My Marketing Maturity Model
Or the times you shouldn’t be paying a marketing agency for help
As a specialist marketing agency owner, it’s pretty easy for me to point out people that I shouldn’t try to help. We focus on the B2B tech industries, so if your product is aimed at consumers, don’t call us. We just won’t be right for you.
There are, however, many companies in the B2B tech sector that aren’t good fits for us either. Understanding where we really help, and the companies who just don’t benefit as much as they should is crucial if we are to deliver work that makes us proud, which in turn is super-important to ensure we retain the amazing, talented team at Napier.
So how do we understand which companies will become clients that bring out our best work?
Different Stages of Company Development Demand Different Marketing Approaches
One thing I have noticed is that often you can see that a company is at a particular stage, which indicates a good or a bad fit. Basically as companies grow and develop, their marketing needs change. At some points we don’t add much value, or maybe the company can’t afford a campaign that will move the needle in their business. At other times we can come in and provide the rocket fuel that helps drive them forward.
The question is how do we know whether the company is at the right stage or not? We’ve produced a marketing maturity model that aims to define and explain each stage.
Marketing Maturity
Maturity models in business are often associated with degrees of competence. The higher the level of maturity, the better. I’m not convinced that this is the case for our marketing maturity model: sometimes it can be much more fun to be an infant than an adult!
Our model, however, presents a great way to talk about marketing needs.
Stage 1: Infant/Child
This stage is usually associated with a start-up. Let’s imagine you’ve just launched a company and have no product. You don’t want to do lots of marketing to generate demand for what is frankly vapourware today, and may be forgotten after a couple of deft pivots mean the company changes direction and drops the original plan.
So don’t pay for an agency now. Don’t pay for marketing. Your sole goal is to get your MVP or first product out the door so you can see if customers like it.
Often smaller companies remain in the infant/child stage for a long time. If you’re a consultant with no intentions of growing a company by hiring others then it’s quite likely that you’ll get sufficient business from word-of-mouth. If this is the case, stay a child and enjoy the ease of having customers coming to you through recommendations.
Stage 2: Adolescent
Adolescents are much more mature than children, but still finding their way in the world. By now your company has a product and some customers. You want to grow. However simply calling in an agency is not always the right approach.
In this stage, you may well be cash-limited. So, it makes more sense to hire a freelancer and concentrate on just one marketing tactic. Freelancers can provide great value, particularly at this stage of marketing maturity. Even if their expertise is less than you’d get with a team from an agency they can deliver value.
Another approach is to hire an in-house marketing manager. This can present a great solution, but it is often difficult to hire the right person, and particularly hard to hire someone who will be able to grow into the marketing director or VP you will need in later stages.
If you are not cash limited, and are sure that your products or services have a market that is ready for them, it might be time to think about an agency, but that normally comes at the next stage.
Young Adult
Young adults have established themselves to a large extent and usually have a reasonable idea of where they are going. You have a growing customer base and know your products or services are on the right track. You are also probably still pretty innovative, so you need to tell people what you do as often they aren’t aware of the creative solutions you’ve developed.
Here getting the right agency can be magic. You have a compelling story and need someone to help you get it in front of the right people. Additionally as the agency helps generate more customers, profits grow and you can allocate a proportion to more marketing, accelerating the virtuous cycle.
This is often one of the most exciting times in the life of a company as it seems that everything you do has a significant and immediate impact. Getting an agency on-board also gives you access to a wide range of experts so you can try many different marketing tactics to determine what’s most effective.
Although there are always challenges, it can seem that everything is going in the right direction. Unfortunately this stage can’t last forever.
Adult
We all have to grow up and become an adult. Our previous customers might want support for products they have bought in the past. We start winning bigger and bigger organisations as customers and this adds more bureaucracy. And with those bigger customers often comes the need to appear more corporate (or less fun as your younger stages might say).
At this stage you’ll start hearing things like “brand guidelines”. It really does start making a different if you are more consistent in your communications. You’ll also need to consistently present an image that makes those major customers feel comfortable committing to working with you: basically you’ll need to be an adult.
