The life of a hummingbird rarely exceeds four years.  The life expectancy of a Marketing Director (or CMO or VP of Sales & Marketing) at any given company is even less than that. The typical tenure these days is a little more than 3 years and this is up from about 26 months in 2004.  In fact, as you stroll through the offices at many companies, it’s an easy bet which executive is a dead man (or woman) walking: the Marketing Director.

What are some of the reasons causing such a short tenure? What are some things a Marketing Director can do to be successful? How much of that is on the company and how much is brought on by the individual?

• It starts before the hire is made. It’s been said that over 60% of companies don’t know what they’re looking for when they recruit a Marketing Director.  In many cases, these companies can’t spell out coherently what the person would be accountable for.  Are you and the President/CEO on the same page? I’ve heard it more than once: “I was brought in to drive change, but the organization wasn’t aligned behind the change agenda.” Whose fault is that?!?

• There are sky-high expectations surrounding what a Marketing Director can and should do.  The best Marketing Director can’t turn poorly made or poorly priced products into marketplace winners every time, nor by themselves create a culture of innovation to make sure new, exciting products are always being developed.

• As I wrote about in my last blog, everyone in the organization thinks that they know how to do that “marketing thing,” so they have no compunction in second-guessing the marketing strategy or the creative. Everyone’s an expert even though they’re not.

• There is an impatience in the effectiveness of marketing. People want results right away and it is probably because the economy has been in the toilet for a few years.  So there is a pressure on reporting how marketing is working for a brand and the CEO/President is looking for a more immediate payoff.  It doesn’t help that chief executives and chief marketers often have very different imperatives.

• Some companies are finally realizing it is time to ramp things up and yet there are too many Marketing Directors ‘hiding under the table,’ relying on the same old people…internally as well as their external marketing “partners”. Think: Different horses for different courses.

• As more is written about different ways to seize on new business revenue, you have a Marketing Director who is being forced by a company President/CEO to incorporate these “must haves” into the organization’s marketing activities.  As important as social media platforms are, for example, they are not necessarily of equal worth or equally effective for all businesses and all products.  But it is a brave and daring CMO who can resist CEO pressure to devote scarce resources in chasing what “everyone knows” is today’s “marketing must.”

• There is more confusion than there should be between sales and marketing roles, what they can do, and how they must work together.

Ok, so how much of this is do you see or experience in the world that you live in? If you’re like the vast majority of Marketing Directors in this country, you see any of these issues popping up on a fairly regular basis. Here are a few things to consider in order to make sure you’re not having to call your executive recruiter anytime soon.

• Do not become stale in the way that you market, from the strategy to the creative to the channels to your thinking. The status quo is a communicable disease that will infect everything you touch if you let it.

• Be personally inquisitive about new technology and new markets and the social implications of new technology.

• Become the voice of the customer. And what’s important is not just understanding the customer ….but the end user.

• Be responsible and accountable for nurturing, growing and protecting the brand. Successful marketers truly must understand the convergence of product, brand promise and experience and get the company to understand that convergence as well.

• Listen to align the rest of the organization around the need to build “our change agenda” not “my change agenda.”

• Continue to make an investment in your own education to keep yourself exposed to things out of your comfort zone. From books and seminars to online webinars and articles you find on your LinkedIn groups. There are so many invaluable resources!

• The need for a strategic marketing partner is imperative. Now and in the coming years, it will be more important than ever to partner with an agency that doesn’t simply fulfill projects for you, but one that offers you the advantage of broad strategic experience in the trenches. One thing is certain about the years to come: companies will have to stay nimble and adjust strategies on the fly.  Who you choose to have on your team is going to mean everything.

• And, I would suggest, too little effort is made to educate and promote the marketing role within the organization.  It is the Marketing Director’s job (another one) not merely to develop and define strategy but to explain it – not only to customers and prospects but to employees and other senior level executives.

While the marketing landscape changes so quickly, the good news is that a Marketing Director can succeed in the face of headwinds no matter which way he/she faces. It may be more challenging than it should be, but stand true to your brand, be current and always in the know, and be bold enough to make a difference….otherwise, chances are, you might be dusting off that resume.

