New priorities for marketers

Recent research conducted by Marketing Week shows that customer experience, data and brand strategy have all gained in importance, while advertising has become less of a day-to-day priority for marketers.

The Marketing Week survey found that, for the majority of marketers, customer experience, data analysis and brand strategy is more central to their role than it was five years ago. Only a minority said advertising had become more important.

It’s no surprise that digital’s growing prevalence has changed the way marketers communicate with their consumers. No longer are marketers’ jobs merely about advertising and communication. These days they’re also about strategy, data and business development.

But as much as the methods have changed, the core purpose, function and fundamentals of the discipline haven’t. The marketer’s role is still to represent customer needs and turn that into commercial opportunity. It’s still about finding out what customers want and then delivering on that need. Essentially, it’s the same principles but new challenges.

Speaking at Marketing Week Live recently, Lenovo brand director Jo Moore explained how the company used crowdsourcing to create a video campaign based on user-generated content rather than using an agency to come up with a concept. Lenovo wanted to use a different marketing approach in order to connect with younger users when introducing a new brand identity. But despite the different approach, Moore said the practices of developing breakthrough content remain the same: it’s still about finding relevant messages rooted in deep insight.

Certain aspects of the marketer’s job, such as strategic thinking, are gaining in importance, according to the survey. Other attributes which are becoming more important are commercial acumen and analytical skills as marketers realise that they need to be more strategic and recognise how they contribute to the long-term growth of the company and meet short-term commercial goals.

It’s all too easy to argue that the explosion of digital, the rapid take-up of new technologies and the changing way consumers buy has altered the marketing discipline. But what marketers are actually experiencing, says Marketing Week’s Mindi Chahal, is an expansion of their roles and responsibilities rather than a complete overhaul. The fundamentals remain the same even though brands now have different ways of ensuring a product or service appeals to consumers.

The big take-out: Despite changing media and consumption habits the fundamentals of marketing remain the same. However, marketers are attaching more importance to customer experience, data and brand strategy than they did in the past.