Question

Topic: Strategy

How To Coordinate & Align All Marketing Efforts

Posted by ccrosser on 4/18/2010 at 6:18 PM ET 250 Points
Working with organizations that are too small for dedicated marketing staff. How can they work smarter, coordinating their marketing efforts for the best results? And making sure that what do is all in alignment with all their marketing efforts and the organization. What resources are available for a simple and concise marketing plan (for people who are not marketing professional)? Thank you. Christy
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RESPONSES

  • Posted on 4/18/2010 at 6:25 PM Accepted
    We've worked with a lot of small businesses (and start-ups) that don't have a dedicated marketing staff. The key is to not try to do too much. Keep it really simple and basic. Nothing to coordinate.

    Then, as the business grows and funds are available, do a little testing to see what other marketing elements work. Not too much. Nothing to really coordinate. Just see what else works.

    Of course, all of this depends on the business objectives and plans. If the objectives are very ambitious, you may need a more aggressive marketing plan ... and a bigger budget. If so, then step one should be hiring the marketing person (or an outside consultant). If that's not in the cards, go back to the business objective and adjust it to be more reasonable.
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 4/18/2010 at 8:12 PM Member
    Christy - the best gift you can give them is a marketing strategy. An internal "bible" that'll help align everyone's vision/message and concrete steps to achieve the desired goals. If there is someone dedicated to implementing the strategy, then their first goal would be to make the strategy transparent and regularly show where the organization is relative to these goals/strategies (and the results).
  • Posted by J Geibel on 4/18/2010 at 8:40 PM Accepted
    For small companies, skip all the formal marketing plans and that kind of Harvard MBA stuff. They don't think that way and won't use them.

    Have them take close look at their successful sales and determine their 'sales map' - both from the selling side and the buyer side (interview the buyers) .

    Once they do that for three to six sales (and continue on an on-going basis) - their marketing requirements will more or less fall out of the information they get.

    Remember - marketing supports the sales environment - so you need to know the key milestones of the successful sales cycle before you can develop marketing to support it.

    This article may help - I call it the Sales Autopsy - www.geibelmarketing.com/autopsy,htm - I developed the methodology after noticing similar successful sales patterns among resellers I worked with in the software and service industries years ago.
  • Posted on 4/18/2010 at 9:07 PM Moderator
    I don't disagree with the fundamental point made by J Geibel, but I do disagree with the statement that "... marketing supports the sales environment."

    Marketing INCLUDES the sales environment, and certainly should not detract from the sales environment, but to say that marketing supports the sales environment is a misleading understatement.

    Marketing includes things like understanding and anticipating customer needs, setting appropriate pricing strategy, guiding product development, and a whole range of other activities -- including support for, and guidance of, the sales effort.

    And, BTW, the response to the basic question would probably be different for different businesses and different industries. For example, a B2B capital equipment manufacturer would probably have different marketing needs than those for an online B2C etail business or a local service business or a not-for-profit association ... to name just a few.
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