How Marketers Can Overcome Short-Termism

Marketing is all about strategy — or is it? To find out, the August 2019 CMO Survey asked U.S. marketing leaders: “How much time do you spend managing the present versus preparing for the future of marketing in your company?” Overall, 341 leaders responded by reporting they spend 68.5% of their time “managing the present” and only 31.5% of their time “preparing for the future.” This finding holds across company size, sector, and industry.

This finding may surprise you given the business and marketing chatter about developing a digital business and navigating technological change to a better future. Visit any marketing blog and you will find practitioners discussing using advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, personalization, and analytics to win future business by improving the customer experience and creating new products and services. So what accounts for this seeming disconnect?

Looking at other evidence in The CMO Survey and business press, we’ve identified four drivers causing marketers to focus on the present at the expense of the future:

Pressure for short-term earnings: Marketing’s role is often viewed as a lever for driving short-term sales instead of the long-term growth engine it has been demonstrated to be. Quarterly earnings pressure from the stock market triggers the need to focus marketing campaigns on achieving immediate customer wins or extending product lines rather than building new capabilities or creating a breakthrough subscription or platform-style businesses.

Too few strategic roles: Marketers are often assigned tactical roles, such as managing social media or promotions. We see this in the August 2019 CMO Survey results showing that marketing leads market entry in only 37% of companies, revenue growth in only 36%, and market selection in only 20.6%. If marketers are not given a seat at the leader’s table, they will not have the credibility to inspire or lead strategic change.

Role ambiguity: Additionally, in the February 2019 CMO Survey, only one in three marketing leaders reported that they felt their role was “very clear.” If they feel their roles are too ambiguous, we believe it is likely that marketers may focus on immediate priorities rather than long-term strategies in order to make quick wins and protect what they can control.

Marketer compensation structure: In the February 2019 survey, marketers reported that 18.9% of their compensation is a performance bonus, on average, with an additional 8.2% in company equity. This imbalance can lead to a focus on short-term success in financial metrics to achieve performance bonuses, rather than focusing on long-term strategic objectives associated with building equity in the firm.

So, what should you do if your marketing organization is caught up in the chaotic whirlwind of the present and you don’t have the time or resources to prepare for the future? Here are a few actionable takeaways one of us (Christine) has found in her teaching, research, and work with companies that we think can help marketing leaders refocus on the future.

Adopting a Future Focus

Allocate time every week to think long-term: Strategic planning should not be something that happens once a year. It should be a part of a marketing teams’ daily and weekly thinking. The long-term view means thinking about brand building and customer relationships — both long-term plays — even as short-term decisions are being made. You can encourage your leaders and teams to think about the future by asking how short-term decisions contribute to corporate and marketing strategies. If they don’t, they should be tabled or cancelled outright.

Invest in marketing capabilities: Organizational-level knowledge and skills embedded in key processes are engines that drive success. Capabilities allow firms to repeat successes, work more productively, eliminate errors, and institutionalize practices. They also make it difficult for peers to imitate, thus widening the competitive gap over time. Marketers report they approach capability-building mostly by hiring new employees with those skills or training existing employees (59.8%), but also rely on learning from agencies (14.5%) and consultancies (12.2%) to equip them with new capabilities and embed them into their culture. Figure out what capabilities are key to your business and build them. On top of this, work to create a culture of continuous learning, where employees can obtain new skills on a regular basis.

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