Your Real Marketing Priorities for 2017

C3Centricity Podcasts

Here at C3Centricity, we have been measuring marketing priorities with our blog followers for several years. So here are this year's top marketing needs. Insight Development Insight development has moved from fourth position last year to first place this year. Even though we’ve been talking about it for decades most marketers are still struggling to find insights in their information. Insight development takes time & far more information than just market research. Major CPG companies spend weeks or months with a team of experts from different specialities including psychology. Don't leave it to just marketers and marketer researchers to work out. Understanding the Category and its Users These are the foundations of marketing, so it may come as a surprise to you to see them in the top five priorities for this year. Not to me. Our customers are changing dramatically, as we ourselves are too. Regularly update your brand personas & follow the changes in your customers as closely as you can. Also, don't forget that your competitors may also be changing and new ones are emerging as a result of these trends: • From ownership to sharing / rental • From service to data • From curing illness to prevention and wellness Therefore it is vital to understand what business you are in today & how your industry is likely to change in the future. Whether changes will happen because of consumer preferences or technical innovation, the time to prepare is now. How to be More Customer Centric Almost everyone understands the importance of customer centricity today and most companies have it as an objective. Why not decide now that this will be the year you put your customers at the heart of everything you do? Every time you take a decision ask yourself this killer question: "What would our customers think of the decision we've just taken If you need to convince management or your boss about the importance of customer centricity, here are a few statistics: • Customer centric organisations are 60% more profitable • The average revenue growth of Customer Experience Leaders is 14% points higher than that of laggards • 64% of people think that customer experience is more important than price in their choice of brand Increasing my Impact on the Business I love this priority because I believe we all dream of having more impact in our organisations. In particular, marketing and market research professionals feel the most pressure. The average tenure of a CMO in leading U.S. CPG companies has dropped from 48 months to just 44 months. In comparison, market researchers often complain that they have too few opportunities to get promoted. As a result, businesses often have relatively inexperienced professionals in the department as more senior personnel move into marketing or sales. The majority of MR departments also still report into the CMO, despite having a larger role to play in this information-rich age. Millward Brown Vermeer's Insight2020 research clearly demonstrated that over performing organisations had insights and analytics managers leading the business in customer centricity. This is a huge opportunity for the market research and insights professionals to finally get the business impact they crave. Innovation and Business Growth Despite the continued abysmal success rates of new product launches in many industries, companies continue to regularly launch them. They hope that their next initiative will be the one. According to HBR "Less than 3% of new consumer packaged goods exceed first-year sales of $50 million—considered the benchmark of a highly successful launch." I suppose that is why innovation and business growth remain top marketing priorities. After all, they are intimately connected. Business growth and the success of innovation rely heavily on the previous priorities of category and user understanding and insight development. You are unlikely to succeed with new product development if you don't have these basics primed.