“Marketing-led approaches are vital for business innovation — and success”

Interview with Marketing Director Johanna Wretdal about Marketing Department of Tomorrow, 2030.

No matter what the marketing department of tomorrow will look like, it is not something that will magically appear out of thin air. Instead, those who do not wish to be left behind should consider it a goal to strive toward; something that will require a proactive rather than reactive approach to make a reality.

According to a study conducted by research company Kairos Future on behalf of Dun & Bradstreet, experts agree that there is a range of different scenarios for how a marketing department might successfully operate in 2030. This means that there are also several different ways to achieve said success: just like no two marketing departments will look exactly alike in 2030, the journey itself will also differ from organization to organization.

The plan for meeting future sales and marketing demand

In the case of Accountor Finago Oy, a firm supplying over 130,000 Nordic companies with digital financial management solutions, the plan for meeting future sales and marketing demand rests on three pillars: growth-enabling change management, target and customer-focused community boosting, and relevant data interpretation.

Johanna Wretdal, Director, Marketing and Communications, considers it essential to ensure that everyone involved tracks data trends in the same way, paving the way for accurate insights on which to base both short- and long-term decisions. “I really believe it’s important to ensure that the commercial team members have at least basic data knowledge — understanding why it’s relevant on an individual, organizational and general level. I also believe it’s going to be increasingly crucial to be able to adapt swiftly from perhaps more traditional roles and skills-frameworks, towards a more collaborative, people-to-people-approach — in an ever-changing landscape.”

Like many other experts, Johanna Wretdal argues that the term “marketing department” itself might actually become obsolete in the future, paving the way for more dynamic relationships between different divisions within an organization. “I definitely believe that the customer journey will be in focus, and the organizational framework ought to be adapted to the journey. 

This is something some are already implementing, perhaps currently termed intrapreneur or growth-hacking frameworks: aiming at building further success on task-force constellations instead of static departments. For example, within our organization we have piloted –— and implemented — different updated ways-of-working and witnessed some very promising results.”

Surveying the current landscape, Johanna Wretdal finds it encouraging that more and more companies are realizing what the past two decades have already taught her: “that marketing-led approaches are vital for business innovation — and success. This has become even more evident during the covid-19 pandemic.”

However, it is important to keep in mind that future-proofing marketing efforts is not simply a matter of technology. That organizations run on people, rather than algorithms or data. “I genuinely believe that by mastering both social-psychological skills and data impact, one will be well prepared for future demand. After all, this is a people-to-people business we’re all in.”