If the answer to this was easy, there would be no quality disappointments for management.

Yet it’s a dilemma that has come up in conversation so many times in the last few weeks, that I have to devote a ThoughtSpark to it.

The short answer is – polarisation.

In our experience, the quality and commitment to intelligent delivery from in-house marketing departments ranges from almost unbelievably brilliant (you know who you are, my friends) to the absolutely shameful.

While there is a mediocre middle, we find that most departments veer to one end of the spectrum to the other. Either very, very good or very, very poor.

To make this a sensible post, let’s just stand back and ask what in-house marketing departments are there for.

First must come strategy. The business outlines a set of commercial goals each year (hopefully over multi-year periods too!). These commercial strategies, when well done, identify sunrise and sunset marketplaces, an appreciation of where revenues and margins are coming from, an assessment of the competitive environment, and an achievable set of goals therefrom.

Marketing then picks up these commercial objectives and crafts a supportive set of marketing strategies which are wholly focused on those commercial aims. Out of this then falls a plan – a practical journey to support the key goals – along with associated budget and resource requirements, as well as performance measures to demonstrate when success has been scored.

Here’s where the first issue can arise. Marketing leadership has to be sufficiently strong, credible and well-argued/knowledgeable to push back on commercial objectives if they are simply unrealistic… mere aspirations. Weak marketing directors accept targets they know they can‘t reach. And that does nobody any good.

In fact, a strong marketing director spends as much time educating internally – telling the business what marketing does, why and how it’s having impact on business growth – as they do managing team and external resources.

Then let’s look at what the marketing team does. Usually, the team’s responsibilities will be divided by skill or by market segment.

If it’s by skill, then they need to keep their hand in. Although the main job of an in-house marketer is to liaise between the business and the external providers actually doing the hard graft and execution, they need to know what they’re doing. A good example is a great friend of mine who manages web and online channels but is constantly updating her skills and knowledge. Another admirable example is a contact in charge of channel marketing who is never content unless they dip into some “hands on” every quarter.

If the team division is by market segment, then a healthy competition for knowledge between marketing manager and supplier agencies is a good thing. Never deploy a marketing manager who is not constantly talking to the business (commercial and sales) to understand how deals work and how customers are serviced. By the same token, never engage an agency that does not have this kind of domain knowledge and shows evidence of constantly growing that knowledge.

By the way, you lovely in-house people, don’t worry – next week I’m going to take the same sort of look at agencies!!!

So, my prognosis on in-house marketing standards? At least in my world of B2B?

30%: simply brilliant (and actually delightful for us agencies to work for – even if tough taskmasters).

10-15%: perfectly OK, but lacking that strategic visions and ability to influence upwards.

50%+: not delivering value for the organisation.

And why is this important for Directors and CEOs?

Because if you get the marketing right, it will transform your business results.

Simple.

I hope you find these bulletins entertaining. I’m happy to discuss all relevant engagements – from customer community creation, to directorial mentoring, to strategy development, to thought-leadership content development, to full campaign structuring and management, and more.

Do get in touch!