If your company is like many others out there, the economic downturn resulted in you having to slash your training budgets, including most of the training efforts for your marketing organization.

The question is- can you afford not to invest in training your marketers?

These are the people that are developing your strategic marketing plans, writing messaging that meets your target market needs, choosing the initiatives that will have the best ROI while meeting your brand goals, and so much more.  It is more than a little unnerving to know that while they handle such critical tasks, 2/3rds of them actually don’t have a marketing background, as shown in a survey of 65,000 marketers by the Marketing Excellence Survey.

The survey results showed that most marketers, despite having low levels of marketing knowledge, rated their knowledge and use of marketing concepts as high.  This means that they are running forward fast with your brand’s future in their hands without a compass or a map.

We did a study to see if marketing training drives a measurable increase in productivity.  Our research showed that a focus on training positively influenced the effort that the marketers put into their jobs above and beyond what was expected or required of them.  In addition, in assessing the marketing knowledge of hundreds of companies over the last 12 years, we’ve seen a positive impact between a company’s level of marketing knowledge and their sales performance.

Basically, your investment in this area is one of the smartest moves you can make as a marketing executive to leverage your marketers and be the most competitive in market.

So now you have a challenge.  Training is critical, but you don’t have loads of money in your budget to be guessing at the most effective approach.

Here is my advice – make the most of your investment by first using an assessment to diagnose the knowledge gaps in your marketing organization.  An assessment will have you save time and money by allowing you to determine what knowledge gaps exist and the depth of content needed, establish baseline metrics, and rule out those areas that you don’t need to focus on.  It will also provide managers with a roadmap for developing their teams.

MLC’s assessment, the Marketing Excellence Survey, allows marketing leaders to benchmark their teams across key areas such as marketing mix strategies, marketing analysis and profitability, both internally based on key demographics and externally against a database of 65,000 other marketing professionals. The Marketing Excellence Survey also provides targeted on-line training modules that address the knowledge gaps identified for your organization during the survey assessment.

Investing in your marketers could be your fastest path to a competitive brand.  Current economic conditions require your marketers to play a key role in driving your business, and it’s up to you to make sure they are prepared for the task.

MLC members, for more on training, please visit our Talent Management topic center, and learn how Unilever, Microsoft, and 3M leveraged training to boost business outcomes across the board.

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4. Managing Information Richness: Three Imperatives for Marketing Leaders
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