Follow These Recommendations to be a High-Performing Organization

A recent Harvard Business Review article by Marc de Swaan Arons, Frank van den Driest, and Keith Weed, uncovers what it takes to be a high-performing company. The Marketing2020 study has some excellent observations from which any sized business or nonprofit organization can benefit.

One major fact: The study demonstrates that marketing is no longer one entity, but extends throughout an organization, tapping every function. It’s always validating to read what many of us have been preaching for eons. Marketing is NOT a department. It is a mindset.

Here are some of the findings and recommendations:

• High performers have the ability to integrate data on what their customers are doing with the knowledge of why they’re doing it. They are gaining new insights into customer needs and how to best meet them.
• Top brands excel at delivering their brand purpose that includes functional benefits, emotional benefits, and societal benefits. A powerful and clear brand purpose improves alignment throughout the organization, ensures consistent messaging across touchpoints, engages customers, and inspires employees.
• Their research shows that high-performing brands provide the “total experience” by deepening customer relationships through leveraging what they know about given customers and focusing on the breadth of those relationships.
• High-performing companies recognize that all employees must share a common vision. They connect marketing to the business strategy and to the rest of the organization; inspire their organizations by engaging all levels with the brand purpose; focus their people on a few key priorities; organize agile, cross-functional teams; and build the internal capabilities needed for success.
• High-performing marketers link their departments to general management, other functions, and the CEO. They ensure that marketing goals support company goals; they bridge organizational silos by integrating marketing and other disciplines; and they ensure that global, regional, and local marketing teams work interdependently.
• Inspiration is one of the most underused drivers of effective marketing—and one of the most powerful. Research shows that high-performing marketers are more likely to engage customers and employees with their brand purpose—and that employees in those organizations are more likely to express pride in the brand. This enhances collaboration and, as more and more employees come into contact with customers, also helps ensure consistent customer experiences.
• Winning companies were more likely to measure their brands’ success against key performance indicators such as revenue growth and profit and to tie incentives at the local level directly to those KPIs.
• Marketing organizations must leverage global scale but also be nimble, able to plan and execute in a matter of weeks or a few months—and, increasingly, instantaneously.
• (I love this one.) Categorize marketing roles not by title, but as belonging to one of three broad types: “think” marketers, who apply analytic capabilities to tasks like data mining, media-mix modeling, and ROI optimization; “do” marketers, who develop content and design and lead production; and “feel” marketers, who focus on consumer interaction and engagement in roles from customer service to social media and online communities.
• The best marketing organizations have invested in dedicated internal marketing academies to create a single marketing language and way of doing marketing. Under-performing marketers, on the other hand, under invest in training.

1. Ensure that everyone in your organization understands the brand purpose and assumes responsibility for consistent messaging, behaviors, and attitudes.
2. Use whatever tools you can afford to truly understand your “customers” and their motivations, so you can deliver on your brand promise.
3. Provide ongoing training, reinforcement, and recognition to ensure that employees collaborate and cooperate in providing the very best service to each other and external customers.
4. Develop a solid marketing and branding strategy that includes metrics and KPIs. Evaluate and measure regularly.
5. Use internal marketing to keep everyone apprised of what’s going on and how they can support it.
6. When you can’t afford a specialized marketing team, hire multi-talented marketers who can work with external specialists while managing the brand.
7. Stay customer oriented. Put your customers at the center of everything you do.