Middlesex Savings Bank

Kerri Madnick is VP of Marketing Product Manager with more than a decade of experience in financial services marketing. Her work spans product strategy, customer acquisition and engagement, marketing automation and integrated marketing strategy. She also serves as President of the New England Financial Marketing Association (NEFMA) and as a board member of the Boys & Girls Clubs of MetroWest.

There is a moment most marketers know all too well.

A business line comes to you with a new product, initiative or goal. The decisions have been made. The timeline is set. Maybe the launch is only a few weeks away.

Then comes the question: Can marketing make a flyer?

The flyer isn’t really the problem. Sometimes a flyer is exactly what is needed. The problem is when marketing’s first involvement in an initiative comes after all of the important decisions have already been made.

At that point, we’re not being asked to help solve the business problem. We’re being asked to communicate a solution someone else has already decided on.

Marketing can—and should—bring much more to the table.

Bring Marketing in Earlier

Marketing teams have traditionally been viewed as the people responsible for advertising, email, social media, websites and creative. We still own those things, but our role has evolved well beyond them.

Today, marketers are sitting on an incredible amount of information. We see customer behavior, campaign performance, market research, competitive activity and digital analytics. As technology improves, we’re getting an even clearer picture of what customers are doing and what they may need next.

That perspective is valuable long before anyone starts talking about creative.

If the organization wants to grow a product, for example, my first question isn’t, How are we going to promote it?

I want to know: Who are we trying to reach? What problem are we solving for them? Is the offer competitive? What does our data tell us? Are we trying to deepen an existing relationship or bring in someone new? And, most importantly, why would a customer care?

Those aren’t marketing questions. They’re business questions.

Marketing should be helping answer them.

Sometimes the Answer isn’t More Marketing

One of the most important things I’ve learned as a marketing leader is that not every business challenge is a marketing challenge.

If customers aren’t adopting a product, the answer isn’t automatically another email or a bigger campaign.

Maybe the product isn’t differentiated enough. Maybe the customer experience has too much friction. Maybe we’re targeting the wrong audience. Maybe employees don’t fully understand the value proposition. Or maybe customers simply aren’t looking for what we’re trying to sell them.

Sending another email isn’t going to fix those things.

"I don’t think marketing needs to own every conversation. But I do think we should be part of more of them. Bring marketing in when you’re evaluating the opportunity, not just when you’re ready to promote it."

Sometimes marketing’s greatest value comes from being willing to say, I don’t think another campaign is going to solve this.

To do that well, marketers have to understand the business beyond the marketing department. We need to understand revenue goals, customer behavior, product economics, operations, technology and the priorities of the teams we’re supporting.

The better we understand the business, the better questions we can ask.

Stop Measuring Marketing by How Much We Produce

It’s easy to measure marketing by output.

How many campaigns did we launch? How many emails did we send? How much content did we create?

But being busy isn’t the same as driving the business forward.

If we want marketing to be viewed as a strategic partner, we need to connect what we’re doing to outcomes the organization actually cares about.

That also means getting comfortable pushing back on the original request.

When someone asks for a campaign, I want to understand what they’re actually trying to accomplish. Who are we trying to reach? What behavior are we trying to change? What would success look like?

Sometimes we’ll get through those questions and the answer will still be a campaign.

Other times, we may realize the better solution is a change to the customer journey, an automated communication at the right moment, a different audience, better employee education or something else entirely.

That’s not marketing making things more complicated. It’s marketing making sure we’re solving the right problem.

Technology Doesn’t Replace the Strategy

Marketing automation, artificial intelligence and increasingly connected customer data are changing what’s possible for marketers.

We can trigger communications based on customer behavior, personalize experiences and reach people at moments that actually matter.

That’s exciting. But there’s also a risk that we become so focused on what the technology can do that we forget to ask what it should do.

Automating the wrong message still gives you the wrong message—just faster.

Instead of starting with, What can we automate? I think the better question is, Where could a timely, relevant interaction actually make the customer’s experience better?

Technology should help us deliver the strategy. It shouldn’t become the strategy.

Earning the Seat at the Table

I don’t think marketing needs to own every conversation. But I do think we should be part of more of them.

Bring marketing in when you’re evaluating the opportunity, not just when you’re ready to promote it.

Let us look at the customer data. Let us challenge the audience. Let us understand the business goal. Let us ask whether the product, experience and message actually line up.

But marketers have a responsibility here, too.

We can’t ask for a seat at the table and then only talk about marketing.

We have to understand the numbers. We have to ask difficult questions. We have to be willing to recommend not launching a campaign. And we have to measure ourselves against outcomes that matter to the organization—not just marketing metrics.

That’s how marketing moves from the department that executes the strategy to a team that helps shape it.

And for the record, I’ll still happily make the flyer when a flyer is the right answer.

I just want to be part of the conversation that determines whether we needed one in the first place.