Why does marketing often fall short of success? Let me count the ways.

I’m still a bit dense and not as quick to connect the dots as I’d like, but I’ve learned a few things over the course of time. Some of those things I’ve learned are the variety of reasons of why marketing can fail to deliver for an organization:

• Mismanaged: The marketing leader needs vision, purpose, confidence, drive. They need to know where the puck is going and get there first. If your organization doesn’t have a top marketing leader that fits this description, good luck.
• Misunderstood: The company doesn’t really know what it is that marketing does, should do or is capable of doing.  The organization needs to have a common understanding of the modern-day purpose and impact of marketing.
• Misaligned: Marketing should not report to sales. Marketing, if done right, should help lead organizational plans, transform and innovate, improve customer engagements through technology and, ultimately, drive sales. Reporting to sales makes marketing the subject of whim and fancy, flyers and donut boxes with logos.
• Impatience: Marketing absolutely needs to act with urgency but there’s a certain amount of organizational patience required for plans to be formed, launched, measured, adjusted and re-launched. Marketing is not a vending machine that just pops-out activities on demand and command.
• Underfunded: The test of any good marketer is not how much they can spend but how little they need to spend to hit their goals. But they also need the right talent on the team. Appropriate budgets matched with the right talent can produce great results.
• Relegated: Marketing needs a seat at the leadership table, not at the kids table at Thanksgiving.

Are there any other you’d add?