• by Aaron Baar , August 12, 2010

Marketing executives are being asked to contribute more to their companies' growth, but they are feeling ill-equipped to do so, according to a new study from Accenture.

"[Marketers are] being laden with more responsibility and greater responsibility for profitable growth than they were before the recession started," Kevin Quiring, the senior executive leading Accenture's North American marketing transformation practice, tells Marketing Daily. "That's posing new challenges for them, and it means they have to do some things differently."

According to a survey of 400 senior marketing executives in Asia Pacific, Europe and North America, the top strategic objectives were improving operational efficiency, increasing profitability, and responding to change. However, they are hampered by inefficient business practices (21%), inadequate funding and resources (17%), poor integration with other business units (15%), a lack of required skills (13%) and lack of access to necessary customer data (6%).

Less than a quarter (23%) said their organization excelled in customer analytics, innovation, customer engagement and marketing operations at the same time, and a third (33%) said they didn't perform well in any of those areas.

"There has to be a more robust use of customer analytics," Quiring says. "And they have to transfer that analytics into action. They've got to transmit that to meeting the unmet needs of the company. A lot are doing it episodically, but they need to do it in much more evergreen fashion."

They need to work more cross-functionally, providing their consumer insights into all areas of the business, Quiring says. They should also start thinking of the entire customer experience in terms of marketing. "We like to say, 'Experience is the new marketing,'" he says. "When you think about the way a customer service rep answers the phone, that's a different way of viewing marketing."

That's because customer expectations are having an impact on their marketing strategy, Quiring says. According to the marketers, 72% believe that most or all of their customers expect more value for their money, and 71% said their customers have higher product quality expectations, 61% said they are increasingly price-sensitive and 68% have higher customer service expectations. Not only are consumers are looking to pay less, they're expecting more," Quiring says. "That really raises the bar for companies. What they're looking to do and what they have to do is [figure out] how to improve the customer experience while still reducing the price."