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With apologies to Philip Kotler, whose four Ps—product, price, place, and promotion—have been integral to any successful product or service marketing effort of the past 50 years, today's successful marketing hinges on five new Ps.

Whereas the Ps we studied in college are all from the provider's point of view, these new Ps focus with laser-like clarity on the customer.

But customer-centricity can't be the mantra of just the marketing department. Every group, from the boardroom to product leaders to IT, must place the customer at the core of every decision it makes.

Responsibility for evangelizing within the organization rests squarely on the shoulders of the CMO. After all, if the marketing chief isn't living and breathing customer focus every minute, and encouraging others to do the same, who will believe its importance?

The CMO's office must consistently demonstrate to the rest of the enterprise the value of looking at all products, messaging, and brands through the customer's eyes. The entire organization can then get closer to the hearts and minds of their prospects and customers, with the added benefit of proving the value of every initiative that the company undertakes.

The new Ps are composed of five equally important, tightly interwoven components, designed to more tightly integrate marketing in the future.

1. People

Certainly, the audience must be at the heart of any marketing initiative. That isn't news to anyone in your department. Smart marketers have always had an instinctive sense of what their audiences would respond to. But no longer is it enough to know about your target in aggregate. Perhaps "person" might be a better heading for this P—because now it's important to know your customer intimately, as a human, emotional being.

It's one thing to know how people who generally look and act like your customer might respond. It's another to know exactly how John A. Sample has responded in the past, and what's likely to interest him next time. Why did he make his last return or exchange? What did he look at before placing an order? Has he purchased anything since his last call to customer service? What size does he wear?

Chances are, he's already told you who he is and what he wants—but were you listening?

2. Passion

Marketers are passionate about their profession. But no good marketer can function using only the right side of the brain anymore. Creativity and instinct are still important, but the anal side—the analytics side—is gaining fast.

Marketing is part of the business, and the business exists to perform. As a result, you're being held to greater accountability than ever before. Today, your passion for marketing must be driven by facts—the full view of all the data now available about customers, campaigns, and returns.

You already know that this passion for a 360-degree perspective can have an incredibly powerful effect. Being able to apply sophisticated marketing analytics to every piece of information you collect about your customers is like bringing the customers themselves in-house to tell you not just what's working and what isn't, but why. You can use this passion to your advantage, helping generate ideas, proving their relevance, and justifying the money you spend.

Still, a survey published in March by the Association of National Advertisers found that the top two concerns of senior marketing executives are integrated marketing communications and marketing accountability. Further research by the same group found that 60% of respondents had none of the necessary cross-functional involvement in their companies' development and management of marketing accountability programs to make them truly effective.

If you're like many CMOs, you've already identified the needs but may be uncertain of the solutions. Fortunately, each of these issues can be addressed by enterprisewide marketing analytics.

3. Processes

Marketing processes must become more enlightened. It's time for everyone to sing from one song sheet—instead of having discrete departments creating dissonant communications and hoarding data. Database and digital marketing, marketing operations, and customer relations all need to work in concert—a concept foreign to many companies in which other departments are often viewed as competitors rather than collaborators.

Again, the answer is a passionate, organization-wide approach to customer-centricity. If it doesn't come from the CMO, where will it begin?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jason McNamara is chief marketing officer of Alterian (www.alterian.com).