If sales are poor, marketing is to blame - or is it?

The strategic role of marketing has not really gained a stronger foothold in companies, and it is still often seen as a support function with a communicative and tactical role, according to Teea Björklund.

“If sales are strong, the sales have done a good job. If sales are poor, marketing is to blame.” This is a genuine statement by a customer. Hand on heart – does this sound familiar? Most of us have experienced this at least occasionally.

Perhaps strategic marketing seems too vague. What if we talked about the customer instead? It is no news that the convergence of business, sales and marketing is increasingly important. The customer is at the heart of all these functions.

The superpower that marketing brings to the table is customer understanding and the knowledge of how this information can be utilised in business planning and operations. The aim of customer understanding is to build a brand, identify growth potential and build growth. This will help develop the business in a multichannel manner using different technologies.

Is our obsession with conversion causing us to ignore brand building?

When you are responsible for business operations, you find yourself wandering. It is easy to look at results brought by marketing in the short term. They are logical, easy to measure and almost self-explanatory. And also important, of course.

But what is equally important is that the organisation has an in-depth understanding of the business impact of marketing. Are we patient, and do we follow the return on investment as we would for machine investments? Or does our conversion obsession lead us to forget about building a strong brand and commitment to our brand and products? We make sure new customers find our brand.

For planning activities this autumn, I'm offering five tips that can help open up a more strategic marketing conversation in your organisation:

1. The onus is often on marketing to prove how it contributes to the success of the company. Marketing metrics are also business management metrics. We defined these together, didn’t we? How about kicking off the autumn by discussing them together?
2. Is your brand and marketing strategy in good shape? Does it support day-to-day and long-term operations; is it part of the business strategy? Does your organisation share a view of the right direction? World-class brands are born of customer understanding and customer promise, systematic and consistent work to develop the brand and customer experience, and effective communications to the right target groups.
3. Effective data-driven marketing encompasses the brand in addition to more tactical activities. Insight built on customer data combined with creative, conceptual thinking makes for a killer combination. There is often too much data rather than too little. First, consider the data used by marketing extensively, from the understanding of customer needs to the analysis of the results and the actions decided based on them. Then try to simplify and find the key data points that everyone follows and understands. These can change, so an agile model is a good choice here too, but complexity tends to increase ambiguity.
4. Bring the marketing, sales and customer service together. Identify and ensure a shared understanding of your key customer groups' purchase paths, customer experience and the required measures. Make sure the brand experience you are aiming for is the same as the customer experience. Although personalisation is a strong trend, it is good to bear in mind that it may be enough for customers to feel that the customer experience is pleasant and that they are being helped. This may be achieved with the appropriate level of segmentation and targeting.
5. Artificial intelligence makes things more efficient and promotes creativity. When considering how generative AI can help us make marketing more efficient, would it be worth considering how it will allow more time for strategic planning and implementation of marketing?

Rather than a threat to creative work, generative AI is an opportunity. As we reform marketing processes, we must ensure that the use of AI increases creativity and helps the company stand out – and that the content produced strengthens the brand. It is high time that AI was incorporated into the marketing strategy.

VP Sales & Channels Teea Björklund is responsible for Sanoma's B2B sales and marketing. Teea believes that the significance and role of marketing in companies should be redefined.