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....