Given the new challenges confronting most organizations, finding and keeping customers has become mission critical. And traditional approaches to marketing, such as introducing more products or increasing advertising, may not add value. A “value-added” approach to marketing is much more complex than traditional approaches.

“In today’s world, customers are scarce – not products – and classic marketing needs to be deconstructed, redefined, and broadened to reflect this new reality. It calls for a fundamental rethinking of corporate strategy to enable the ongoing creation and delivery of superior value for customers in both the marketplace and the marketspace. And it appoints marketing as the lead driver in shaping and implementing this strategy.”
- Market Moves: A New Approach to Profits, Growth, and Renewal by Philip Kotler, Dipak C. Jain, and Suvit Maesincee

One way to get more out of marketing is to elevate marketing into your strategic process. In fact, your strategy should be dominated by marketing since customers drive so much of what a business does. And when you create more value for your customers than your competition, then you have a more sustainable future.

Another key part of creating value through marketing is through alliances and partnerships. In order to execute across the entire marketing chain (supplies, public relations, advertising, product innovation, etc.), you must align yourself with some critical partners. Just like building a great sports team, you need highly talented players that can execute on their part of the marketing mix. This will require strong collaboration within everyone, connecting the knowledge in a way that marketing is now fully integrated as opposed to fragmented silos of activity. Fragmented pieces of marketing are less value added since too many errors and miscommunication problems take place in the absence of a single, cohesive effort. Once again, you can think of it in terms of a sports team where everyone on the field clearly understands how they must execute.

“Marketing is a matching process, one that pairs the capabilities of a company and the wants of the customers. What is the unique value that you will create? What steps will you need to take to create this unique value? What steps will you need to take to insure that you continue to have a competitive advantage?
- Marketing Plans that Work by Malcolm H.B. McDonald and Warren J. Keegan

Finally, your marketing effort will need to have processes in place to monitor and react quickly to changes demanded by your customers. One way to accomplish this is to fall back on your “integrated” marketing chain since this is an invaluable source of knowledge. By tapping into this knowledge, you begin to “manage” the entire process. This is commonly referred to as Customer Relationship Management or CRM. CRM is the process by which you learn about opportunities on how you can add value to customers in the chain (supplier, vendor, end-user of products and services). And as long as you can create and build more value, then you are creating value through your marketing effort.

“Customer relationship management (CRM) can be the single strongest weapon you have as a manager to ensure that customers become and remain loyal. Implementing CRM is nonnegotiable in today’s business environment. Whether your customers are internal or external, consumers or businesses, whether they connect with you electronically or face to face, from across the globe or across town, CRM is your ticket to success.”
- Customer Relationship Management by Kristen Anderson and Carol Kerr