Rehmann Rayani is Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer and joined N model in 2018.
getty
Business strategy and marketing are fundamentally different, yet they are inextricably connected. In Model N, I am both the chief marketing officer and the chief strategy officer—two roles that are traditionally led by different people, serving different functions. But when you get to the heart of the matter, marketing and strategy both identify and address market demands and challenges. Combining them under one enables leader both departments, and your company at large, to deliver innovative results.
What is the intersection of strategy and marketing?
The intersection of strategy and marketing is a dynamic place. When thinking about the value chain of work within a company, step one is strategy. Strategy is defining the space the company plays in. What markets does it serve? What problems does it solve? Who is it trying to help? Why does the company have a right to play within this space? Those questions are the essence of business strategy.
Step two is marketing. Marketing takes the guidelines established by strategy and puts them into practice by defining key target customers, and then mapping the best path to reach and engage them. Ideally, it’s a give and take, and both functions benefit from cross-collaboration and exchanging real-time learnings to hone their approach.
However, in many companies, communication breaks down between steps one and two with not much dialogue. Through my dynamic role in overseeing strategy and marketing, I can ensure that the right teams are talking to each other, trying innovative approaches, and that business priorities are met throughout the value chain.
What are the benefits of intersecting strategy and marketing?
There are unique opportunities at the intersection of strategy and marketing that deliver many benefits, some of which I just touched on, but here are a few more:
1. Enabling Prioritization
Those in a strategy role have a direct view into what’s around the corner for their organization. To help shape the business, they must understand impending challenges, market dynamics and internal perspectives. Communicating this direction to the marketing team delivers significant value for the company, as they can re-prioritize and adjust their approach, if needed.
2. Translating Strategy Into Go-To-Market Focus And Execution
Informative and effective input from the strategy team allows the marketing team to pursue well-defined markets more successfully—in turn, the team can maximize viable revenue opportunities and ultimately, marketing investment results in a higher ROI.
3. Elevating The Marketing Function
By uniting marketing and strategy, the role of marketing is naturally elevated across the company—becoming a more strategic and valued function especially in B2B tech. Marketing gets more mindshare, as both marketing and strategy get seats at the executive table, and marketing gains real-time visibility into business priorities.
4. Driving Innovation
Ultimately, removing traditional boundaries between strategy and marketing sparks creativity and innovation across the organization—this begins at the executive level and naturally seeps into all levels of the company. Tight coordination between the two areas achieves product, company and revenue growth quickly and with little friction.
The marketplace is endlessly shifting and evolving, and companies cannot maintain the status quo to stay ahead of the competition. Joining strategy and marketing under one roof maximizes available resources to continuously fuel innovative initiatives and enhance go-to-market efforts. We’ve seen the proof of this approach at Model N and look forward to evolving it.
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