In the midst of a severe downturn, with budgets being cut across the board, the axe tends to fall more heavily on marketing. In a recent Forrester study, 30 of the 90 marketing leaders surveyed expect to be the first to find their plans on the line when the company has to cut budgets. CFOs in a MarketingSherpa study agree – 43% of them felt marketing was the first place to cut in a downturn.

As a marketer, you know this pattern isn’t new. And, you may already be planning to deal with these cuts in the same three ways marketers indicated in the surveys:

1. Build better measurement dashboards to prove marketing effectiveness
2. Shift spending from traditional media to more measurable direct and online channels
3. Cut overhead expenses (staff) while protecting program dollars

These actions may sound appropriate. But, I would assert that they’re akin to putting on a band aid when major surgery is called for. The fundamental issue here is marketing credibility. Too often marketing is viewed as a discretionary staff function, a luxury during good times that can be cut without risk during tough times. Better measurements don’t change this basic perception.

For your marketing expenditures and budgets to be treated as critical they have to prove themselves to be so. One way to do this is to link marketing execution closely to front line customer operations across channels, whether it be the sales force, the web site, the call center or retail store. When marketing is able to provide input into and enhance every customer interaction, it truly becomes intertwined in the operations of a company and makes a visible (as well as measurable) impact on the top and bottom lines.

To do this, you need to have powerful, usable insights that can be applied at the moment of truth. When a customer calls in, where should he or she be routed? Caller ids can automatically route preferred customers to specially trained operators. Once the operator picks up the call, the strategy and/or script for that specific customer can be driven by prior knowledge of the customer’s behavior and value, as well as the preferred action we would like to see – ranging from just an extra special experience on the phone, to active retention efforts, to targeted cross sell or up sell efforts based on next best product models. Web sites can similarly be programmed with decision rules that deliver the appropriate message to visitors and customers, based not just on the page they happen to be browsing but on that specific customer’s prior behavior.

The technology to do the things mentioned above – which are only the tip of the iceberg – has long been there. But, so few companies use it. Why? There’s a lack of organizational alignment between marketing and the front lines within most organizations. Marketing can be an island, pre-occupied with other concerns (like branding) which don’t necessarily interlock them with the daily interactions with customers and the business of making the cash register sing.

Getting down and dirty with day to day operations may not be as glamorous as being on a shoot or approving web design or direct marketing copy. But, it is a sure way to be seen as integral to the operations of the company.

It’s hard work to develop products and models that truly integrate customer insights in a manner that are leveraged by front line people and technology on a continuous basis. It also takes a change in mindset, in collaborative behavior between marketing and channels and between channels themselves.

But the effort is worth it.