Secrets of the Marketing Masters: What the Best Marketers Do – And Why It Works

Citation

Lillis, M.P. (2010), "Secrets of the Marketing Masters: What the Best Marketers Do – And Why It Works", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 313-314. https://doi.org/10.1108/10610421011059649

What are the marketing competencies that underlie a clear and convincing competitive advantage? What role does the marketing function play in providing resources and capabilities that enhance a company's distinctive competencies? What marketing strategies exist that help to increase value through differentiation while simultaneously lowering a firm's cost structure? In his book, Secrets of the Marketing Masters, Dick Martin shares insights from the “marketing masters”, individuals who are widely known for their marketing savvy among executives in the so called “C‐suite” (i.e. CEO, CFO, COO, etc …).

Using an introspective and highly engaging style, Martin illuminates some of the trade secrets of the marketing masters. He identifies an important common denominator that lies central to their thinking: the customer. With examples from a variety of high profile marketing giants, he effectively illustrates how a broad customer‐oriented business definition can safeguard companies from being caught off guard by major shifts in consumer demand. Martin argues that master marketers find the need to reconnect with a higher consumer‐related purpose, thereby increasing their capacity to adapt and meet new strategic challenges. He underscores the difficulty of maintaining this kind of deep‐rooted, customer‐based view of an organization's business model:

But purpose‐driven marketing requires a level of customer intimacy that doesn't come naturally to marketers who work from secondhand briefs and shopworn strategies. In a landmark speech to the American Association of Advertising Agencies in 2004, Stengel declared existing marketing models “obsolete” and gave the industry a grade of C‐. That restless dissatisfaction with the status quo, combined with keen intellectual curiosity, characterizes all the masters of marketing and is surely among the secrets of their success … (p. xviii).

Martin arranges his book into three parts. Part One, “Think inside out”, contains four chapters that deal with ways of relating functional level activities back to an organization's business model. As Martin observed, masters of marketing translate business‐level goals into functional‐level programs that deliver results. This section illuminates several ways that marketing masters help to align the marketing function with a company's business model, each explained in a separate chapter:

• •

  “Run marketing like a professional service” – identifies six principles for building alignment: clarifying roles and authority with C‐suite executives; acquiring staff who possess functional excellence and business acumen; executing internal changes quickly; accommodating needs of internal customers; identifying concrete, measurable objectives related to growth and profit; and measuring everything, targeting relevant benchmarks that matter to business leaders.

• •

  “Build a marketing culture” – offers suggestions for building and institutionalizing a marketing culture, thereby ensuring appropriate fit and alignment with best practices.

• •

  “Become known as the voice of the customer” – provides insights on how to get to know your customer. For a master of marketing this means: “… becoming the acknowledged expert on who customers are and what they need. Plus, it means spreading that word inside the company, involving everyone else in the customer's world” (p. 33).

• •

  “Share results that matter – good and bad” – emphasizes the importance of measuring the return on marketing investments using “metrics that impact business goals” (p. 43).

In Part Two, “Think outside in”, Martin provides sage advise on how marketing efforts can align with a CEOs highest – order goal, profitable growth. Martin asserts “… what all CEOs care about most boils down to one thing – profitable growth. The masters of marketing link everything they do to that goal, translating customer insight into the revenue and profit of business insight.” (p. xix). This section offers four chapters that reveal some of the trade secrets that help to facilitate that translation:

1. 1.

   “Develop insight into people's needs” – provides guidance on how to gain insight into what customers really want, how they perceive value, and how to meet their unarticulated needs.

2. 2.

   “Develop insight into businesses' needs” – describes ways of better understanding what businesses really want. For the marketing master this would include face‐to‐face visits with customers to “… observe how customers use the product, to see firsthand how it fits into their business process, and to ask open‐ended questions about their operations and business goals” (p. 85).

3. 3.

   “Turn insight into foresight” – offers useful advice on how marketers can predict trends and capitalize on market opportunities.

4. 4.

   “Building customer listening posts” – explains how to develop good listening skills and explains how these skills serve to “deepen customer relationships and drive innovation” (p. 105).

Finally, Part Three, “Connect emotionally”, contains six chapters that describe how to connect with people on an emotional level. In other words, how to “… connect with people in meaningful, relevant ways by finding the intersection of their product's higher‐level purpose and people's deepest needs, desires, and values” (p. xx).

1. 1.

   “Find your brand's higher purpose” – discusses the importance of identifying a brand's higher‐level purpose and offers suggestions as to how to construct “ meaning around products” (p. 130) in an effort to enrich the customer's experience.

2. 2.

   “Be true to your brand's meaning“ – reveals the importance of aligning “… every customer touch point with the brand's meaning, not only in messaging but also through all five senses”(p. 155). Therefore, in addition to advertising, it is also important that the process of buying and using a product expresses and reinforces its deeper meaning.

3. 3.

   “Cultivate positive ‘word of mouse’“ – emphasizes the significance of consumer social media and offers suggestion on how to develop an effective social network to build brand enthusiasm.

4. 4.

   “Cultivate positive ‘word of mouth’“ – offers guidance for fostering a positive word of mouth and identifies ways of increasing the advocacy (“reason to care”) and amplitude (“reason to share”) that surrounds a company's products.

5. 5.

   “Win people's trust” – offers insight on how to build enduring relationship with a brand's customers.

6. 6.

   “Invest in relationships” – discusses the importance of creating relevant customer experiences that reinforce brand values. Further, Martin illuminates the merits of using marketing as a platform for creating customer connections and managing customer relationships.

For most marketing professionals, the strategic significance of marketing is readily apparent. Through aggressive pricing, promotions, and advertising, the corresponding increase in a company's product volume and market share allow a company to realize both economies of scale (as volume increases) and increased efficiencies that come from learning how to do things better. However, for this advantage to be sustainable, marketing strategies must help to ensure that the organization can “… connect the dots between customer needs and the firm's capabilities … ” (p. 33). Unlike other marketing books, this text identifies aspects of marketing strategy that are not readily apparent to the average marketing executive, or even “to the marketing masters themselves”(p. xviii). As such, it provides the reader with a rare glimpse of a few trade secrets that have helped master marketers achieve consistent profitable growth.