10 things marketing in T&T needs to fix
1. differentiation – it is not central to our thinking. we default to tactics. we love to do stuff without first defining a single-minded umbrella that everything we do must sit under.
2. customer experience – at the very top of organisations it’s not embraced. if the boss does not see it as important, her reports and their reports will ignore it too. why is this so? I think we believe that “that is not for we” . also on the customer side, we don’t demand it. so there is a low expectation of service [of course we must now add online experience to the brew].
the above makes it easier to build a competitive advantage around customer experience. in the land of the blind, a one eye woman is queen.
3. research – this is a big one. we really have grossly underinvested in the most basic of information that any business should have. wonderful yet horrible example: the last media track study was done in November 2014
4. product development – the promotions P is the darling of marketing. all the others suck salt. we have not invested enough in new product research and development
5. measuring and reporting on ROI on marketing expenditure. at a minimum, we should have case studies that report on campaign results. agencies should do better. their clients should demand more.
6. better integration of clients and agencies. agencies should be an extension of the marketing department. some of us are treated like stationery suppliers. generally speaking companies don’t share information with their agency partners and that’s like driving down the highway, with a blanket on the windscreen. clients can use indexing to share results to avoid sharing sensitive information
7. the embrace of digital and digital transformation has been way too slow
8. no proper matching of responsibility and authority for marketing and sales teams. decision making is still too centralised and non-marketers are making marketing decisions. children don’t learn to ride unless you take off the training wheels
9. we have under-invested on branding and over-invested on sales activities
10. we are using social media as the silver bullet for our marketing communications. I think it’s over-rated and that we are not so sure of the value of the new shiny toys that arrive every month, but are sucked in, moving with the crowd
