Hands Up Who Gets Marketing?

Ask that question in an FMCG business and there would be a strong showing. Ask it in many B2B businesses and the response would be far patchier.

In many B2B organisations Marketing is a proxy for Marketing Communications (MarComms). Often the head of marketing is also the Sales Director who employs a marketing person or manager who looks after Sales Promotion, PR, and Exhibitions and Marketing Collateral. When you ask questions such as, ‘who is responsible for the value proposition, or brand building, or improving the customer experience or representing the voice of the customer, or for strategic marketing?’ The answers are often confused and unfocused.

Ask these questions in an FMCG business and the responses are very different.

Why is this?

Firstly, legacy. The B2B market comes from an industrial background, where supply and demand drove purchasing decisions, making price, and availability primary drivers. People made decisions on ‘objective’ criteria, through a face-to-face selling medium.

There was much more supplier power than there is today, which meant the product didn’t have to be sold, customers were lucky to have the opportunity to purchase.

The offerings were simpler, products to make or do things with.

Things changed much more slowly. Technology wasn’t the disruptive force it now is.

The current environment is very different. Supply outstrips demand for most things, customer power is on the ascendancy, emotional motivations to purchase are as important as practical, products are often wrapped in services and business models are more complex.

Now customers need/want to be engaged with in a much more fundamental, multidimensional way where their suppliers are able to connect with their unarticulated motivations through demonstrating an in-depth understanding of the market dynamics and business pain points they are facing.

Its real, joined-up marketing that opens up this avenue of potential.  It requires marketers who can make the insightful connections across hard and soft data sets, identifying opportunities to sell into that are distinctive, and profitable.

Claudine McClean
T:  01789 734400
E: claudinem@salespathways.com

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