As we kick off 2024, B2B marketing seems more complex than ever.

Challenges abound, whether it’s sales and marketing alignment, AI, new product and market launches, social purpose, changing customer needs, data privacy, new martech or hiring top talent. This is at the tip of the iceberg and there’s so much more lurking beneath the waves ready to surprise us.

Global teams need the skillset, mindset, processes and tools to engage with customers on their terms, and to adapt to the market in ways which outperform the competition. However, according to Marketing Week, “Since 2015, the top 10 skills for marketers globally have changed by 50%, an accelerated pace of change given LinkedIn finds overall skillsets have evolved by 25% since 2015 and are expected to change by 41% by 2025.”

So how do you arm your organisation, teams and individual marketers with the marketing capabilities they need to create competitive advantage this year? In this post, we’ll share our top tips for getting started.

What is marketing capability?

It’s often a synonym for transformation, innovation initiatives, or training. We at Magnus define a marketing capability as the effective combination of purpose (commercial objectives), people (skills and behaviours) and process (efficiency, method and tech) to deliver value.

Still too much jargon? Yes, maybe.

Put simply, marketing capabilities are the specific muscles that your organisation needs to deliver on its strategy and targets. This could be leadership, skills and behaviours, processes, data sources or tech. Understanding the capabilities you need versus what you have creates focus and sets clear expectations for your marketers.

A marketing capability program develops new solutions, upskills and mobilises your teams with a shared purpose, and provides the support they need to succeed. It delivers fast impact against your priorities but, more profoundly, it establishes an innovation mindset and the belief and confidence in ongoing change and improvement.

Change is hard.

Organisational change can feel daunting. You have well established ways of working and organisational siloes, politics slows you down, and your teams are distributed globally and hybrid working. You may have also been stung by big, expensive, rigid transformation programs run by global consultancies.

It needn’t be that way.

Where to start: Building the Marketing Capabilities you need to accelerate growth

At Magnus, we have developed six principles which are at the core of our capability programs. They are hard won from many successful capability programs and a good place for you to start your journey.

1. Give the program an identity
Clarify business goals and establish an internal brand for change with clear principles and KPI’s. This program must feel unique to your business, tailored to your culture and growth journey. Demonstrate that this isn’t just another initiative and cut through operational siloes by having the CMO own and communicate the imperative for change.

2. Create a people movement
Understand the pain points of front-line marketers to set relatable, shared objectives and create advocacy for change. Communicate the program’s objectives in the language of your marketers and make proof points meaningful, so everyone is aligned on the need for change and their role in making it happen. Inspiring a people movement will generate more change and actionable insight than a top-down mandate.

3. Make a splash
Deliver a differentiated experience that will gain attention, inspire action, and generate demand for more. This could be in how you gather insight or collaborate on solutions. It could be the method of communication. It could be a training experience unlike your marketers have seen before. It could be a champions program which celebrates teams and individuals.

4. Deliver accelerators not 101 training
Focus exclusively on the capabilities that your business needs for competitive advantage. Marketers don’t need to be experts in every discipline. They need to understand the specific actions which will drive growth and enable them to lead their teams and agencies more effectively. We call these accelerators. Practical workshops or training which radically shifts the participant’s knowledge and enables them to apply new skills immediately.

5. Go fast and slow
Ensure the community can access training and support on their terms. Deliver capability training and global marketing standards but also support in moments of need. Understand these ‘moments’ to speed up process and workflow.

6. Build a community
Share proof points and resources to continually improve and maintain engagement with marketers. Make heroes of changemakers, learn from your community, and celebrate breakthroughs. Demonstrate how the community is solving today’s challenges and building the capabilities of the future.

A successful marketing capability program is laser-focused on business objectives but it is dependent on, and powered by, alignment with the challenges and daily reality of your marketing community. The right approach unlocks business performance, team effectiveness, and the careers and ambition of your people.