Does Your B2B Company Measure up to Marketing Excellence?

Audio Version — 2:11

Marketing in many B2B firms is often lackadaisical at best. However, B2B marketing should not be halfhearted, especially in today’s digital, customer-driven marketing environment. B2B companies that achieve marketing excellence often outperform competitors because they put customers first, create strategic alliances, and are value and outcome-driven.

“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.” – Peter Drucker

What is Marketing Excellence?

Reaching excellence in marketing is a process of implementing marketing best practices where the firm delivers exceptional value to customers, vendors, and other stakeholders. The Marketing Excellence Review chart below shows the best practices for achieving excellence in marketing. The table also identifies two different marketing performance areas that a B2B company may fall within, poor and good marketing practice.

According to Phillip Kotler, considered the father of modern marketing, organizational management must examine their marketing processes in relation to the review chart. They create a marketing profile based on determining where they think the business stands on each review list line. In areas where the company falls short of excellence, the business leaders can make changes that help the firm become an outstanding player in their industry.

Poor	Good	Excellent
Product driven	Market Driven	Market Driving
Mass-market oriented	Segment-oriented	Niche-oriented and customer-oriented
Product offer	Augmented product offer	Customer solutions offer
Average product quality	Better than average product quality	Legendary product quality
Average service quality	Better than average service quality	Legendary service quality
End-product oriented	Core-product oriented	Core-competency oriented
Function oriented	Process oriented	Outcome oriented
Reacting to competitiors	Benchmarking competitiors	Leapfrogging competitors
Supplier exploitation	Supplier preference	Supplier partnership
Dealer exploitation	Dealer support	Dealer partnership
Price driven	Quality driven	Value driven
Average speed	Better than average speed	Legendary speed
Hierarchy	Network	Teamwork
Vertically integrated	Flattened organization	Strategic alliance
Stockholder driven	Stakeholder driven	Societally driven

Summary

Achieving excellence is an achievable goal. It requires management to understand where they currently are in marketing proficiency, identify areas for improvement, then develop and execute a strategy to reach excellence.

Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, stated, “Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.” If you are not marketing and not innovating, your competitors will eventually outpace you.