There has been a contrast between the low-risk go-to-market approach and the need to rescale marketing strategies, claims the latest study from Gartner.
In this digital era, focusing on existing customers is expected to be more favourable for businesses than other marketing strategies. As a result, CMOs are putting more effort into low-cost and low-risk business plans.
Gartner recently published its “Gartner CMO Strategic Priorities Survey 2021” – where almost 73% of businesses indicated being dependent on the existing customers to fuel growth this year. CMOs will avoid looking to develop new markets for now.
The study also found that nearly 39% of the respondents plan to increase the sales of their existing products – to the current customers in 2021. Another 34% reported introducing new products and services to existing customers.
However, such a low-risk marketing approach could be at odds with CMOs as they desire to reinvent and rescale the crucial strategies – which are established over the pandemic era. Simply put, this low return plan has been warranted given the market uncertainties.
Jay Wilson, the VP Analyst at Gartner Marketing practice, explains in the company blog post – “At the same time, we see CMOs being overly ambitious in terms of the change they expect to bring to how their organizations interact with customers.”
Jay added, “With the scale of recent change organizations have experienced as a result of COVID-19, CMOs must take care to ensure their own strategic approach is matched to the enterprise’s aspirations.”
Gartner surveyed more than 380 marketers to explore different marketing strategies. The focus was to understand how businesses accelerate growth while reinventing them to be well-positioned post-pandemic, reducing lower than pre-pandemic stages, returning to pre-pandemic levels, or retiring as they are no longer sustainable.
Certainly, CMOs can’t rescale and reinvent strategies while executing effectively and remaining agile in an era that comes with more challenges. Companies that attempt to renew a lot often risk failing – while overloading their teams.
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In this context, Gartner suggests marketers are required to consider the following to successful business execution –
- Being Selective– CMOs should prioritize what they select to reinvent or rescale to pre-pandemic levels. The focus needs to be on the most critical efforts in the short-term – aligned with their growth plans for 2021, while the rest should be delayed or deprioritized.
- Documenting Decisions– Companies should make sure that all decisions to reinvent rescale, retire, reduce, or return are appropriately accepted by other stakeholders. It will ensure the management that the priorities of the marketing team are focused on the maximum returning initiatives.
- Planning Scenario– While marketing leaders should make tough trade-offs now; they should also introduce formal scenario planning. This is to support a constant cycle of iterative adjustments – as 2021 commercial conditions warrant.
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As a result, experts say that marketing leaders must try to escape reinventing the strategy wheel in 2021. For any strategy being rescaled, they should choose another to either reduce or retire. And for every reinvention of the plan, another should return to pre-pandemic levels.
