Introduction. It’s often tough for business owners to transition from tactical, day-to-day operations into the realm of strategic direction

It’s often tough for business owners to transition from tactical, day-to-day operations into the realm of strategic direction. Marketing your business is one of those areas where business owners often get thrust into the role of a strategist since we need to hand off the work to an expert staffer or third party. We’re used to being involved in everything from design to acquisition, so it can be difficult to allow someone else to carry out the responsibilities associated with day-to-day marketing.

On the other hand, handing off tasks can be incredibly liberating. Now, you can cast a vision and cut your team loose to carry it out. But there are some important considerations to understand when transitioning to marketing strategy development, as opposed to day-to-day operations.

This article is an introduction to a series on strategic marketing for businesses and begins with a discussion on organizing your company for a marketing strategy that doesn’t involve you directly in terms of operations. (Those business owners who are only a team of one can still draw from the tips in this article and in the upcoming parts of the series, but ignore the “team” aspects discussed.)

In the upcoming weeks, we’ll cover the following points for strategic marketing:

• Knowing Your Audience
• Media and Consistent Integration
• Collaborate, Distribute, and Test

For now, read on to find out about the keys to success in collaborating with your team on your new marketing strategy.

Consider developing a formal marketing strategy document that you can send to various managers or third parties who will be managing the different aspects of your campaign. The goal is to involve everyone— even those outside of marketing.

There are thousands of right ways to put together a formal marketing plan, so don’t get too caught in the formalities. For instance, your plan could be a simple document full of bullet points for quick reading and easy understanding, listing social media sites, banner ads, PPC, and other strategies you plan to implement or have already implemented. The idea is to let those in operations, accounting, finance, and other groups become aware of the direction your company is going, so they can adjust if needed.

This also guides your marketing team, which can include many staffers, third party firms, or just a few folks. If there’s a question in your absence, then a marketing plan can guide the team in decision-making and provide a general set of guidelines.

Marketing, especially of a product, entails many different departments working together for a main cause: getting the public to buy what you are selling. However, because different departments within a company handle singular aspects of the product, deciding on a common approach to marketing can be difficult.

Finding common ground within sales, advertising, marketing, and operations departments of a company (or even just between you and your business partner) is key to successful implementation of a product or of providing services to the public.

All departments should understand, at least somewhat, the different perspectives and then decide what is the common motivation driving each group. Therefore, ask each department/persons involved to write up individual development plans. Doing so can eliminate unnecessary misunderstandings that each group may have and not even realize. This practice can also help direct a meeting more efficiently when all the groups come together. After the groups have documented how they feel their part is important to implementing the new product or service, they can come together and present their plan as a unified whole.

Because the personalities of each group tend to be so different, it is important that each area of the company understands each other’s focus and contribution in the chain. Enough cannot be said about how each group fully recognizing the roles of other departments leads to unity and empathy, helping the entire company as a result.

“Know what other companies you are up against” seems like common sense. However, does everyone involved understand this obstacle? Perhaps not.

The sales department most likely has the best idea of whom they are competing against, but the operations department, for example, probably does not. If all parties involved understood this challenge, then products could be designed and tailored to the needs of the consumer in a way that the competitor is not providing.

Leaving key pieces of the company puzzle out of the loop can cause frustration. The operations departments are up close and personal with the product and can often see potential problems that the sales team has no idea about. Again, all contributors have valuable perspectives, and they should be allowed to voice them to those who will be dealing with the public.

When creating a company that runs smoothly, all areas need to be in sync. If the marketing group understands the approach that the sales group is going to take, they can proceed accordingly in their marketing materials. If the operations team understands the method that the sales and marketing teams are going to use, they will know how to handle manufacturing, packaging, and delivery of the product.

It quickly becomes obvious within as well as outside the company when there was little communication as to the knowledge of strategy between different departments. These occurrences speak volumes: the lack of cohesiveness shows little concern for the consumer. Unless you want the message sent to the public that the company motto is “make money, no matter what the consequence,” then a group effort for your marketing strategy is key.

