There is a tendency for companies to downplay the importance of marketing – and even cut or eliminate marketing – during challenging, uncertain or flat market climates. Instead, this is when the companies should double-down on marketing.

Corporate leadership can’t be completely blamed for having a skeptical outlook toward marketing. That’s because a lot of marketing initiatives are ineffective.

Approaches are often reactive, tactical, and checklist-driven so a scorecard can be shown each quarter depicting all the “stuff” marketing has accomplished. Plans are based on an old playbook comprised of tradeshows, webinars, white papers, advertising and press releases because that’s the way it’s always been done. Activities are marcom-centric with a focus on generating an abundance of questionable leads, posting and presenting promotional “noise” as thought leadership and – as Dave Daniels observes in The New Rules of Product Marketing – serving as “effectively secretaries for the sales team.”

So, instead of differentiating these companies, marketing unintentionally makes them homogenous.

Therefore, when Sequoia recently advised leaders to question myriad business assumptions including marketing, it’s understandable its counsel gets interpreted as “Go cut marketing!”

The 2020 Marketing Manifesto

Akin to Contrarian Investing (“Buy when there’s blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own”), companies should keep marketing during these difficult markets. Further, they should insist on evolving the role and expectations of marketing.

Denise Lee Yohn observes in Forbes, “Marketing as it was originally intended, in its fullest, truest, and greatest form, is more important today than ever before. The world is awash in innovative products, services, technologies, solutions, business models, etc. today. These new offerings must be brought to market and commercialized in order to generate revenue and profit. Innovation alone cannot sustain a company; it must be paired with marketing.”

Similarly, Alex Goldfayn advises in Evangelist Marketing that companies need to keep innovating and executing effective marketing to maintain and grow market position.

To achieve this, there are two key ways in which marketing must evolve and be implemented.

First, marketing needs to help drive the go-to-market strategy. According to the Pragmatic Institute, the pioneer of the Pragmatic Framework which is a market-driven, data-led blueprint for creating and marketing products people buy, companies need to be able to identify the unmet and underserved needs of buyers, discover how these buyers make buying decisions, architect strategies to engage them and, most importantly, convince them to buy its solutions. Marketing – not R&D, Engineering, Product Development or Sales – is best-positioned to do this.

Expanding upon this, Denise Lee Yohn writes in the Harvard Business Review, “Innovation is a top priority for almost every organization. But to achieve success through innovation, companies must put as much energy and investment into marketing new offerings as they do in generating them.” Adding, “The bigger the innovation, the bigger the risk of failure. Because marketing can reduce those risks, it matters as much as innovation — perhaps even more.”

Second, marketing must achieve mindshare among buyers and influencers. Mindshare is more than just brand awareness. Rather, it’s about convincing buyers and influencers to believe a company’s products and services solve their problems. Marketing is better-positioned than other corporate functions to create differentiated and unique messaging focused on problem-solution scenarios to stand out from the competition and become trusted resources for buyers.

The power of mindshare is market perception. It’s when buyers call sales instead of the other way around. It’s when partners rank a product over the competition even though it’s not the best one. Simply put, when a company has mindshare, the probability of getting short-listed, winning business and growing market share significantly increases.

Now More Than Ever

Even before COVID-19 essentially shut down in-person marketing activities such as tradeshows, training, networking and other events, the writing should have been on the wall that marketing needs to evolve. Doing the same things year after year or, worse, doing the same things as the competition is likely not a sound go-to-market strategy and won’t garner mindshare.

In the coming weeks and months, this blog will discuss and debate ideas, examples and best practices of marketing to address the requirements of companies seeking the to grow share as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Please join the conversation and share with your colleagues.

Meanwhile, should you need help, Mindshare Advisors is a specialized consultancy focused on helping high-potential organizations architect and execute go-to-market strategy, launch, thought leadership, and branding to capture marketshare by winning mindshare.

Contact us at info(at)mindshareadvisors.com