The Extent of Leadership in Marketing - Case Study Example

The Extent of Leadership in Marketing Name of University Submitted by Names: Tutor: Date The Extent of Leadership in Marketing Definition of Leadership Leadership is the process of influencing others socially, by enlisting their aids and support so that a common task can be accomplished. According to Kruse (2013), leadership is not dependent on one’s position or seniority in the company, and therefore it is not management, although the two can be combined. According to the views of some respected business thinkers such as Peter Drucker, Bill Gates and John Maxwell, leadership involves having followers, ensuring influence and translating the company vision into reality. Therefore, Kruse deduce that leadership is a process whereby one (the leader) influences others socially, maximizing their efforts to achieve common goals (Kruse 2013). Leadership and Marketing Many business literatures agree that to be a marketer, one has to be a leader first. Leadership will enable marketing executives to deliver insights that can change the way organizations function to withstand both emerging business and long-standing challenges so that they can improve their strategic functions while at the same time attracting and converting buyers (Miller 2013; Tellis and Golder 1996). Looking at the current economic climate and customers’ lack of confidence to buy most of companies’ products, it is evident that stronger attributes of marketing leadership are needed (Lusch, Vargo and Malter 2006). As consultants at Brand Learning note, for the company’s marketing skills and brand development to have value in the customers’ eyes, it is important that they are aligned with superior market leadership traits. Forbes 100 top companies such as Apple, Tesco, Unilever and Virgin Atlantic have managed to be great courtesy of inspirations they have from their effective marketing leaderships at all levels of the business. By doing this, they have been capable of creating superior customer values and beating their competitors (McGrath 2009). Therefore, this paper will address the extent at which leadership influences marketing performances of a company. Extend at Which Leadership Can influence Marketing Start-up Mentality This is fundamental for any leader, because he has to feel that he owns the process and therefore, he has the responsibility to influence and empower others so that a certain marketing function can be accomplished. In marketing, leaders are often seen to own up their jobs. Although other people in the management will take their jobs as working for 8-10 hours a day, marketers will view their job as their own businesses. It has been noted widely that companies such as Facebook, Starbuck among others were begun by owners who marketed their ideas rigorously before others could join them. After learning how to roast coffee from entrepreneur Alfred Peet, Jerry Baldwin, Gordon Bowker and Zev Siegl decided to start producing and marketing high quality coffee, different from the one produced during that time. It is important to realize that at that time, the total sales in coffee in the whole of the US market were plummeting. However with their spirit of self starter, they managed to market their coffee to take up 10% of the market, as compared to the low level of 3% in 1983. With this legacy of selling specialty coffee rather than cheap one, the company has managed to bring new, but expensive brands such as esperesso coffee, which has widely been accepted (Allen, 2009). The other wonderful example is Tesco, which rose to be among the Britain’s biggest supermarkets. It is remembered that the owner begun by selling surplus groceries and making a profit of one pound per day. However, with his marketing zeal, the initial grocery has managed to expand and become the country’s largest supermarket. Currently, the whole supermarket chain has 6,784 stores due to the self starter marketing efforts of Jack Cohen (Lusch, Vargo and Malter 2006; McGrath 2009). On Future Vision One of the emerging features for marketers is that they should excel by anticipating changes in the future. However, when one has leadership quality, first as a leader, he can be able to lead change (Mirow 2005). This trait is much crucial because marketers need to develop skills that can inspire people around them so that the company’s vision can be articulated clearly. If one can lead people to realize the future vision of the company, people will be confident in what the organization could be doing right now, and what it will be doing in future. The future vision will always be encouraging everybody in the company to take innovative propositions so that powerful brands can be produced to meet promises to customers. Great brands such as Johnnie Walker, Dove, Tesco, and Virgin have all been based on people’s innovative ideas due to leaders inspiration in future visions(McElheran 2013). The vision of the future has been enabling marketers of these companies to involve in challenging tasks of finding out how customers’ needs are likely to evolve with time. Such analytical thoughts have been resulting in some companies to begin forward looking segmentations as ways of preparing for the expected change. Strategic analyses are critical for leaders in marketing who want to ensure that they lead their companies to customer-focused choices (McGrath 2009). It has been noted that although Steve Jobs was not all along passionate about computers, he had an avid passion about helping and letting people to unleash their potential. He realized that since computers were becoming increasingly important, he had to develop creativity that centered on customer experiences in his employees. In this regard, he chose his own style of doing business by looking at a bigger vision of how consumer experiences might look like in future, especially in the retail segment of computer selling, rather than looking at competitors (Entrepreneur Staff 2014). Engaging Others Engaging others is the next leadership skill that marketers need to have to excel. Marketing leaders will therefore develop skills that will enhance contributions from other stakeholders. This is not done for personal gain, but as a bid to build organizational commitment and alignment behind customer-focused agenda. It is important that for marketing leaders to influence others, they should be influential in their area of business as leaders. This is