Marketing can affect businesses profoundly. In a 1999 McKinsey survey of executives at 545 UK companies,¹ 80 percent of the respondents cited it as either very or critically important in achieving financial objectives, and more than three-quarters said that its importance was growing.

But marketing still has a way to go: only about a third of the respondents claimed that it was well established in their own businesses. And since just 18 percent rated its strategic effectiveness in their companies as better than good and 36 percent as fair to poor, companies may understand the value of marketing, but many have yet to give it the high priority it requires. Forty-two percent of the respondents from business-to-business companies said that marketing had made its appearance recently; in business-to-consumer companies, only 26 percent of the respondents agreed. Perhaps not surprisingly, respondents from companies that sell goods and services to other companies regarded marketing as less important than sales to achieving their company's objectives; for respondents from business-to-consumer companies, the reverse was true (Exhibit 1).

Several forces now make it even more essential for companies to strengthen their marketing efforts. Customers are more demanding. The number of suppliers has exploded. Information about competing offers is ever more pervasive. And quality and reliability no longer suffice to make sales: customers now want benefits such as easy access to product information, simpler transactions, and personal service. In this area, at least, business-to-business companies may be a step ahead of their business-to-consumer counterparts, because they already have well-established sales relationships that permit them to combine products and services more naturally. For both kinds of companies, the Internet and other technical developments are making it economically feasible to deliver highly targeted propositions and to change them frequently. Today's marketers, who face great pressure to perform, at least have the tools and flexibility to address the challenge.

Moreover, the fundamentals of marketing strategy are more important than ever. An overwhelming majority of the respondents recognized the value of understanding their customers more fully. And the respondents know how imperative it is to get strategy right: as Exhibit 2 shows, when they were asked to choose the marketing factors most necessary for future success, four of the top five were related to strategy. Looking ahead, marketers will have to balance the requirement for longer-term strategic clarity against short-term profit pressures. Meanwhile, the accelerating pace of change in technology is creating not only huge new opportunities but also an increasingly complex marketplace. Both considerations leave little doubt that marketing's importance is rising sharply.