Again here is a great opportunity to use an agency to level-up your marketing. Working with an agency that understands how to polish your image to move you to the next stage, prime of life, can be invaluable. Realistically the adult stage can be hard work, and so getting external expertise and experience really pays dividends.
Prime of Life
Companies really do get to the stage where it almost feels like nothing can stop them. They have huge organisations who are totally committed to being customers, and so it can be very hard to see dramatic changes from quarter-to-quarter (or even year-to-year).
You’ll probably hear a lot about quarters at this stage as it is typical of successful public companies. You’ll find very different people running the business to those who loved the excitement of childhood, and you’ll benefit hugely from working with an agency that can ensure the marketing machine within your company runs effectively and efficiently.
Often in prime of life companies, marketing teams are more internally-focussed. You have lots of internal meetings. You have people to report to, other parts of the organisation that are internal customers. You’re basically a big company. And this is where agencies offer huge value: by engaging people who are not as closely caught up in the complex workings of the company, they can often deliver far more than could be achieved by an internal marketing professional. In fact in the most successful companies the mid-tier and senior marketing professionals understand that their role is not to do marketing, but rather to make sure it gets done.
The people in these organisations are rarely excited by the details of marketing tactics. This is fine. They are the strategists who can plan global campaigns, win and manage large budgets and engage company stakeholders to ensure the campaigns are delivered successfully. But they need agencies to deliver the campaigns.
Tired
I was going to call this group “over the hill”, but felt it was a bit mean, and would really give away the fact that they are usually not a good fit for an agency. Fortunately many companies don’t reach this stage, but in those that do the marketing teams often struggle.
Tired companies are like the cash cow in the Boston grid, but instead of applying to one product, the whole company has adopted the mentality. Tired companies try to maximise profit by cutting costs, rather than growing sales. Frequently you’ll see them cutting marketing budgets because sales are down. Maybe sales are down because marketing budgets were cut and 25%% of the sales force culled.
Tired companies typically bring marketing in-house. I get it. They have a lot of marketing people, and wonder why they can’t just get them to do the work as well as plan it. Unfortunately tired companies struggle to hire great people, and the internal challenges still exist, meaning that tired companies struggle to deliver effective campaigns.
It is possible to turn around a tired company by finding an elixir of youth. Typically this involves major changes to the company, including new management teams, restructuring and often the selling off of parts of the business. The new organisation can be much more dynamic. Agencies are often part of helping turn the business around as marketing teams are usually cut to levels where they simply can’t deliver the campaigns, and the new management recognises the flexibility and deep expertise of outside help.
Although it’s true that turnarounds are rare, it’s also the case that many companies never reach the tired stage.
Company Lifetime
We keep hearing about companies having shorter lifetimes in the modern world, but this does not mean that they speed through the different stages in the marketing maturity model.
Some companies stay in the child or adolescent stage for a very long time (interestingly many agencies stay in these stages, only getting out when they sell the business to a much larger organisation). Other companies are able to reach adulthood in a couple of years. Companies can stay as adults for a long time, never quite making it to prime of life. And as mentioned before there is no inevitability about reaching the tired, over-the-hill stage with a good management team.
I think the important thing to understand is that there is no right or wrong stage. The early stages can be thrilling, while the scale of what marketers can do in the later stages of maturity inspires others. I’ve learnt, however that as an agency we’re able to deliver best value during the adult stages.
Understanding where we deliver value is super-helpful when talking to a new company. It’s also a bit depressing. In particular I love the excitement of an early-stage company, but know that I shouldn’t try to help until they’ve reached a level of maturity that matches the work we can deliver. Frustrating. But way better than feeling we are holding clients back.
Marketing Maturity in Practice
Earlier today I emailed a prospect to explain we weren’t right to help him at the current stage of the company, and even provided a short outline of the marketing plan I recommended the company implements using in-house resources. By applying our marketing maturity model, I knew they weren’t at the right stage for us to add our optimum value, and for me being honest with both clients and prospects is non-negotiable.
Was I disappointed that we weren’t going to pitch and win another company? Absolutely. But am I happier knowing I’ve given the company what it needs to hopefully reach a level of marketing maturity where we can really add value? You bet!
