The role of marketing is evolving

Businesses are facing challenging times and should be leaning on marketing to understand audiences and drive growth – but so often, internal blockers, politics and misaligned strategies stop this from happening. Marketing can’t be done by the marketing team alone. It’s dependent on deep collaboration and buy-in from every part of a business.

With highly fragmented, global audiences, swings in buying habits, technology that’s advancing at a terrifying rate, more data than we know what to do with and an economic backdrop that’s bumpier than our flight back from Dublin the other week – it’s more challenging than ever. 

Internal pressures 

But it’s not just those external pressures that are changing the role of marketing. Increasingly complex internal politics, siloes and culture issues can have the same if not more impact on how effective we are as a marketing team:

• Securing budget
• Gaining C-Suite support
• Improving sales alignment 
• Adapting to shifts in business strategy  
• Building a brand and marketing culture  
• Proving marketing ROI 

How can we respond better to these challenges, reduce the internal friction and deliver more effective marketing?  

Marketing thinking should permeate the whole organisation 

We need to acknowledge that marketing is a unique function in that it must be fully “plugged in” to every function and team around the business, and we need to work hard on those connections.  

We must build strong, collaborative, productive, open, and supportive relationships with sales, product, finance, HR, IT – and of course, the C-Suite. This isn’t a nice to have. We’ll fail if we don’t embrace this collaboration with every part of the business. We need them to do our job better. They need us to do their job better.  

A key role of marketing is getting the rest of the business to adopt a marketing mindset so that we’re all rowing in the same direction.  

This is a shift for everyone, and it isn’t easy. It requires energy, focus and the right skills, on top of a solid understanding of how every part of the whole business machine works. It’s crucial that a CMO has these skills and spends as much time on this as they do on building the marketing plan. 

Doing the hard work – where to start? 

This part of marketing is less showy, more behind the scenes. It’s not about new products or creative campaigns. But it will ultimately make those things better.  

If you’re a CMO or marketing leader wondering how to better do the job you’re paid to do, start by focussing on the big four: 

1. Spend time understanding the dynamics, needs and challenges of other functions, and prioritise how you can best support them. 

2. Meet your stakeholders where they are. Understand what’s most important to them and show them how you’re supporting those metrics.  

3. Help other functions understand why marketing benefits everyone. Show the business why being marketing-led is important, and how everyone can support it through their everyday actions. 

4. Work hard on collaboration. Make time in busy schedules to work together with peers from sales, finance and HR on strategy, planning, problem solving and idea generation.  Persist with tricky customers as that’s likely to be where the biggest gains can be made.  

The role of marketing has shifted, and marketers must shift with it  

Successful CMOs of the future can’t just focus on their piece of the pie. They must invest time and energy building a strong marketing-led culture across the business and trusted, collaborative relationships with every other function. Marketing must be fully “plugged in” across the business – and when it is, everyone will succeed. 

Helping CMOs drive growth  

As a growth consultancy, we partner with CMOs to build effective and future-fit marketing teams. We can provide a range of marketing support including interim cover for senior marketing roles, strategy team outsourcing and CMO advisory, whether it’s bridging a short-term gap or a long-term partnership.