73% of CEOs Think Marketers Lack Business Credibility

Well it looks like marketers haven’t quite sold CEO’s on the value of marketing and branding and frankly they have nobody to blame but themselves. The Fournaise Marketing Group found that marketers focus too much on the latest marketing trends such as social media, because they believe they represent the new marketing frontiers – but can rarely demonstrate how these trends will help them generate more business for the company (74%). In other words they are doing because they are high on the social media propaganda not because of ROI to brand/business objectives.

Here is a perfect example of data leading people by the nose without thinking: Data from “The 2011 Social Shopping Study” (a recent study by the e-tailing group and PowerReviews) indicates that 50% of consumers spend 75% or more of their total shopping time conducting online product research, with 15% spending 90% or more of their shopping time in this manner. So then most marketers would say that “we need to do more online because our audience is researching our product” but that is pure 100% horse hockey ! Does anyone really believe people are researching their cereal, yogurt, salad dressing or butter brands online ? Of course they’re not but too many marketers really believe that their brands are important to their audience. Sorry folks but there is a good chance your brand doesn’t have the equity of a Starbucks or Apple.

The cold reality is that probably 95% of products in the grocery store are not going to be researched online but too many marketers believe their products are being researched by consumers online when in fact they are looking for discounts.

According to the report, “marketers keep on talking about brand, brand values, brand equity and other similar parameters but their top management has great difficulties linking back to results that really matter: revenue, sales, EBIT or even market valuation (77%). OK so let’s be honest here, the reason for not being able to link back are because they are too busy sucking up and micromanaging or because they don’t have the business skills to start with a clear and concise business strategy which includes how to measure your marketing.

CEO’s also bear some responsibility as they usually cut marketing budgets to the bear bone and expect miracle results but most marketing people are afraid to say what’s on their mind and stand up to management because after all politics is more important that doing what is best for the brand.

The other bit of data that I thought was interesting is that “Unlike CFOs and Sales Forces, marketers don’t think enough like businesspeople: they focus too much on the creative, “arty” and “fluffy” side of marketing and not enough on its business science, and rely too much on their ad agencies to come up with the next big idea (67%) . For proof of this just look at all the social media platforms that aren’t making money. They first start with platform and then build and audience and then try and figure out how to turn Tweets or Facebook Likes into dollars, usually at the expense to consumer privacy.

The fact of life today in corporate America is that marketers have to continually demonstrate real value in hard,cold business metrics. Forget the bullshit around things like awareness, message recall and Facebook Likes because they don’t mean a damn thing if sales are going down and you can’t connect what you do to business and brand objectives. You should be having a come to Jesus meeting with all your agencies and informing them that unless they can help you show bottom line results you’re don’t need them. The way of doing business is changing and today it’s abput “What have you done for our sales ?”