I was asked the other day to explain the role of a marketing manager. It is a good question because it has changed so much over the past few years. I love this Gartner map that outlines all the areas that a marketer needs to be across today.
Lets look at each section in turn.
Strategy – Understanding market opportunities, cultivating markets and customers, generating demand and awareness.
Marketing Management – Business processes and tools associated with implementing the marketing activities
User experience – the discipline associated with creating customer experiences that meet business objectives.
Analytics – the process of discovering meaningful patterns in data.
Creative – services and tools that supports the implementation of marketing programs.
Ad Tech – managing advertising through all the channels (web, social, offline, mobile) – targeting, design and bid management, optimising and reporting and automation.
Real Time Data – can now be provided by geotargetting and other technologies to assist us reach prospects on the fly
Search – to help get found and find things on the web.
Social – applications, technologies and environments that build social communities
Mobile – communication, applications and wireless devices (smart phones, tablets, portable computers)
Emerging technologies – new technologies that consumers are adopting, 3D televisions, solar cars, google glasses. Only very early adopters. 5% of the market.
So as I see it the role is enormous. In the coming years I see more experts being created around each area of expertise. The intersection between customer centricity, strategy and technology is my sweetspot. Learn more.
To learn more go to the webinar. or download slides
Here is a good slideset on the future of Marketing
Strategic Service Design 