I had a phone call with a previous client last week and during our talk she told me more than once how she felt like the role of her marketing department was being marginalized. Apparently, over the course of the last few years, various internal departments who relied on the marketing team to support their activities are now more or less telling them what they want said and how they wanted it represented in the various forms and channels. They’re playing Copywriter and Art Director. The reason why this has happened was summed up by what more and more people in organizations think: “Anyone can do Marketing.”

Unfortunately, there are people in C-suites around this country, self appointed ‘marketing experts’ on the web (who are generally selling something), etc., who believe that to be the case.  In fact, the marketing department is also occasionally to blame. How’s that? Well, have you noticed any of the job postings for marketing people? Some of the position descriptions are impressive and ask for proficiency in a number of specialties like SEO, CRM, social media, Photoshop, along with more traditional marketing areas.  And then comes the kicker: 2-4 years experience required. What??? Obviously, marketing management who wrote the job spec doesn’t view its role as that complicated or requiring suitable experience to do the job correctly. No wonder respect is hard to come by.

As we know, businesses depend on professional attorneys to oversee their legal affairs and experienced accountants to manage their finances. But some executive level business people don’t think twice about turning over their revenue-producing marketing efforts to someone who doesn’t have a clue what the 5 P’s of Marketing are. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say “Troy, I know you’re a engineer by training but you took a class in junior college about law, didn’t you? Hey, would you mind doing some international patent registration for us?” Yet a very similar conversation happens with marketing.

Misguided companies everywhere assign the marketing role to anyone who they think is “creative” or can write. And people in your company know people outside of your organization who fit that bill. So why should they think that you’re different? What’s been done to offset that perception?

In the organization I mentioned, the marketing department first let some things go that they shouldn’t have and ultimately as a result they’ve abdicated their role as experts and brand stewards.  They’re now seen as mere fulfillers.  In their zeal to make people happy, they took the thoughts offered up by the internal stakeholders as the easy way out in order to get through the work in their queue.  Having overseen a creative services team for a large financial services company, I know how this can happen and how tempting it can be when it “just needs to get done ASAP!”  But you’re just opening up Pandora’s box when you go down that road.  So what are a few ways for people to better understand the value that marketing offers? Here goes:

1. Don’t accept work without setting up a meeting to discuss. If it’s important to get the work done, then it’s important for the time to be spent up front getting it right.
2. Come to the meeting prepared with questions that need to be answered…thoughtfully, like, for starters, “Why does this need to be done?  What should be the outcome?” Show the value of why these questions are being asked.
3. Bring research that can help in addressing the issue but also ask for research as well (this stops a lot of opinion-giving). Talk about ways that the work could be repurposed.
4. Set clear expectations on a timeline because some of these people think it can done in a day or so (remember, this is the group that believes “anyone can do marketing”).
5. Bring insights into the equation…not just facts. Facts are “on the surface” while insights are “beneath the surface” and give birth to the type of emotional messaging that connects with your audience.
6. When the time comes to present your ideas/creative, make sure they’re really good. Not sort of good but really good. Anyone can rely on clichés (“For all your ______ needs.”) or rip offs (“Got ____?”) or poorly executed puns.
7. Should things not go splendidly when the work is presented, do not let yourself be pushed around in order to accept the ideas initially offered up by the internal stakeholder. If you do, you’re really not accomplishing anything and in fact, you’re seen as a roadblock to getting work done quicker.
8. Make the process standard operating procedure and non-negotiable and stick to it.
9. Distribute finished work to various internal departments for awareness purposes

At the end of day, the value of your department or specifically, your job, is more at stake than you might imagine. A so-so marketing plan, a mediocre tradeshow booth or ad or collateral piece, a ho-hum status quo “integrated” campaign…they all make you look more like a fulfiller of marketing needs and less like the marketing professional that the company is counting on to drive revenue, awareness, brand preference, etc.  In fact, not showing value is the quickest way to have the work you do be discounted as nothing special.