for the simple reason that without their inputs, the company will not be able to create the value for its customers. However, influence is earned, and marketing leaders have to demonstrate the quality and tangible impact on the company’s strategic thinking (Mirow 2005). To ensure customer alignment, marketing leaders have to ensure that all cross-functional roles and responsibilities become clear, and that decision making concerning customers take place at the right time, involving the right people. The most important factor, for one to engage others and create influence, is the quality of relationships that he builds and gets along with others. This implies that the quality of relationship between the marketer and other stakeholders in the organization is very much critical for his success. Successful marketing managers will engage other people in deriving customer agenda, rather than simply communicating to them, what they should do and what they should not do (Allen 2013). According to Richard Branson, one of the most important things that will energize employees is engaging them. The Virgin Group guru notes that to keep the workforce motivated and focused, especially when resources seem stressed, marketing managers need to start engaging employees. However, the Virgin Boss cautions that this should not just stop on employees, but move on to customers. He asserts that companies that seem only for themselves are increasingly frustrating consumers. It is through engagements that the boss can know where he can position his marketing activities or offices to continue increasing the company’s profitability. In other ways, the employees and customers will feel even to be part of the company when their suggestions are taken into consideration to solve the company’s problems. The CEO also contents that companies need to take seriously developing their relationships with these stakeholders. This can happen in variety of ways, such as taking employees and customers to the nearby islands for luxury trips or even inviting some of them as the guest speakers. However, in all cases, any instance of learning will have to happen in clear comfort zones where ideas can be embraced so that favorable results can be attained (Branson 2014). Reputation Management Marketing activities cannot be separated from the leadership reputation of a company. For instance if the company managers are sued for frauds, it’s the company that employ them which will pay for their evils. Many companies are hiring consultancy firms to help their managements improve in their reputation, so that they can attract positive mentions, awards and best pieces of content that are less likely to hurt them. Therefore, it is imperative that instead of waiting to start paying such prices, leaders, especially those that influence marketing activities in their firm, should salvage themselves to avoid being met with catastrophic conditions (Allen 2013). Forbes Magazine has ranked Microsoft Corporation, as the company that has the best reputation as far as corporate responsibility is concerned. Generally, since the reputation of a company is determined by the level of its corporate responsibility, Microsoft, which is among the top 100 companies according to Forbes magazine, has topped others. The company spent more than $900m to promote its non profit activities worldwide, reduced its carbon emission and improved investments in employee compensations. According to the Reputation Institute, over 73% of global consumers can recommend companies that are believed to be delivering or doing well with its social responsibility program. Although some companies are offering social responsibility programs or have indicated on their websites those activities that they venture in for the community, they are not getting any feedback messages from consumers. In this regard, some consumers are neutral about their activities, and they cannot say whether the company is delivering its social responsibility promises or not. Some companies are just simply not trustworthy, as they are ethically not appealing. In this regard, the reputation of the management in terms of personal reputation and treatment of employees and other stakeholders such as customers and shareholders are not appealing. According to CB Bhattacharya, a professor in Corporate Responsibility at the European School of Management and Technology (Germany), most people still equate the larger picture of corporate responsibility with philanthropy, which has made many organizations to thrift in their strategic formulation and implementation regarding “what” and “how” to give back to the community (Forbes 2014). To be able to determine the extent of the reputation of the firm, and therefore the effects of its corporate responsibility, one has to do a rigorous research to find out how the key stakeholders of the firm view it. This study will enable the firm to realize the value of its corporate social responsibility (CSR); that is how the CSR programs are marketing its brands. The researchers have also noted that for every increase of 5 percent in CSR the firm makes, it gets an increase of 9 percent in its recommendations. Researchers at the Reputation Institute insist that since the CSR activities are being evaluated on the grounds of how they make the community feel good, it will be important if data are collected so that their impact on ROI can be measured (O'Reilly 2013). Public Relationship Superior public relation can also make the company to be the leader in the industry. Good leadership will always make the leader in marketing to develop good relationship with customers, prospects, stakeholders and peers. Although traditional marketing is known by being transactional with focus on making sales, and in fact on one time basis, relationship marketing is supposed to build and sustain mutually beneficial connections between customers and businesses. Currently, with the internet revolution, companies can consistently develop quality content to attract PR relationships. Although it may not be a onetime silver bullet, it is upon the marketing leader to keep on improving consistently. There is a widespread use of social media networks and users are sharing a vast amount of information with companies on regular basis. It is therefore easier to know the features of various prospects and customers alike. In this regard, it will be easy for the manager to personalize and tailor one’s entire experience