Question

Topic: Career/Training

Oh No! They Just Made Me Director Of Marketing!!

Posted by Anonymous on 9/20/2007 at 10:08 AM ET 250 Points
25 years on the operations side of various professional services firms in several industries, and now I have been promoted to Director of Marketing for $17M engineering firm.

I am the first Director of Marketing that the firm has had in its 61 year history! I have no formal Marketing training, other than what I have been reading here for the past few weeks. I have no full time staff to help me. I have a couple of marketing degreed administrative folks that have volunteered a couple of hours a week to help. I have a supportive boss(President of the firm) who has an active interest in seeing me do well in this role as well as a desire to see an increase in the exposure of our firm and increasing our lead generation.

Among many other things, I am initially worried about:

-Correctly prioritizing my initial efforts,
-Scoring some quick victories to show that the creation of this position was a correct decision,
-implementing a "nurture" email campaign (Pet project of my boss),
-defining the metrics by which my performance will be measured.

I am a sponge, and am in dire need of advice.

Thanks in advance for any guidance you can provide.

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RESPONSES

  • Posted by ilan on 9/20/2007 at 10:16 AM Member
    First of all, make sure this job is NOT the Director of Sales.
    Yes, you will have to prove ROI, but if the management is having thoughts that it is YOUR ultimate responsibility to generate sales, learn what marketing is all about.
    Second, LEARN.
    There are many courses about marketing, IMC, and various disciplines like branding, in many adult education institutions.
    One of the best is the Graham School at The University of Chicago.
    Some of the best minds in marketing, people with real life experience teach there, and not just "academians",
    Check it out and go learn the business.
    And last, feel free to call me and consult on the subject, I teach it.
    Good Luck
  • Posted on 9/20/2007 at 10:24 AM Member
    Marketing for an engineering firm is a great opportunity. The email campaign could be a great way to keep in close contact with your past clients in hopes of securing future business. The hardest part of creating an email campaign for me is, content. Content may be the easiest part for you as you can share insights that your engineering staff has learned on projects similar to ones the target might be considering. Glad to hear an engineering firm is realizing the value mkting can bring to a firm, good luck!
  • Posted by Frank Hurtte on 9/20/2007 at 10:25 AM Member
    Marketing in the Engineering Field is much different than marketing in consumer products... don't let anyone convince you otherwise.

    Here are some thoughts on setting priority..
    1) who is your current client base?
    2) who is your expansion client base?
    3) what is your perception in the market.. (for engineering firms this may be something like civil engineering firm with municipal water/waste experience)
    4) what would you like to become known as?

    I work as a coach to several people in marketing and business development in your field. I can think of about 15 or so of these, contact me via my profile and I would be willing to chat with you for 20 minutes or so just to give you some ideas..

    Frank Hurtte
  • Posted on 9/20/2007 at 11:02 AM Member
    Good luck.

    If i was you i would get a book with the basics of marketing and read it through. Philip Kotler is one of the best authors. Get a short book to start with, it takes time to absorb the knowledge.

    I agree with Ilan. It is important to clarify that marketing is NOT sales as people often think. Sales are part of the marketing plan.

    Try to make a list of the marketing activities of your company, i.e. what you already do in advertising, promotion, personal selling, etc.. In that way you can have a bigger picture of so many activities your company already does in marketing. A report on that may be used to impress?

    My biggest lesson from marketing is that marketing is all about the client.... him-him-him and not me-me-me (ie your company). Whenever i tell my clients they are sooo stunned!

    And i always say that marketing sometimes is just common knowledge. Smart people can be way better marketers, than people that have studied and studied marketing for ages.

    Antonia

  • Posted on 9/20/2007 at 11:12 AM Author
    Ilan, Steve, Joe, Frank NuCoPro, and Antonia:

    Holy cow! Talk about great advice delivered quickly!

    I'll try to answer your questions and respond to your comments in order.

    Ilan - This is definitely not a sales position. We have a VP of Sales who will be benefiting from the leads, research, advertising, collateral generation, etc. that I will be generating. There are still a few clients that will be mine because of personal relationships, but by and large I will not be directly selling. Regarding learning, I am trying to set aside 4 - 6 hours per week to read and talk to folks about marketing in todays B2B world. I have a long way to go.

    Steve - The engineering services marketplace is more competitive now than in the past. The company believes, but doesn't know, that our market share is dropping. Traditional "word of mouth" advertising and anecdotal research on our position in the market place aren't providing the leads and data required to efficiently run the business. Also, the old school attitude of no "Sales" in this professional services business is, quite literally dying out...My charter is to increase the awareness of our firm and its capabilities, drive an increase in lead generation, identify new revenue opportunities, and help to increase revenue from existing clients.

