Why Marketing cannot be allowed to decline

Marketing was born out of the Industrial Revolution, when manufacturers needed to develop products that would appeal to customers and to find ways to engage customers with them, and Manchester was the world’s first industrial city (Marketing’s home city and where I did my master’s degree in Marketing during the 1990s).

However for marketing things have changed over time, instead of being led and valued as a driver of business viability and growth, it has stagnated in recent years. Gartner’s Chief Marketing Officer Spend Survey (2022) shows that marketing budgets have levelled off to an average of 9.5% of company revenue (due to the pandemic it had been as low as 6.4% - 2021, the long term average has been around 11% - 2018 to 2020, which is still low), many organisations including Unilever and P&G have scaled back their marketing spending, and others including Warner Brothers and Walmart have been cutting marketing staff.

The predictions of the decline of marketing have been increased with recent developments including the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and the growth in the number and market share of Amazon’s private label brands. According to Forbes (2022), AI assistants are expected to use algorithms and predictive analytics to offer up information, goods, and services to customers – which suggests that marketing will have increasingly less impact on their decisions. Many organisations believe that marketing is the cost you have to pay when your product is inferior.

However, in my opinion, marketing is needed now more than ever especially in today’s innovation-fuelled marketplace.

If business leaders want to thrive in today’s VUCA (volatile, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity), crowded and more competitive marketplaces, they need to unleash the powerful potential of marketing.

This powerful potential of marketing is critical in achieving the transformation that new products and services required in the innovative organisation, to have that all-so-important competitive advantage that enables continued success in the marketplace, and ultimately the survival of your business.

How do you create an organisation where talented employees want to stay and future talent wants to join, well, you make sure as an organisation you increase the HR Brand Selling (HRBS) of your organisation.

For more information and details on how we can help and support you, consult us today by sending us an email through info@in2focus.com.au and we’ll contact you.