Revenue Journal®

The CMO Council and MarketBridge just conducted a study to determine how marketing is perceived and how marketers think they're doing. The results agree with what I've observed for many years: the very nature of marketing has changed and many marketers haven't changed with it.

The web has changed the way people buy, forever. We all know it. We all do it ourselves. We research, using the web, before we buy. We Google, we hunt around, we click from one site to another in search of the product or service we need. As we hunt, we get our first glimpse of a company's home page and decide, in an instant, if the company should be trusted with our money and credit card information. That's the buyer's side of the story.

On the seller's side of the equation, CEOs are only interested in hiring marketers who understand this shift in buyer behavior, embraced it a long time ago, and have been aggressively learning and applying online marketing techniques ever since - including email marketing, SEO, landing pages, pay-per-click, blogs, viral marketing, and website conversion.

When the web first emerged, CEOs saw that digital marketing methods could give them the accountability that they were never able to get from the old loosey-goosey style of marketing. They continue to insist on accountability. Never mind that the website visitor is anonymous; that response to email campaigns has dwindled to direct-mail levels with the proliferation of spam; that people don't want to have to register in order to shop; that real website accountability takes time, money, and expensive software. CEOs don't care. They're in a "make it so" mood. "If you can't prove it pays, you can't make the play," is the CEO's mantra.

Contrast this with the fact that 73% of the 400 marketers polled in the CMO study say that they "have no formal marketing performance scorecard" to rate their department's performance, and you can see why less than 10% of the survey respondents from large companies said their marketing group was "highly influential and strategic." Less than half felt their teams were "well regarded and respected."

Years ago I said that marketing had shifted from "80% creative and 20% logistics" to "80% logistics and 20% creative." CEOs hiring marketing managers are now looking for candidates who are logistically sophisticated. One candidate, who is a top condtender for a job I'm helping a client fill, has a BA degree in marketing and logistics, and an MBA in marketing and finance.

Those who got into marketing because they "like working with people" are struggling now. Their only hope is to start thinking more like a finance person and to become the company's expert on the customer (by personally interviewing customers every single week). Otherwise, they will find themselves replaced by someone who has an MBA in marketing and finance, has kept up with the latest technologies, and persistently and consistently listens to customers.