Marketing effectiveness

Marketing effectiveness is the quality of how marketers go to market with the goal of optimizing their spending to achieve good results for both the short-term and long-term. It is also related to Marketing ROI and Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI).

Marketing effectiveness has four dimensions:

§ Corporate – Each company operates within different bounds. These are determined by their size, their budget and their ability to make organizational change. Within these bounds marketers operate along the five factors described below.

§ Competitive – Each company in a category operates within a similar framework as described below. In an ideal world, marketers would have perfect information on how they act as well as how their competitors act. In reality, in many categories have reasonably good information through sources, such as, IRI or Nielsen. In many industries, competitive marketing information is hard to come by.

§ Customers/Consumers – Understanding and taking advantage of how customers make purchasing decisions can help marketers improve their marketing effectiveness. Groups of consumers act in similar ways leading to the need to segment them. Based on these segments, they make choices based on how they value the attributes of a product and the brand, in return for price paid for the product. Consumers build brand value through information. Information is received through many sources, such as, advertising, word-of-mouth and in the (distribution) channel often characterized with the purchase funnel, a McKinsey & Company concept. Lastly, consumers consume and make purchase decisions in certain ways.

§ Exogenous Factors – There are many factors outside of our immediate control that can impact the effectiveness of our marketing activities. These can include the weather, interest rates, government regulations and many others. Understanding the impact these factors can have on our consumers can help us to design programs that can take advantage of these factors or mitigate the risk of these factors if they take place in the middle of our marketing campaigns.

There are five factors driving the level of marketing effectiveness that marketers can achieve:

1. Marketing Strategy – Improving marketing effectiveness can be achieved by employing a superior marketing strategy. By positioning the product or brand correctly, the product/brand will be more successful in the market than competitors’ products/brands. Even with the best strategy, marketers must execute their programs properly to achieve extraordinary results.

2. Marketing Creative – Even without a change in strategy, better creative can improve results. Without a change in strategy, AFLAC was able to achieve stunning results with its introduction of the Duck (AFLAC) campaign. With the introduction of this new creative concept, the company growth rate soared from 12% prior to the campaign to 28% following it.

3. Marketing Execution – By improving how marketers go to market, they can achieve significantly greater results without changing their strategy or their creative execution. At the marketing mix level, marketers can improve their execution by making small changes in any or all of the 4-Ps (Product, Price, Place and Promotion) (Marketing) without making changes to the strategic position or the creative execution marketers can improve their effectiveness and deliver increased revenue. At the program level marketers can improve their effectiveness by managing and executing each of their marketing campaigns better. It's commonly known that consistency of a Marketing Creative strategy across various media (e.g. TV, Radio, Print and Online), not just within each individual media message, can amplify and enhance impact of the overall marketing campaign effort. Additional examples would be improving direct mail through a better call-to-action or editing web site content to improve its organic search results, marketers can improve their marketing effectiveness for each type of program. A growing area of interest within (Marketing Strategy) and Execution are the more recent interaction dynamics of traditional marketing (e.g. TV or Events) with online consumer activity (e.g. Social Media). (See references below, Brand Ecosystems) Not only direct product experience, but also any stimulus provided by traditional marketing, can become a catalyst for a consumer brand "groundswell" online as outlined in the book Groundswell.

4. Marketing Infrastructure (also known as Marketing Management) – Improving the business of marketing can lead to significant gains for the company. Management of agencies, budgeting, motivation and coordination of marketing activities can lead to improved competitiveness and improved results. The overall accountability for brand leadership and business results is often reflected in an organization under a title within a (Brand management) department.

5. Exogenous Factors - Generally out of the control of marketers, external or exogenous factors also influence how marketers can improve their results. Taking advantage of seasonality, interests or the regulatory environment can help marketers improve their marketing effectiveness.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-02