So if your organization believes that “Anyone can do Marketing,” consider whether or not you have a role to play in that notion.

Over the past 5 years or so, it’s it happen more times than we care to remember …maybe even at a company that we once worked at. (For me it was Countrywide Home Loans.) I’m talking about a company or brand that was once a familiar part of the business landscape which is now no longer around. Disappeared. Gone and forgotten. From Oldsmobile to Borders bookstores to more big city and community newspapers than one can count.

The fact that “going out of business” has become such a growth business, it got me thinking about a question I’ve posed time and again to the marketing leadership of companies during this “New Normal.”

The question is simple and insightful — and it’s worth taking seriously as you evaluate your approach to strategy, competition, and innovation. Here it is:  If your company went out of business tomorrow, would anybody really miss you and why? Let that swim around in your brain for a bit.

If that question didn’t concern you…maybe it should. What’s being done in order to make your brand important enough and invaluable to your customer so that they feel they could not live without, or at worst not want to live without you?  Here are 5 ways to help make your company or brand so meaningful that your various customers would notice if you went out of business.

First, you must provide a product or service so different that it can’t be provided nearly as well by any of your main competitors. Mercedes would certainly be one, maybe even Ritz-Carlton and Southwest Airlines as well. But really, how many products or services fall into this group? Do your customers see you as a “must” or a “they’ll do”? How many viable options are there to what you offer? Do they trust you to follow through on what you’re telling them? What makes you so special…really?

Second, meaningful brands are created by people with a vision and a passion, and destroyed by “caretakers.” Perhaps the founder of a company identified a niche or angle that was unique and pursued it with passion.  But once the brand is relinquished into the hands of “caretakers” more focused on the financials and preserving the status quo, it can tend to be slowly destroyed. Marketing, and I mean the kind of marketing that moves people to act, is something seen getting smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror.  Former President Reagan once said “Status quo is Latin for the ‘mess we’re in’.” Amen.

Third, make sure that the company continues to innovate and not stand still when the brand realizes some success. When something works, either because it was thought through or, more times than not, by other factors, the “don’t fix it if it is not broken” philosophy kicks in. The growth of the brand or company stalls, instead of constantly trying to evolve, improve and adapt to the changing world. One cannot win a race by standing still. Vanilla/mediocre advertising is a big contributor to — or perhaps the result of — standing still.

Fourth, your company must forge a uniquely emotional connection with your customers that other companies can’t copy. Apple is an obvious passion brand in the performance-obsessed technology world. HBO is a brand in the fussy media market that doesn’t just have viewers but devoted followers. But in a world of endless choices, how many companies and brands do you know that have achieved the status that inspires “loyalty beyond reason?” Is there a reason why your brand shouldn’t one? Can your company be an Apple, Starbucks or HBO to your customers? If your answer is “we can be a brand like that”… good for you!

Lastly, look at the marketplace and understand who you’re competing against.  Many companies and brands define their business too narrowly just like stagecoach owners did. They focused on offering the best stagecoach service, the cheapest stagecoach service or the fastest stagecoach service. Eventually other forms of getting people from “A” to “B” came along, like when the jet plane destroyed the lucrative transatlantic ocean liner business. You need to define what business you’re in and who the competition really is.  Food for thought: If Google’s the one ranking your business against your peers, then it makes sense to understand who they think you’re similar to, right?  Type in your own URL in the search bar and see what comes up. You may be surprised.

The fact is, a very few companies meet any of these criteria — which may be why so many companies feel like they are on the verge of going out of business.  So the next time someone at work urges you to think small and settle, ask them why they believe that playing it safe is playing it smart. That’s what they thought at Saturn, E.F. Hutton and House and Garden magazine — and look how it worked out for them!  For, as they found, their customers could live without them.

At the end of the day, if your customers can live without you, eventually they will.  If you do business the way everybody else does business, you’ll never do much better. If your answer to the question of whether anyone would notice if your company or brand went out of business is “no” or “not sure” – you need to focus on how to ensure it doesn’t happen. What is your marketing doing to make sure that doesn’t happen?