Influencer Marketing is one of the most important new approach to marketing in a decade for those focused on influencing customer decision making.

Marketing is orientated around sales. If it doesn't initiate, assist or close a sale, then it is failing. And failing it is. The largest single item on most firms' marketing spend is advertising, accounting for between a quarter and three-quarters of budgets. In some industries, marketing accounts for a third of revenues. Yet the link between marketing and consequential revenues is hardly apparent.

Most of today’s marketing is based on notions that are 20 years out of date. There are many marketing notions that are anachronistic or at the least obsolete. These include the notion that if you put enough messages out there some of them will be heard. The notion that 'building the brand' is money well spent. The notion that people believe what they see and read.

Many recent marketing initiatives that supposedly take advantage of Web 2.0 technologies are merely reactions that apply old techniques to new media. Marketing needs to rethink the messages it is communicating, to whom it's communicated and the methods being used.

Many companies are disappointed at the lack of tangible return on their investment in multi-million dollar marketing activities. Advertising remains the largest budget item on most firms' marketing plans. Advertising may be a fixture in a company's annual budget, but management boards are increasingly questioning why this is.

Four of the world's largest brands have never conducted much advertising, and the same is true for seven out of the 10 fastest growing brands. There is no proven causal relationship between advertising and financial performance, period.

There is no strong evidence to suggest that advertising has any effect on sales. The academic research on marketing and return on investment (ROI) is paltry in number and unconvincing in conclusion. There is an awful lot of assertion from the advertising profession itself, and numerous claims to the link between brand and revenues or stock price.

It is true that firms with big revenues and profits usually have well-known brands. Yet brand awareness could equally be an outcome of high sales, rather than a driver of it.

Google has never advertised, yet it has become the world's most powerful brand.

In most companies, a disconnect exists between sales and marketing. This manifests itself at an operational level in departmental warfare with disastrous results.

At almost every company, there lies a wide schism between marketing and sales. Neither side strives for collaboration or alignment of objectives that will ultimately benefit the company. The result is paralysis of purpose that hampers the company’s ability to increase brand awareness among its target audience.

Recent trends in marketing, which includes the move online, campaign management systems, the creation of brand personalities – have done nothing to bring the two sides closer.

All these trends should influence marketers to rethink the way they engage and interact with their customers. More than ever before, today's marketers need to make sure that their marketing offer is fully backed by a well aligned marketing organization that is ready to deliver on the brand promises they’ve made.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

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