Marketing as a strategic growth driver: closing the critical capability gap
What is the true role of marketing?
Marketing has long been defined by experts as:
“The process by which companies engage customers, build strong customer relationships, and create customer value in order to capture value from customers in return.” – Kotler & Armstrong
“The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.” – CIM
Yet despite these comprehensive definitions, marketing is often too narrowly perceived within organisations, reduced to a support function rather than a value creator. In reality, strategic marketing is a growth driver spanning the entire customer journey – from driving market insights and customer understanding to positioning, engagement, and revenue generation.
The evolution of role of marketing
As a function, marketing has transformed more dramatically than any other business discipline, now encompassing multiple specialisms and specific capabilities – from commercial strategy and brand management to data analytics, sales enablement, and account-based marketing. This evolution has elevated marketing’s role significantly, positioning marketing as a strategic growth driver that demands a broader, more sophisticated skill set than ever before.
Yet many marketing teams are struggling to keep pace – expected to drive impact in an increasingly complex landscape without the right capabilities to succeed. The result is a widening capability gap, with many marketing teams being tasked with driving strategic business growth without the right skills, structures or confidence to success.
The business impact of strategic marketing not being a growth driver
Our Magnify marketing assessment consistently reveals three insights:
- When marketing isn’t fully aligned with commercial goals, businesses miss significant revenue opportunities.
- When teams aren’t structured for maximum impact, growth is severely limited.
- When organisations fail to invest in their marketing team’s capabilities, the full revenue potential of marketing remains untapped.
These findings highlight a crucial point: how an organisation defines marketing’s role directly impacts its bottom line. The most commercially successful strategic marketing teams we’ve seen don’t just adapt to change – they lead it. They embed marketing across the entire customer journey, from awareness to advocacy. They operate with agility, quickly responding to market shifts, competitive pressures and evolving buyer behaviours. And crucially, they integrate marketing and sales through shared KPIs, structured handoffs, and clear attribution to drive measurable business outcomes.
Repositioning marketing as a strategic growth driver requires deliberate investment in core capabilities. These five foundational pillars create the structure for long-term impact and commercial success.
Five foundational pillars for transforming marketing as a strategic growth driver
1. Aligning marketing to commercial goals
Marketing becomes a strategic growth driver when it’s directly connected to commercial outcomes. This requires a shift from campaign thinking to understanding revenue mechanisms and profit drivers.
- Approach: Link marketing KPIs directly to business outcomes and commercial metrics – CAC, pipeline velocity and revenue contribution – to demonstrate clear commercial impact.
- Growth impact: When marketing is fully aligned with commercial goals, businesses access significant revenue opportunities previously missed.
2. End to end customer journey mapping
High-impact strategic marketing teams influence the full customer lifecycle, enabling every stage from awareness through to retention and expansion.
- Approach: Map the journey across pipeline stages with a commercial lens, focusing on the decision points, friction zones and handoffs that matter most. Analyse each stage through lenses of stakeholders, decision drivers, touchpoints, external influences and mindset, identifying where marketing can drive the greatest impact.
- Growth impact: When marketing supports the full journey, businesses achieve stronger commercial alignment, faster conversion and greater lifetime value.
3. Aligning marketing, sales and customer success
Marketing’s influence doesn’t stop at generating a marketing qualified contact or account. The most effective teams ensure marketing is fully integrated with sales and customer success to support and enable the entire customer journey.
- Approach: Establish shared goals, structured handoffs, and feedback loops between marketing and sales to accelerate deal velocity.
- Growth impact: When marketing is integrated across functions, businesses experience faster pipeline progression, consistent customer experiences and improved revenue growth.
4. Structuring teams for maximum impact
The highest-performing marketing teams are designed for impact. They have clear roles and responsibilities, KPIs aligned with business goals and the agility to scale with evolving needs.
- Approach: Evaluate whether your team structure effectively supports the desired strategic role of marketing within your organisation – whether focused on brand growth, end-to-end customer engagement, or customer expansion.
- Growth impact: When marketing teams are structured for maximum impact, organisations can respond more quickly to market opportunities, execute more effectively on strategy and drive greater return on marketing investment.
5. Strategic marketing and customer insight
The most impactful marketing teams build their strategies on robust market understanding, from ICP definitions and DMU mapping to competitive analysis and market sizing. Yet it’s incredibly common for organisations to lack consistency in the creation or application of these critical foundational elements.
- Approach: Establish a structured approach to creating insight that prioritises business-critical questions about buyers, buying decisions and triggers, and the competitive landscape.
- Growth impact: When marketing delivers and utilises customer insights, organisations gain clarity on where to invest and focus, what drives buyer decisions and how to develop messaging that resonates.
The future role of marketing: growth leaders
Marketing leaders who prioritise capability-building and invest in these five critical areas are not only future proofing their teams but transforming marketing to serve as a strategic growth driver in the business.
When marketing is aligned to revenue, structured for impact and embedded across the customer journey, it becomes a powerful engine for business growth.
Closing the capability gap isn’t optional, it’s essential for marketing to deliver its full commercial potential. Businesses that fail to address it face increasing inefficiencies, missed revenue opportunities and limited competitive advantage.
How Magnus Consulting creates a growth engine
At Magnus Consulting, we empower commercial leaders transform marketing into a strategic growth driver by helping them implement these five critical pillars. We work alongside teams on live projects, demonstrating best practice and embedding scalable approaches that directly connect to commercial outcomes.
We ensure marketing teams are positioned for strategic success – empowered, aligned and clear in their ability to deliver on business goals. Ready to elevate marketing’s role in your organisation?
