Why marketing is your organisational glue

As an integrated customer experience becomes increasingly important for commercial success, a key trend for businesses is the emergence of the marketing function as the glue which binds together the whole organisation.

This was one of the key insights from Sarah Speake, CMO at out-of-home advertising company Clear Channel, during a recent session on the most important skills required by marketers run by the ADBL (the Academy of Digital Business Leaders).

“I see us [marketers] as being very much the glue within our respective organisations. Internally we absolutely need to be the glue as a result of the direct impact of technology innovation and digital transformation.”

Marketers may not always need to be experts in digital technology, but they are more likely than ever to be leading cross-functional teams focused on improving or innovating products and experiences.

This metaphor for marketing tied in well with my own subsequent presentation during the same ABDL webinar. I featured ‘collaboration’ as a core skill required by marketers during the year ahead and beyond.

As a function which needs to lead the way in championing a joined-up and seamless customer experience, marketers can only thrive if they are well versed in the arts of teamwork and diplomacy, i.e. winning friends and influencing people within the business.

However, research from the Adobe Digital Roadblock Report 2015, based on a survey of more than 1,000 marketers, shows that marketing is not yet working as harmoniously with other functions as it should be.

Integration is most effective with the sales function (possibly a surprise for some!) and least effective with finance and HR. Relations with IT departments, much maligned by marketers as a bottleneck to progress, are actually in the middle of the range (as shown in chart below).

Relationship between marketing and other functions

While more technical digital skills such as proficiency with digital analytics data and familiarity with marketing software are an important part of a company’s collective skillset, broader commercial and interpersonal skills are more important than ever.

According to Sarah’s experience from Clear Channel (and previously at Google and ITV):

“I tend to recruit more generalists. As the organisation changes and as technology changes I think people need to be digitally upskilled but we’ve moved away from having to tick every box on the digital marketing toolkit.”

While digital knowledge is important, the essence of marketing is still very much about the traditional ‘4 Ps’ of marketing, namely product, price, place and promotion.

As collaboration and integration become more important as a way of breaking down marketing silos, we will also see more demand for marketers who have a good commercial ‘horizontal’ understanding of the business.

Tune in here to see a video of the full ADBL November webinar on ‘The Three Skills Every Marketing Team Will Need in 2016′ (registration required).