while interacting with the companies (Allen 2013). The Exxon Corporation’s reputation has been suffering a lot, due to the oil spills and ground off dumps which have greatly been a concern among environmentalists. However, according to the Forbes Magazine, the company with its large base of resources has managed to deflate the public from the harmful events. Its PR seeks to tout it as the company that enjoys the largest profit in US and therefore, making big contributions to the government as taxes, with vast resources for employing more people. Moreover, its PR has sought to meet with media editorial boards, academics, and students in high schools, colleges and campuses to avoid the backlash from consumers in the United States and across the World (Himler 2012). Ahead in Thoughts and Content In this case, lead marketers need to have new “lead generation tactics” to ensure current successes. As already said, before one influences others, he needs to be ahead in thought and content. Currently, content marketing and thought leadership have been found to be creating a lot of awareness(Stirling 2008). Aggressive online marketing in this regard will generate the firm’s needed prospects, create, nurture and develop relationships, which will obviously result in high sales volumes. With the revolution of the internet, thought leadership and content marketing have been positioning companies as leaders in such areas. Although most companies are not aware about lead generation effects of the content marketing, there is greater relationship between the quality of the article and the expected response rate. Some companies have devised cookies that have been overseeing the overall activities on their websites, and doing analytics for decision making. According to the recent studies by Mashable.com, more and more consumers now prefer to buy from companies that engage in content marketing campaigns. The campaigns are very essential as lead marketers can engage audiences directly and generate leads. Many online marketers are now incorporating tools on their websites so that they can get the metrics of their online selling. These will then be equated to other financial information to realize if they are generating highest ROI (Allen 2013). Strategic content marketing helped to save BP from revenue loss and negative publicity after its oil spills. The company’s content advertisement saved its reputation that had been slightly tarnished with communication outreaches from various fronts. According to the researchers who sought to measure the impacts of the BP’s oil spills; although consumers had decided to punish the company temporarily, their effects were significantly reduced by its “Beyond Petroleum” campaign. The “Beyond Petroleum” campaign was a ‘green washing” strategy that sought to cover up the whole effects of the company’s oil spills (Nongbri 2014). Delivering Results This is the final leadership quality that the manager needs to ensure. In this regard, his results will be measured according to his brand propositions and initiatives he undertakes to attract and retain customers. In this case, there are two major dimensions: ensuring that that the firm and its marketing efforts pull together to create or enhance the customer perceived value and making sure that there is effective allocation of resources that can sufficiently make the marketing function successful (Belderbos, Sleuwaegen and Veugelers 2010). This should be in line with the demand that is currently in the market. As the Brand Learning consultants note, great marketing leaders must be acting in two folds: as great strategists and great activists (McElheran 2013). In this regard, as they set eyes on the future, they should also be obsessed with getting other’s attentions regarding their products in design and delivery. Experience from customers, both within and outside their control, about the nature of their products is quite important; thus they should frequently be checking how the overall business model is driving the financial success of the firm (Stutton 2006). Being obsessed with successfulness, they will be relentlessly monitoring and tracking their relationship with customers’ satisfaction (Allen 2013; Hall 2013). Westpac Banking, an Australian corporation, has managed to be the world’s most sustainable company due to efficiently offering attractive output out of every capital unit to the customers. Analysts also note that although efficiency may play a major role, it may not be the only factor that can contribute to sustainability (Kouzes and Posner 2008).Other important factors involve diversity, long-term-learning and innovation. In this case, while the management is providing efficient output that satisfies the present customers’ perceptions, it is always scanning the future beyond the next financial year. However, for health and safety practice and the efficiency of resources to be ensured, there must be responsible leadership. Generally speaking, most companies that rank in Forbes Top 100 must score well in research and development, which will reveal their customer centered approach. Westpac’s performance has been attributed to the increasing customer confidence, which is central for any business willing to have good performance. Due to better marketing services, the Company’s net profit increased by 14%, which the company’s CEO Gail Kelly says that it can be attributed to the careful execution of its strategy (Smith 2014). Conclusion Having observed why some of the top 100 companies in the world according Forbes Magazine grow, it is notable that effective leadership in their promotional activities plays a very big role. In this regard, for one to be an effective marketer, he has first to be a leader because his performance will be determined by his leadership skills. Marketing managers with leadership qualities, such as start-up mentality, consciousness with future vision, team engagement, proper reputation, good public relations, application of lesson and result deliverance, will obviously overcome leadership barriers and perform their marketing roles diligently to deliver sterling performances. References Allen M 2013, Must-have characteristics of successful marketers, Customer Think, viewed 12 October 2014, Belderbos R, Sleuwaegen L and Veugelers R 2010, European commission market integration and technological leadership in Europe, European Economy. 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