STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD
EVERYTHING in business is linked to marketing. Every phone call made and caller answered. Each e-mail, tweet, web page, mobile app, advert and piece of printed material. The demeanour of team members, from foot soldiers to generals. Marketers must evaluate this mass of interactions. They have to monitor customer perceptions of the business and be ready to make changes, quickly.
These are complex challenges. To prosper, marketers need board-level backing, which, in turn, requires understanding of the commercial value of strong marketing. Without such support, necessary changes will be slowed. They might be refused altogether.
Therefore, marketers: prove it. Argue in favour of the payback to be gained from being customer centric. Show that the marketing plan and its execution are aligned to overall business strategy, integrated with sales and profitability.
You will be building the brand, from the inside out. Brand and performance go hand in hand. When the entire organisation buys into that brand, the impact can be vast. It is the solid platform for productive involvement of the wider public.
The inherent value, understood internally because of your efforts, then will be communicated externally. Employees are the best brand ambassadors you can have.
THE PLAN
An energetic brand enables businesses to stand out from the competitive crowd, building customer loyalty and maintaining interest. Clear and consistent, it ensures positive experiences, whether online, in print or in person.
It starts with a flexible marketing support plan. Strategically, the marketplace is scanned and targets set out, along with the means to a profitable end. Tactically, issues such as raising awareness and achieving repeat business are on the what-to-do list.
This is about analysis, problems, openings, objectives and courses of action – including good old SWOT brainstorming – all with the brand, customers and prospects intertwined within the thinking.
The marketing plan will identify procedures and processes to tell people the time, not how the watch works. It will invite them to share their time with you.
From SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), the plan moves forward to offer SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based) recommendations.
Every thought-through, complete marketing plan should stake a right to be installed at the heart of the business to which it applies. But its value has to be made obvious.
EARNING RIGHTS
That right to be at the centre of things has to be earned. The power mongers in the business have to be sure that your marketing plan will work. Presuming that the content is accurate, supported by facts and compelling in tone, what it needs next is to be sold by its compiler.
Those who know how to be persuasive appreciate that merely pushing their own arguments will flounder. They must sound authoritative and convincing, but they will be patient listeners as well.
Persuasive people hear what is being said by others. You can’t win the argument if you don’t know what you are up against. Wearing people down is not an effective strategy. The same applies to developing an intelligent, inclusive approach to customers.
It is necessary to seek common ground to help establish mutual objectives. You can persuade someone much more easily if they are aligned with your theories and principles.
Probably, the key to persuasion will be motivation. There are two fundamental human impulses: the desire for gain and a fear of loss.
Your brand reinforcer of a marketing plan should satisfy both. Firstly, show how the business can do everything better. Then, prove that without your marketing blueprint, the future looks far less attractive. Yes, the plan is that important.
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