As often as not, our consulting assignments end up here. (Click for article.)

Original Question from another group member. (Click to read full thread, which requires Group membership.):

• Do you agree with my top 5 mistakes in Marketing?
  I look forward to any comments or addition thoughts, have I missed any marketing mistakes that would be in your top 5 list?
  • Not having a game plan
  • Not have a refined market or marketing message
  • Not having an organised system in place
  • Being passive, not proactive in your marketing
  • Believing the media hype that “ times are tough” and that you should cut back

First word that popped into my mind was "silos," which is a rather ubiquitous organizational issue for marketers. The worst case is when Marketing’s position within the organization is constrained to "Communications," which is the case all too often. After that comes the attitude that we’re just a Sales support function in the eyes of senior management, or that our accountabilities stop at the Revenue line instead of going all the way down to the bottom line. (Self-serving plug for BottomLine Marketing.)

There are more subtle constraints, however, that we marketers often put on ourselves… whether out of short-sightedness, cultural taboos, insufficient training, insecurity, or power-hoarding and empire building. If you’re a tech firm, your marketing will fall short until Engineering understands and embraces the connection Marketing can provide between their efforts and the marketplace. If your Customer Service people – pretty much the only folks who interact with customers on a continuous basis – don’t understand, embrace, personify and project your brand, then you’re falling short. And I don’t just mean slapping on a telephone script that has them say "How may I provide excellent service today?"

We can check these off function-by-function… If your Finance/Accounting team are the enemy and they only see Marketing as an expense, you’re falling short. (Among the first things our consultancy does is interview the client’s Finance/Accounting team and get key numbers from them. Invariably that team is surprised to be near the top of the list for marketing consultants.) And let’s not forget Sales, often the toughest silo to bridge… If we don’t speak their language and work with them as valuable partners, we’re just missing huge opportunities.

So over all the good observations and suggestions that have come before, I think the biggest failure is to conceive of Marketing as far narrower than it can be.