Well well well, marketers seem to be getting into the line of fire this time! Findings from the Global Marketers Effectiveness Study last year, revealed that a good 73% of the CEOs find their marketing teams lacking the business credibility and failing to meet expectations for meeting business growth targets. Somehow, CEOs feel that marketing strategies fail to meet top line expectations.
Now there is a long list reasons why they are unhappy, we’ve picked out about 6 of them:
- The greatest issue pointed out by CEOs was that marketers focus more on the brand, its values and equity which somehow doesn’t link to what matters more which is the sales, revenues and also market valuations! This came from about 77% of the respondents.
- Very close to the first issue in terms of number of respondents – CEOs feel that marketers are focusing on the latest trends which include social media; again which are not sound and proven channels for generating top line sales! Clearly a sign of following the herd as the whole world is looking at capitalizing on the social media revolution- but in vain!
- Again the next issue is also linked to top line sales. In order to increase Marketing ROI, marketers end up deploying cost cutting measures including negotiating with external vendors rather than focusing more on how to generate more sales.
- Marketers always look forward to getting those budget approvals but can hardly vouch for what increase in business can they produce with more funds! A good 72% of the respondents agreed to this fact!
- The next point, I would say is something harsh from the CEOs perspective, which throws light into the fact that marketers focus a lot on the creative and the ‘art’ aspects of marketing rather than thinking like business people!
- One more ( like I mentioned earlier, there are many more) fact is that CEOs feel that marketers rely on agencies too much to get those big ideas, campaigns , ROI and so on!
What’s more interesting that about 69% of the respondents who are marketers have commented that though their strategies make an impact but sadly, they are not able to give numbers to the incremental business caused by them. This only proves that there is heavy disconnect between the marketers and their bosses! What do you feel?
