A colleague asked me recently whether Marketing and Excellence could fit in the same sentence….. This discussion got me thinking on the future of Marketing in the tech industry and the idea of this blog was born. So why does Marketing need Excellence?

Marketing in the tech industry was built on a very successful model in the last 20 years relying on the dual power of Product Marketing and Marketing Communications. Product Marketing rode the waves of great computing innovation such as Moore’s Law with masses of customers eager to upgrade to the next version. Marketing Communication relied heavily on a concentrated media model with TV 30 second spots and key publications dominating the scene.

The fundamentals of this model have been challenged over the past few years. Market hyper growth has slowed in core segments of the tech industry. The media landscape has exploded with the rapid development of cable TV and TIVO and the Internet is aggressively challenging the traditional model of advertising. The emergence of web 2.0 and search is quickly accelerating this phenomenon (I will address these topics in future posts). I have come to the realization that Marketing in the tech industry is at a turning point: continuing on a traditional path with shrinking budgets and headcount or re-defining itself in this new environment to take a larger role in driving business growth.

This is what Marketing Excellence is all about. It is a new approach to Marketing. It is Marketing pushing the boundaries of traditional accountability. It is about new skills and DNA. Because even in this new environment, some fundamentals are not going away:

Customers still matter: Marketing needs to re-establish its preeminent role as the voice of the customer in the organization. This not only implies excelling at market research and segmentation like what’s been done in the past but also developing the right proprietary customer insights. Analytics and mining customer and market intelligence will play a huge role.

Brands still matter: Marketing will need to establish a broader role defining not only the value proposition but influencing other brand loyalty drivers such as design and user interface. Brand marketeers will need to develop optimization models to decide on the right media mix trade-offs in a much more complex and fragmented media space. Finally Marketing will need to experiment and adapt to new media vehicles, such as advertising on blogs and embrace web 2.0.

Performance still matters: Marketing is one of the last functions that needs to embrace the imperative of process rigor and financial discipline with respect to its return on investment. Short of that, Marketing will not be given the license to expand its core responsibilities as described above.

Marketing needs excellence today more than ever and is at a turning point of redefining its future. Join me in the journey……