We recently surveyed 75 CMOs and Marketing Directors and 50 business owners.
If you’re a business owner, here’s the good news: Your marketing teams usually know what they should be doing. In fact, they’re fully aligned with what you want them to do.
And now for the bad news: They could do better.
So, what’s holding them back?
The marketing priority for the year ahead for most survey participants, is increasing customer lifetime value and customer retention.
Because when you look at it, there are four ways to grow a business.
1. You can get new customers.
2. You can get those customers to spend more.
3. You can get those customers to spend more frequently.
4. You can get your customers to stay with you longer
Getting new customers is all about that top-line customer growth. Getting customers to spend more and spend more frequently is about extracting and generating profits from those existing customers that you worked so hard to acquire.
So, we have the business owners and marketing teams fully aligned on what they should be doing.
They are clear on their priorities and objectives.
Ready, set, grow the business.
Not so fast!
We dug deeper.
There’s a problem.
The plan is sound; the execution is what’s lacking.
The survey showed that the biggest challenge that business owners saw as a block to achieving those goals was the lack of capability within their marketing team.
At first, that was horrifying.
Marketing was letting them down on their number one priority for the year.
But, if you think about it, it’s understandable.
Marketing has become more complex.
It’s so much harder to be an expert in each element within the field of marketing.
So, you know what smart marketers do?
They leverage external help in specific areas that they aren’t experts in themselves.
Now, most marketers have long outsourced creativity, generating brand management, ads and media buying.
But I’m now starting to see that extend into other disciplines in the broader sphere of marketing.
Digital acquisition and funnels, customer retention plans, customer base management or pricing expertise for example.
Good marketers now know what they need, they know what they are good at, and they know their gaps.
Great marketers know how to build a world-class network of external professionals to help them deliver on their strategy and deliver on those business goals.
If you would like to have a confidential chat about how Market Fit can help you bridge gaps and make your marketing more successful, book your complimentary session with me here.
