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MAUREEN MCGUIRE: The value of marketing today is totally
dependent on the objectives that the company
is trying to achieve.
I think if you're in a business to business
environment, in today's environment where many
businesses are cutting back on, either cutting back on
staffing, on hiring, cutting back on what they purchase
from other companies.
They're being very careful about it.
Then the value of marketing, honestly, is to try and help
the company get more market share from the players who are
out there today.
There aren't a lot of new customers
coming to the market.
So you have to get a bigger share of the customers that
already exist. And I think in a B2B sense, marketing has to
work very closely with the product, people, and the sales
people, to make sure that we're as
tightly aligned as possible.
That makes the sales job much easier.
So I see in that case, the value of marketing is
accelerating the sales process, and improving sales
productivity.
And that's not new.
That's been around for a very long time.
But today's environment causes you to have to do it even more
scientifically than ever before.
In the consumer space, I think it's slightly different.
The vehicles through which people get you know you and
understand what you're trying to offer seems to be an
endless stream of ways that people can get
information about you.
And in order for the marketer to really understand which is
working best, there has to be a lot of tests and learn.
And to find what the optimization of that
marketing mix is.
So I think the value of marketing there is to bring
some really very close analysis to bear to make sure
that we're not wasting our efforts.
And spreading ourselves too thin.
The tools and the techniques to which you can be reach the
consumer are changing.
But the things that motivates consumers to purchase from
you, they may be changing slightly
because of the economy.
So it might be more motivated by costs than it was before.
Or it might be more motivated by some other reason that's to
do with the economy.
But the motivations--
if you understand the motivations--
that's key.
That is a long held truth of marketing, you have to
understand the customer, and gain insight for that
customer, no matter which technique, which tool, which
channels you're using to communicate the message that
you want them to receive.
So understanding those consumer insights in a
changing marketplace is very important.
I'm in a very interesting position right now, because
I'm with a company who hasn't needed marketing in the past,
and now does.
And there are pockets of the organization that definitely
recognize it, and there are some that think things worked
quite well the way they were.
So I would say that you have to prove the value of
marketing one product at a time, one person at a time,
one problem that you're trying to solve at a time.
You can't go in with big broad promises, a very high level,
and saying we're going to cure all ills.
Nobody will believe you to begin with.
They won't give you the chance to do it.
But if you take very real marketing-- very real business
challenges--
and apply marketing techniques to it and prove the case, then
you gain credibility.
You build those relationships.
You build trust. And then you can go from there.
That's the way I go about trying to make sure that
people in the organization find value in marketing.
It not about me telling you it's valuable.
It's about you actually seeing some of that value.