Will this dual role for marketing make any of the roles less relevant? The job of marketing is to create value through differentiated offerings. In order to create value, they need to first create value for requires an understanding of their needs. To offer differentiated products or services, marketers need to study competitors and substitute products. Technology management is easy today mere technology will not help deliver all of the above. Recall how many multi-crore customer relationship management (CRM) projects had failed abysmally in the past. SMEs should let the marketing head develop the ... with a clear understanding of what customers want and then position the offerings right. Make him measure any action or tactic leading from the strategy using technology as an aid and not as a replacement for marketing strategy. Finally, agree on clear deliverables to manage the expectations of the owners when campaign budgets are decided. Short-term results cannot necessarily improve long-term brand value. Therefore SME owners should keep this focus more in their minds as marketing folks have been focusing more on delivering short-term results before jumping the ship for better prospects.Having the marketing folks head technology too is not a bad move to engage new-age employees meaningfully. For an SME, tech needs could easily be outsourced to major players who have developed cloud services on an operational use basis. Rapid advances in technology are changing almost everything we have known. The acceleration is only increasing post-pandemic outbreak. Are there some silver linings for SMEs to benefit from this? From accounting to marketing and sales, technology is omnipresent and most new-age employees seem perfectly at ease with tech tools. If the tech tools are embraced by different functions to improve productivity and return on investments (ROI), should SME owners think of combining some functions and tackle the issue of talent shortage with tech tools – so to speak? My point is, can’t tech and marketing be handled by one head instead of two different heads? SME owners are demanding more from marketers and to be accountable for every marketing investment. The average marketer is driven up the wall with tech tools and analytics. This is one reason more churn is happening at most SMEs. How can this be changed? Even in large companies, the tenure of a marketing head is less than that of a CEO. Marketing folks can actually embrace technology to have more control over their activities. They can also get the real-time measurement. This will also help in addressing the accountability questions they are subjected to more frequently now by the bosses. The question of ROI of marketing is getting louder and as such SMEs are confused between the roles of marketing and sales. This is easier measured with technology today than a few years ago. Interestingly, when we did a major workshop for marketers 10 years ago, there were hardly 100 senior executives who had come to the session and the majority lamented that India was at least 10 years behind in measuring (Return on Marketing Investment). Things have changed since then. Marketers who have not been able to keep up with the changes that are happening across the world will be left way behind.
With tech tools, SMEs should combine the functions of marketing and technology how?
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