The Important Function Often Overlooked by Marketing Leaders

By Mark Yeager

With so many responsibilities tied to running the marketing effort for a technology organization, it can be overwhelming to cover the spectrum of activities that commonly fall under the marketing department . I often find that marketing leaders can almost silo themselves in pursuit of achieving KPIs that justify the marketing team’s existence without considering how to make the most impact for the entire company.

What is most important for marketers?

So, among the many initiatives that the marketing team takes on, what is the most important function that marketing leaders often overlook, but should perform for their organizations? I’m sure there are as many opinions on this as there are different marketing activities, but of the many ways to help drive an organization, I have seen the most impact when leaders embrace this simple imperative: Align the entire organization to who the buyer is and the problems your product solves for them.

As the legendary marketer, Peter Drucker, once said: “…the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous…to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.” The interesting thing about this statement is research shows:

“76% of marketers feel they know what their

customers want yet only 34% have asked customers”.¹

Research by Deloitte shows that customer-centric companies were 60% more profitable compared to companies that were not focused on the customer. And while most organizations state in some form that they put the customer first, research by HubSpot shows 42% of companies don’t listen to their customers at all. When marketing leaders truly embrace this role of focusing on the buyer and deliver a clear picture of who the buyer is, specific to how each team needs to understand the customer, every part of the organization will see improved results.

The Benefits of Organizational Understanding of the Customer

So why is customer understanding so important for technology marketers? Obviously, marketers need to know their customer in support of their own initiatives, but independent of that, the entire organization needs this alignment because it provides context for who the organization serves as a technology provider and aligns each department on a common set of known truths about your buyers.

When marketing paints a clear picture of the customer, several things happen for other departments within any organization:

SALES TEAMS know who is most likely to buy and focuses their attention on ideal prospective customers, not just anyone that wants to see a demo. Persona profiles help to educate the team on who is buying and why.

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT teams prioritizes features that matter to the prospective audience, not what competitors are doing or enhancements that seem like a good idea. Product leaders obtain documented use cases and feature ideas based on what buyers actually do with the product.

CUSTOMER SERVICE teams understand what drives the buyers and are able to escalate important issues and remedy small problems more efficiently. They can anticipate upcoming issues that might be tied to a future release because they understand challenges the end-user might face.

The reality is that without alignment to the buyer, all of these departments within an organization are likely to have different understandings of who the customer is. In addition to that, many of these perceptions are based on individual experiences that often don’t match the needs of the majority target audience. When marketing fills the misinformation gap with buyer insights, every part of the organization performs better.

Customer Understanding Earns Marketing a Seat at the Executive Table.

The extra benefit for marketers is that true insights about the customer is something every part of the executive team will listen to. It doesn’t matter who has the loftiest title in the room or who is the loudest, data about what real buyers want is what will guide important decisions – but only when it is available and deemed as credible. Otherwise, titles and noise will continue to steer the organization.

Marketers earn the privilege to sit at the leadership table when they center conversations around buyer data that helps all leaders and their teams develop a clear view of buyers’ needs for each of their specific customer interaction points.

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¹Brian Solis, The State Of Social Marketing, October 2012