Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Bill

I guess the hard part here is making sure you get 100% alignment between marketing and business strategy. This is going to come from a set of mandatory support activities - collateral materials, sales support tools - and campaign activities that generate new inquiries from your strategically targeted segments.

I'd be looking at how your funnel works - and making sure the marketing supports and stimulates the funnel activity.

Also - where are the pain points for marketing? Where is there most need for marketing dollars?

Why not create a long list of potential campaigns and activities, and with your team, rank each one by cost, potential return, difficulty and strategic alignment, and create a composite score or ranking to decide which ones to implement and in what order to execute them?

ChrisB

Dear Bill,

You want to "deliver robust marketing capabilities (across all product sets)"?

Er ... come again?

Might you have a greater impact if you simply say "We've need to deliver a clear message to a specific audience about their particular problem to which our product is the solution."?

And might you also generate deeper rapport by asking "What do we need to say, when or how are we going to say it, and to whom do we address what we want to say?"

Then, might you have a greater impact when you decide "OK. This is what we're gong to say, this is how we're going to say it, and this is who we're going to say it to"?

All I'm urging here is clarity.

Whenever I've sat in meetings where someone's been talking about "leveraging core deliverables through synergistic marketing capabilities" (or some equally hollow but jolly impressive phrase) I've seen people siting around, nodding sagely, but seldom have I seen or heard anything that achieves or produces a result that benefits the customer.

I've found that the simpler and more straightforward you approach a problem (no matter how complex it might be), often, the easier it is to solve and the more effective the solution becomes.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

your post reminds me of a company I worked four years ago. The director of marketing felt he deserved much more respect than he was getting from the R&D and tech support departments.

It seems to me that your goal is to increase the influence and the effectiveness of the marketing department, and I am sure almost everyone on this forum would agree that that is a good goal.

However, we might disagree about the best way to reach that goal. I do not know your situation, we have never met, and I am reading between the lines as best I can. It seems to me that if the marketing department has strong backing from the CEO, your strategy could work. However, if the marketing department is currently not well-respected, you may not want to stand up in front of the other departments and confess that you really don't understand what is going on in the company, and that you need their help.

I am shooting in the dark here, and I might be way off base. If you are trying to build trust and acceptance without high-level support, you might try to win some small victories first, and build on your successes, rather than complaining about your lack of participation and complaining that you are out of the loop.

On the other hand, if I were in your situation, and I had top level support, I would ask the CEO to explain my mission and role to the other directors, and then I would present my requests as a way to fulfill this directive.