Part 2 of 3: Is Marketing a Discipline That Can Be Learned?

Julie Baker is an experienced marketing executive who works with the star of our last blog post, Shelley Stanford, at Zoetis. She is often tasked with hiring, training and working with marketers who don’t have a marketing background.

Though she is quick to point out that not everyone can be a successful marketer, she has seen how a structured approach to building strategies and plans can accelerate the development of non-traditional marketers. We asked her to share an example of how her company’s disciplined process accelerated an inexperienced marketers development.

“A new marketing manager on my team, Polly, is a classic example of an Accidental Marketer who benefitted greatly from our structured marketing process. She had over 20 years of experience in Regulatory Affairs and Production, knew the products and market incredibly well, but hadn’t spent a day in marketing when I hired her as marketing manager for a portfolio of important products.”

Julie insisted that Polly immediately learn and utilize Zoetis’ strategic marketing approach. This helped Polly translate her technical knowledge of the products into powerful marketing strategies like a seasoned professional.

The process gave Polly confidence in being able to handle her new role, and accelerated her skills to the point where she created two successful product launches within one year. According to Julie, “The approach has quickly turned Polly into a real marketer. She truly loves marketing and is now energized by it.”

We have found that a company-wide marketing process of the type found at organizations like Zoetis, Covidien, Pfizer and GE has many benefits. One of the biggest advantages is that these marketing systems provide thinking tools for inexperienced marketers. We are not talking about PowerPoint templates that are filled out as part of some rote planning exercise.

The tools provide marketers with a discipline for examining all angles of their market, customer and competitive situation. Ultimately the process helps inexperienced marketers examine strategic options almost as well as a seasoned pro.

While some experienced marketers may resist this type of structure for a variety of reasons, many Accidental Marketers love to work this way. As Shelley Stanford explains “Because of my technical background and training, my mind works like a flowchart already. I start by asking ‘what question are we trying to answer?’ I then ask ‘what diagnostics are needed to get insights?’ Based on the outcome of these inquiries, we need to have a plan for moving forward for any of a number of scenarios.”

“Our marketing discipline guides us to work in just this way. There’s a series of questions we are prompted to ask that allow us to examine a variety of strategy approaches with the ultimate purpose of finding the path to offering maximum value and differentiating our products and services.”

Beyond an improved capability for Accidental Marketers to turn insights into strategies, a process also leads to more efficient marketing planning processes, and better company cross-functional alignment. It’s this last point where non-traditional marketers can often have an advantage.

Stay Tuned for Part 3: The Power of a Common Language. We’ll discuss the most important component to successful execution of a marketing plan, whether created by an Accidental Marketer or a veteran marketer.