How Can a Growth Mindset Enable Marketing Success?

Not long ago, marketing departments were just another support function in your typical company. But today this constantly evolving area has taken on a holistic role and is impacting more facets of the business. As a result, reaching an omnichannel audience requires customized targeting.

As time goes by, some questions remain a staple of executive board meetings: What is marketing today? What is its role within a business? Which key functions are a must in any marketing department? In an ever-changing context, there is no straightforward, definitive answer. On the contrary, it is all about opening up to new ideas, demolishing outdated structures and adopting a flexible growth mindset.

The key is not just to sell hard, but to sell smart: to offer an omnichannel consumer just what they need and meet increasingly challenging targets at lower costs. But to understand how marketing departments have evolved into what we see today, we first need to briefly retrace our steps to their beginnings.

In its early days, marketing was directly related with the product, its production and its distribution. As time went by, it became an independent discipline and started interacting with and benefiting from other fields. Thus, marketing acquired a distinctive trait that can easily be seen even today: its interdisciplinary nature.

In 1967, in his book Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation, and Control, Philip Kotler placed marketing strategy “at the heart of any business.” However, in 1994, a new concept came to revolutionize the marketing world: digital marketing. In just a few years, this trend became a must in any successful strategy.

At the turn of the century, technology started gaining ground within marketing teams, with new roles emerging, such as data scientists and developers. Today, technology is a key ally for marketing departments. There are even purpose-built solutions that independently manage and automate processes so that marketers can focus on their most vital skill: human engagement.

The pandemic has created major changes in the consumption ecosystem, such as the increases in omnichannel purchases, in competition and in users who feel overwhelmed by the information overload of digital channels. So, now that they have an installed digital base, marketing departments face a new challenge: besides retaining existing clients, brands need to become more relevant to attract new customers.

In this new scenario, marketing teams must double down on their efforts and set increasingly ambitious goals. Before, they looked to establish a 360° approach to client engagement; that is, interacting anytime, anywhere. Now, the goal is to create continuous, assertive relationships, reaching the right audience just at the right time, driven by consumer needs, not brand needs.

So this is not just a digital transformation after all — this is a holistic change in which marketing teams are integrating new roles to accelerate business innovation. Marketers now help guide the future of businesses, changing focus from process digitization to early adoption of innovative technologies, to drive better-targeted results. For example, marketers can now apply artificial intelligence to leverage their most valuable asset: data.

The CMO’s role has grown to an unimaginable extent as marketing needs have diversified. Now they have to ensure exceptional customer experience. To do that, they must engage with other business areas. This is how CMOs have earned their seat at the table.

Having said that, CMOs cannot do it alone — they need a diverse team of experts. And, as we mentioned, marketing is known for its intrinsic interdisciplinary nature. Here we see how this feature can be key in taking a business to a whole new level. This is why marketing teams prioritize upskilling, a strategy that is at the heart of a growth mindset.

To help marketing teams adopt a more sales-oriented mindset to meet today’s needs, companies should consider incorporating growth marketing teams. These teams use quantitative and qualitative data analysis to optimize testing and drive continuous improvement. Their goal is to find new ways to improve results and meet sales targets at lower costs. It is not about increasing the number of sales leads whatever the cost; it is about increasing the quality of leads. The key is to leverage technology and new talent to optimize processes.

In terms of new talent, there is now a host of emerging roles in marketing teams designed to reframe departments and meet business needs. For example, growth managers focus on creating a buyer persona and leading their team to engage with those customers in effective and meaningful ways.

Another role becoming popular is the UX/UI specialist, who enhances the user experience and makes the user interface more friendly to improve a platform’s usability. Meanwhile, content managers work on creating an effective content marketing strategy to target and engage with the company’s buyer persona.

All these new roles can be supported with new digital solutions designed to automate processes, optimize results and maximize the company’s return on investment. This enables teams to focus on areas where they can add more value: improving business strategy, boosting creativity and analyzing results to drive continuous improvement.

Adopting a growth mindset can trigger key changes in your business. It is a great way to help teams focus on opportunities instead of challenges, learn from their mistakes and embrace technology as a key enabler of success.