NO BUDGET
I’m reading more and more about the reluctance of hospitality and retail operators to hire senior marketers and support them with a decent budget.
Operators clearly still see marketing as an expense and not an essential investment. But why?
REASONS WHY
- These sectors are often still very much operationally led, because we haven’t grasped that what worked during our 90’s & 00’s heyday does not always work now. The top 100 brands in the world put marketing front and centre, and given that marketing is the closest function to customers because of the data they hold, why do so many hospitality and retail operators think this shouldn’t apply to them?
- Because if operators can’t ‘see’ marketing, it mustn’t be happening. I once sat in a meeting where after presenting a digital strategy which would generate over £2.3m of incremental revenue, was asked, aghast, “but where are the posters and table talkers?!” The market has changed, so your marketing has to. And the mix required is as complex as the customer base we serve.
- Because even though we pride ourselves upon it, we are embarrassingly far away from putting our customer first.
VANITY METRICS
The pressure for instant ROI and vanity metrics has put marketing firmly in broadcast mode and the glimpses of operational insight we get when a GM or store manager is able to get to know some of their regular customers, does not scale in any commercially meaningful way.
Both hospitality and retail have faced more than their share of challenges. But it’s time for the 2 sectors who most often find themselves in crisis to honestly ask themselves are they doing the right things.
WHAT NEXT?
You have the data, you have the tools (and you have people like me and my DataHawks to steer you in the right direction)- that direction MUST be customer first.
