Marketing does not run any effective customer loyalty, advocacy, or referral programs. CRM system and process ownership resides outside of marketing.

Marketing runs some programs for customer loyalty, referral, or advocacy with limited effectiveness. CRM system is used by marketing but owned by IT.

Marketing is in the process of taking over ownership of CRM systems, data, and customer loyalty. Advocacy or referral programs are moderately successful.

Marketing owns the customer experience, CRM systems, and data. It deploys successful customer loyalty, advocacy, and/or referral programs.

Marketing is not responsible for driving revenue growth or identifying new product or service development opportunities based on customer needs.

In some cases, the marketing organization provides feedback from customers to the team that owns new product or service development.

Marketing analyzes feedback from customers and market trends data to inform the product  or service development team on a regular basis.

Marketing owns the product or service development function and has formal responsibility to drive revenue growth with new product and service innovations.

Marketing does not drive business strategy or suggest new business models.

Marketing shares some strategic insights related to the creation of new business models.

Marketing helps to shape business strategy and regularly suggests new business models.

Marketing drives business strategy and contributes the majority of ideas for new business model development.

Marketing doesn't perform competitive analysis and is completely reactive when responding to threats from more agile competitors.

Marketing performs competitive analysis on an ad hoc basis and reacts reasonable quickly to threats from more agile competitors.

Marketing performs competitive analysis regularly and responds fairly quickly to threats from more agile competitors.

Marketing stays ahead of the competition and recommends acquiring more agile competitors who are a good strategic fit.

Marketing does not provide any personalized experience or automated customer interactions.  

Marketing is starting to personalize content or automate some customer interactions.

Marketing develops some personalized content and automates some customer interactions with technology.

Most customer interactions are automated with technology and provide a personalized experience.

The concept of a customer journey is new to our organization.  We have few resources that help customers through their decision to purchase from us.

Marketing is starting to interview customers to learn more about their purchasing journey to determine what information they need before they buy.

The customer journey, and its key stages, is documented but there are gaps in the content needed to facilitate purchasing.

The customer journey is well documented and understood by all in the organization. A rich set of content is provided across all stages of the customer journey.

Marketing does not produce a lot of content that is relevant and valued by customers.

Marketing produces some content that is relevant for target customers, but has limited understanding of which content items provide the most value.

Marketing produces loads of relevant content for target customers and the quality of the content is generally fairly high.

Marketing only produces high quality content that is required by customers to facilitate their purchasing decisions. Very few content items are produced but not regularly used.

Marketing is not very savvy when it comes to collecting or analyzing data.

Marketing analyzes some basic transactional data points, such as purchasing history and operational campaign metrics but analysis is done ad hoc.

Marketing has deployed formal data analysis processes and maintains a dashboard of key performance indicators.  

Marketing leverages big data and analytics to make forward-looking predictions about performance. The use of behavioral intent data is starting to be used.

Marketing has no idea how effective it is, nor what the ROI is for specific programs.

Marketing collects and reports on leading indicators of revenue such as email clicks, brand preferences, social media followers, etc. but cannot draw a direct correlation between marketing spend and incremental revenue generated.

Marketing provides some fuzzy calculations to demonstrate ROI, but confidence in the ability to measure effectiveness is not high.

Marketing uses advanced attribution models and analysis to demonstrate reliable calculations of ROI and effectiveness that are believed by C-level executives.

Most key roles in marketing department are outsourced. Limited internal skills and no training provided.

Marketing is starting to bring some key roles in house and provides some training, but most of the best work is still performed by an agency or contractors.

Marketing has brought most roles in house and invests in training and skill development for marketing team members.

The marketing department is staffed in house with a solid team of creative, technical, operational, and digitally-focused professionals and the organization invests heavily in training.

Very product-focused and internally-driven business culture.

Mainly product-focused business culture with some occasional flashes of customer-centricity such as customer satisfaction survey or net promoter score programs.

Culture is shifting from product-focused to customer-centric as evidenced by solution-based messaging, new customer experience executives, customer advisory councils, and customer-driven programs.

Customer-centricity is core to every level and department in the organization. Customer success is endorsed and supported by C-level executives, and resources to drive customer programs are prioritized highly among other investments.

Marketing systems, processes, and technology are very out-dated. Organization has a difficult time leveraging marketing technologies to drive revenue.

Marketing uses some marketing technologies, such as CRM or marketing automation, but the IT department has decision-making authority over marketing systems and data analysis.

Marketing has a fairly well-integrated marketing technology stack, with most applications owned by a systems analyst or administrator who works inside of the marketing department. New applications are deployed regularly but there is lack of a formal technology roadmap.

Marketing owns and operates the majority of the organization's marketing technology infrastructure. A formal marketing technology strategy, roadmap, and budget exist. The organization is constantly testing and optimizing applications and processes.