    Joe - I am looking forward to getting a campaign going and could use a recommendation for a software package or service that would automate or streamline creating and running the campaign. Any ideas?

    Frank - I have been reading that Marketing for professional services firms is a somewhat unique subset. Thank you for your offer of a chat. I will most likely take you up on it in the coming days.

    NuCoPro - Thank you for the referral to the American Marketing Association, I will definitely be following that up. I have also been advised to look at "The Society for the Marketing of Professional Services". Do you know anything about them?

    Antonia - Thank you for the reminder about our clients. We aspire to be a client centric organization, but we have a ways to go.
  • Posted on 9/20/2007 at 1:57 PM Author
    Bill,

    Thank you very much. My reading list is growing by the minute. Any suggestions for some quick projects or efforts that might lead to some quick initial successes. I would like to take some pressure off while I try to get up to speed on some of the basics of the job.......
  • Posted on 9/20/2007 at 3:34 PM Author
    Thank you Gary. The pressure comes from inside me, not my firm. "Lesson One" hit home with a resounding thunk. My first efforts need to be laying out what I want to accomplish this first year, craft the strategy to get there, and then work the plan.
  • Posted by denise on 9/22/2007 at 2:53 AM Accepted
    Dear Trice,

    Well done on your promotion. I'd like you to step back and consider these broader questions then to get back into the specifics. There are some good suggestions above


    Here are some initial considerations to consider:

    What image do you want to portray?
    We all have an image, whether created consciously or not. Consider what 'image'is appropriate to your job appearance, clothes, life style, attitudes.

    Give your new colleagues the benefit of the doubt if you don't feel at ease with them right away. Think how long it takes for stepfamilies to get used to each other. The dynamics can be similar for a new worker. On one level, your new work team will welcome you. On another level, they may worry about how they will have to change because of you.

    Define your future
    This is your chance to be the person you want to be. If you want to be seen as friendly, act in a friendly way; if you want to be seen as effective and efficient, don’t take too many tea breaks and be sure to return from lunch promptly.

    Don’t be too keen on making a good impression
    There is a lot to take in with a new job, so pace yourself. Remember that you are learning a new job, building relationships and settling into a new team. All of this will take time. The temptation might be to work like mad to prove yourself worthy of your new role but you will do better if you take the time to reflect, refocus and reprioritise. You don’t want to have to slow down at a later point. It may look like you have lost your enthusiasm.

    Wait before making suggestions for change
    You have lots of ideas to make a difference, and want to let the company know they made the right choice in recruiting you, but don’t try to change things at once, seek to understand first. You want to make sure you show them how you can do the job and fit in. Before you start making changes, try to understand why things are done the way they are. It can then help when you do want to make a suggestion. People will notice that you took the time to understand. Then don’t try and make too many changes at once, choose a small achievable goal first.

    Ask a lot of questions. This won't show up any lack in you. Rather, you'll show that you can learn what you need to know. You can ask as many questions as you want at the beginning. Do help by grouping questions together and not asking a question every few minutes.

    Find out:

    * The way the company works, and your boss and close team members in particular
    * The limits of your authority
    * The parameters and main objectives of your job
    * The kind of feedback you will receive from superiors
    * The limits of your responsibilities personnel, products, services, etc
    * The way your job meshes into any quality system in use. If the organisation has received ISO 9000 status or a similar quality accreditation what impact does this have on your work
    * The resources you will have
    * The priorities in the job and the proportion of your time you should be giving to each
    * The main problem areas and the 'uniqueness' of the job
    * Your objectives. Sit down with your new boss and making sure you understand what he or she wants from you, when they want it and how they want it.
    * The expectations of your team
    * How to communicate with you boss. Can you just walk in or do you need to set an appointment? Who needs to be kept informed?
    * Who do you need to copy in on memos and invite to meetings?
    * How involved does your boss want to be?

    Understand the network of people.
    You need to view relationships across the organisation and beyond. Understand how to manage internal politics, recognise the key influencers, the gatekeepers, and the allies who will help you achieve your goals.” Draw a hub-and-spoke diagram with you in the centre and identify the important relationships you need to cultivate.
  • Posted by Neil on 9/23/2007 at 11:16 AM Accepted
    I've looked and it appears you have gotten a lot of good advice. I want to add that you should feel good about your operations experience! That is an excellent foundation for your new job. You mentioned you have a supportive president. That's great. He can be a resource and help you identify the experts. The experts are going to be useful to you because you are not going to talk in the same way to a client for whom you designed and built a water treatment plant as you do a client for whom you did a transportation project, etc.

    The president and the experts (don't forget finance and IT) are also going to help you. I bet you have a database with all kinds of useful information about clients.

    As for permission-based email marketing, I wrote a primer that covers some basics of segmenting and email marketing:
    https://www.marketingprofs.com/6/anuskiewicz3.asp
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