New research from marketing trade association MMA Global provides key insights on a topic at, or near, the top of the priority list for any company in any industry: Growth. The results revealed a 50/50 split among marketers when it comes to how to best achieve growth.
The results revealed two very distinct schools of thought:
- Go Long & Broad Purists. Mostly senior marketers with a strong conviction around the traditional principles of brand building, reach and penetration as the drivers of growth. (50 percent
- Pragmatic Balancers. Mid-senior marketers who take advantage of modern marketing opportunities (e.g. targeting), and choose to balance different approaches without always having one unifying theory. (50 percent)
“The MMA believes that every marketer must understand the rapidly evolving science of competing growth frameworks and put continuous effort into validating or re-validating them for their business. This research highlights the need for marketers to increase their expertise in applying and measuring the effectiveness of growth strategies to rationalize marketing’s contribution to overall company growth,” said Greg Stuart, CEO of MMA Global, in a news release. “It’s why the MMA Boards pushed us to develop a new approach to growth in our Outcomes-Based Marketing 2.0 (OBM2), released last year, which is currently being tested in the marketplace.”
For these reasons, the firm, along with Neustar, are launching a new discussion series, CMO Roundtables on Growth. This series aims to challenge marketers to gain a better understanding of the science behind effective growth strategies. The first session will take place on June 8th and will focus on Marketing Attribution as a key enabler of growth. The discussion will be moderated by Joanna O’Connell, VP/principal analyst at Forrester and will feature a panel of leading CMOs including Frank Crowson from Best Buy and Jonnie Cahill from Heineken USA, as well as offer live audience Q&A.
“The research highlights the risk marketers face in appearing opinion vs fact based in their decision making,” added Norman de Greve, CMO of CVS Health and Chair Emeritus of MMA’s North America Board, in the release. “The fact that there is such a divide among marketers on how to best maximize growth supports the need for industry conversations on the topic.”
In total, there will be five roundtables, each focusing on a different key marketing growth driver, including marketing attribution, creative, organization design, data, and customer experience.”
Additional CMOs who be joining these discussion panels include Elicia Azali from American Family Insurance Group, Lynne Biggar formerly from Visa, Jay Jaffin from Western Union, Linda Lee from Campbell’s, Carl Loredo from The Wendy’s Company, Deborah Wahl from General Motors, and Andrea Zaretsky from Morgan Stanley.
MMA Global clients can download the full report here.
The report is based on a survey of more than 200 mid to senior-level marketers at medium to large companies and sought to answer two critical questions: What is the level of marketing alignment when it comes to driving growth? And how do companies approach marketing growth?
