Marketing faces the unenviable position of having low barriers to entry, meaning anyone can call themselves a marketer, without having either the credentials or experience to support these claims.

As a consequence, there is a significant level of bad advice, leading to poor results that not only jeopardise client outcomes, but also the industry as a whole. The prevalence of design and digital agencies purporting to offer marketing, is leading to misinformation and a rush towards ill-considered tactics. The association of tactics with the word marketing, including content marketing, social media marketing, telemarketing and direct marketing, is creating an environment where tactics are undertaken without the required research and strategic insights that are required to achieve the desired results.

We are in an environment where it is very easy to spend on ‘marketing’, but a lot harder to generate a return.

Meanwhile, brands are being created without the insights required to correctly determine market segments and stakeholders. These brands ultimately fail due to a lack of connectivity with the market context. Similarly terms like brand equity get thrown around, without an understanding of how it should be measured and evaluated to enable performance monitoring.

Marketing needs to elevate itself and reach the Boardroom. It cannot do this while it fails to speak the language of the board and absconds from responsibility.

Marketing is often one of the first functions to be downsized during times of economic uncertainty, simply because it has failed to demonstrate value, due to poor and incorrect reporting on outcomes.

Marketing needs a governance framework that provides the capabilities and capacity to engage the Board, maintain accountability and deliver measurable results. Our White Paper on Marketing Governance provides the framework for marketing to embark on this journey.

No longer should marketing be considered a silo that is immeasurable and unresponsive. Marketing Governance provides the toolkit to enable:

• Strategic rigour and alignment with organisational goals.
• Evaluation and assessment of risk, both internal as well as the external context.
• Financial accountability by correctly budgeting cost centres and revenue generation.
• The relevant roles and responsibilities required to plan, manage and deliver marketing outcomes.
• Accountability through metrics and evaluation, ensuring that relevant inputs, outputs and outcomes are correctly identified across the customer lifecycle and measured.

While there is the impression that these issues may be limited to smaller businesses, the fact remains that marketing is significantly underdeveloped within Corporate Australia and government agencies, as much as not-for-profit organisations and new enterprises. Some of the most evident examples of marketing governance failure come from larger companies or organisations.

Time, money and reputation is being eroded due to poor marketing governance. Marketing Governance enables Marketing to reach and engage the boardroom, by stepping up and identifying that it needs and should do better.

Download our White Paper at www.synekamarketing.com.au/syneka-marketing-governance-framework/

Read this item at It’s time we focused on Redefining Marketing