ln the future, with the correct balance of strategic, tactical and personal skills and experience, a marketer should be able not only to successfully fulfil their own operational role, but also to help in the wider development of the organisation in which they are working.
In many traditional organisations driven by sales, production or product orientation, the role of the marketer has been quite subservient. This has often resulted in a short- term focus, with objectives that are supporting rather than leading. This can be frustrating for the career-driven marketer and probably less advantageous to the organisation, which then fails to reap the potential value that a strategic marketer can provide.
In the future this is likely to change and the marketers who harness a strong set of complementary skills and experience will be the ones who raise the bar in marketing, and at last ensure it achieves the prominence and authority that it has long promised.
Collaboration will also be at the core of the soft skills the marketer of the future will need to foster. This will be nowhere more important than in the marketing and sales relationship. Gone will be the "us and them” ethos that has dogged these two potentially compatible teams of professionals, to be replaced by a solid, mutually agreed collaborative pathway in the best interests of the organisation.
The best marketers are likely to use a set of common strategic objectives to bond together sales and marketing. Rather than the old internal bickering and failure to see or understand each other's challenges, pressures and values, the new blended sales and marketing teams will use their collective strengths and work together to share the ‘voice of the customer’ back into the organisation, to fine tune customer need, to achieve short term tactical targets and to embrace and celebrate a mutually advantageous position.
For many more experienced marketers who are used to the legacy style of marketing they will need to join their newer colleagues in displaying adaptability as the pace of change in their market place continues to increase. There will be less time to reflect, shorter new product development timescales and product lifecycles.
Marketers who are less flexible and adaptable will quickly become irrelevant as the organisation looks to marketing for direction in the latest technologies, systems and processes. The role of the marketer will balance thought leadership and futurology with evidence collected from regular market analysis and auditing. By fully embracing the necessity for change, the successful marketer will retain a thirst for learning. Not only continuous improvement of their personal skills, leadership qualities and management techniques, but also best practice from within their sector and beyond.
This thirst for learning will require the marketer of the future to continuously search out new and better ways of working to allow themselves the time and space for self-development. Some of this will be through more structured professional learning and qualifications, but also through continuous reading and self-research, every day.
By Neil Wilkins, Tutor at Cambridge Marketing College.
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