a trusted customer goes legal, you can bet there were multiple missed marketing touchpoints along the way.
In terms of crisis communications, Legal will almost certainly want to control the message. But, as with any business problem, treating functions as siloes just exacerbates things. Yes, they will need to be involved in crafting the message, but there’s a balance between saying what can (or can’t) be said legally and framing this as positively as possible for the business. You need to stop thinking of “Marketing” as a department or a team, and see it as something everyone does every day, whether they realise it or not.
Why marketing needs to be more proactive
The problem isn’t that marketing doesn’t have a seat at the table, it’s that it doesn’t stake its claim to one. To do that, you need to show up earlier, ask better questions, and go beyond comms into the harder, messier parts of strategy.
I get it, it’s scary and potentially risky to take on challenges outside the ‘natural’ remit of marketing. But being more proactive in diagnosing and coming up with creative solutions to broader business problems is the single most powerful way to reposition marketing as a strategic driver of your organisation.