We all know what marketing strategies are.  It will probably come as a surprise that I don’t use the Strategic Marketing Group to do those strategies.  For one thing, as head of marketing, that’s my job!  For that matter, calling this a “group” is usually a misnomer because it frequently consists of just one person.  It’s easy to consider these points and conclude there’s no reason for such a “group,” yet I’ve never seen a serious company that did not have one or two people doing this function, regardless of what they were called.  Let me explain.

First, although I don’t have them formulating strategies, they are kept busy doing strategic activities, hence the name.  For instance, the way I do the annual marketing plan is to set some basic guidelines, and then have each of the six marketing groups write their section.  I use the Strategic Marketing “group” to manage that process, oversee the drafts, the schedules, and get the thing assembled for review.

I also use this group to keep track of the various industry associations and conferences.  Several of these may look to our company for data about our shipments that will be merged into industry reports that the members can then use to calculate share-of-market numbers.  It’s important to me that this data be calculated in a consistent way, because I don’t want industry analysts taking off on us due to some misreported data.  By the same token, the research services deliver volumes of expensive reports, and I want to be sure these are kept in one place and not lost.  In this case, strategic marketing provides data to the individual product marketing managers and acts as librarians to people “checking out” the reports.

I actually go a step further and charge Strategic Marketing with massaging the data from the research services, arriving at an “official” company model, and providing that to the product managers.  Why do this?  Because the services almost never present data in the form you really need… they group some products together with others and you really need them broken out.  Sometimes they define product categories in ways that don’t fit the company product map well.  In any event, I want one person to work through that data, call the research service and test their assumptions and chat with them about what went into the data, and then come up with a model that makes sense for us.  And there are two things that are critical if you go down this path.  First, your approach has to be defensible.  Second, it has to be used consistently from year to year.  The only way you can get this level of attention and consistency is by having a disinterested group charged with doing it — Strategic Marketing.

I have also used strategic marketing people to make high-level contacts with high-profile customers.  Many times people carrying sales titles find it hard to penetrate these customers at higher-management levels.  But something about the title, Strategic Marketing Manager, cuts through that resistance and can create an informal relationship between the companies at the highest levels… a relationship that, over time, will be turned into a customer / sales relationship.  It’s especially true in relationships that are more of an alliance than a sales relationship.  In the semiconductor industry, companies frequently agree to “second-source” each others’ products.  It would be inconceivable to have that type of an alliance explored by sales people, but someone carrying a strategic marketing title is perfectly situated in the organization to do it.  They have both the credibility in the company to get action taken and, at the same time, are not caught up in the details of individual product pricing or quoting.  They have just the right amount of power and distance.

Finally, I’ve found over the years that I frequently end up inheriting a senior manager whose experience and judgement I respect.  But they no longer have the energy or the desire to work the hours it takes to run a product line as a Product Marketing Manager.  Keeping them on board as the Strategic Marketing Manager lets me have continual access to their experience and advice, and gives the company a valuable channel for working industry associations and strategic relationships with other companies.

One of the best guys I’ve ever had in this role was Jerry GIbbs, the product marketing manager that hired me into the business back in the 70’s.  He worked for me as Strategic Marketing Manager at both Zilog and ZyMOS and did a spectacular job at it.  At Zilog he had a strategic group of about four people and even had a lab for prototyping little systems and checking out new market directions for us.  By using such an experienced manager like this, it gave the whole marketing department some real depth.

Tags: Big-M Marketing, Strategic Marketing

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