WHAT MARKETING HAS BECOME. Thanks to digital, what used to be considered a sales support, cost center that was really good at "prettying" things up is now the revenue generating, ass-kicking investment center that is core to all growth. Why should anyone care? Because no one is used to it - not the marketers, not the people working with marketers, and definitely not the executive team funding marketers. This evolution has caused the value of transparency to skyrocket and those that don't realize it are paying the price.
Step back and consider what happens when people are faced with uncertainty and change? Questions, emails, reports, dashboards, meetings... and yes, even the dreaded cross-functional committees. You can't blame people for acting this way. Everyone wants to know what is happening, why it is happening, and what we are going to do about it. The biggest problem with this is the cost in time (people doing this work), money (food, meeting spaces, and even unnecessary systems), and opportunity lost (what else could you have been doing). This is the blessed curse marketing now faces and it has created a true premium on transparency.
WORKING WITH OTHERS. There is no way around it, in order for any marketing plan to work you MUST communicate with others about what is going on. Why? Because marketing now sits at the intersection of customer service, sales, retention, and technology. Although there are plenty of ways to keep others in the loop, I continue to see marketers more focused on marketing inside of their organization vs marketing outside of it. This is due to not having a hold on transparency. Think about it, for every hour a marketer spends trying to communicate with others, build a report, update a dashboard, etc., is a hour you lose on actually doing the planning, testing, and learning.
Just in case you think I am advocating for less internal communication, I am not. I have done that in the past and found out how bad things can be when you work in a silo. You find out there is less trust your plans, results, and insights... which means just that many more meetings, status emails, etc. What I am advocating for is taking the time to find the right balance.
Finding the balance is very, very tough, but those marketers that have figured it out are finding themselves in high demand... not for meetings, not for status updates, but for finding ways to make the company more money. And when you can get your marketers focused on finding more ways to make your company money, you will get to see the true value of marketing in this new digital world.
THE COST OF TRANSPARENCY. By just doing some simple math, you can see how an imbalance in transparency can cost you... A LOT.
1. Cost of employees - What percentage over 25% (which is an avg from my experience) of your marketer's time is spent on trying to communicate internally? Whatever is over 25%, multiply that times their salary .
Example: (50% - 25%) x $60K = $15K per year extra spent trying to tell others what is going on.
2. Cost of not learning and iterating - If your marketers are spending 50% or more of their time trying to communicate internally, then it is highly unlikely they are spending time learning and iterating on those findings. If you consider what is lost, it is at least 25% better results ( check out this content to see why I say at least 25% ... it is probably way more than that). Take your annual marketing budget and multiply it by 25%. This is essentially how much budget you are leaving on the table.
Example: $120K marketing budget x 25% inefficiency = $30K per year
If you have a marketing team of 2 people (@ $60K each) and a budget of $120K for agencies/programs/advertising, you are costing your company 1/4 of your entire marketing by not prioritizing transparency.
NET. NET. You can not afford to keep transparency off of your a core initiatives for marketing. It is probably costing you more than anything else the team is working on.