Seven Steps To Better Marketing

You’ve heard of the expression ‘being in the flow’, or ‘in the zone’, well Better Marketing is kind of like that. It’s when every aspect of marketing your business is working just about perfectly. When people clearly understand who you are, the value you offer, when qualified leads walk through the door already liking your brand and convert to a sale with ease. Everything is monitored and measured, and you know exactly what’s working and what’s going on at all times. 

Your marketing people are smart, fully informed and driven to help the business succeed as a whole, and marketing actively aligns and contributes to the overall business strategy. 

Your whole team feels like they’re part of something they all get, sales & marketing work seamlessly together, as do your internal and external marketing teams, and in addition to significantly adding to the bottom line, marketing is continuously raising the profile of the business, and adding value to your brand.  

You’re growing, and your competition is worried. 

This is what you should be aiming for if you want your business to be the best it possibly can be and create the change you dream of. If you want to leap ahead of your competitors, dominate new markets, or if you want to build it up and sell it for the highest amount possible.  

Sound good? Yes indeed, and although it’s not an easy place to get to, it’s not horrendously difficult to achieve either. 

So How Do You Reach The Lofty Heights Of Better Marketing?

That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it. There’s no single silver bullet and it’s different for all businesses. However, having been in this game for longer than we care to remember, and having built a few Better Marketing teams over the years, we’ve narrowed the ‘route to Better Marketing’ down to seven basic steps. And we’re going to lay them all out for you. 

Seven Steps To Better Marketing 

1. The Right Perspective

Now we’re not going to get into your mindset here, although it’s an important enough part of running a business as you well know. Instead, it’s about having the right perspective on your marketing.  

Marketing Needs To Be On Your Executive Team 

You need to genuinely see marketing as an important part of the entire business. Marketing should have a representative in your executive team, and depending on the size of your business, it shouldn’t be someone with the ‘Head of Sales & Marketing’ title. Those are two distinctly different jobs and although they have a lot of crossovers, the skills and experience required to excel in each area, are completely different.  

Marketing Needs To Be A Long-Term Investment

Marketing needs to be viewed as an ongoing investment in people, technology & process, just like any other part of the business. It’s an investment that creates not only an increase in sales (as it should do) but also increasing customer engagement, and long-term equity in the brand.  

A factor that may seem a little intangible to begin with, but when you notice fewer touchpoints are required to connect with the people you hope to serve and move them along the sales funnel, then your brand is starting to gain some value.  

So, if you’re looking to ‘get some marketing done before EOFY’ to ‘get a few more leads in the door this quarter’ to ‘get a few more runs on the board for a poor sales period’ then we’d suggest that, perhaps, you’re not on the route to Better Marketing.

How Valuable Is Your Brand? 

Let’s say you’re trying to sell your business to a potential buyer who’s got two options in front of them, you’ll be very glad you built the better brand – you’ll make a sale and get a higher price. 

How much higher? Well, if you get to Coca Cola’s size, your brand is worth more than all your physical assets! Interbrand measures such mega-brands’ values. 

For we mortals, to see how to calculate the value of your brand you could take a look here or here.  

2. The Right People

If you do have the right perspective, then all of the rest becomes a hell of a lot easier, and it starts with hiring the right people. And what do we man by that..? Well, let’s examine the wrong people first… 

Hiring The Wrong People 

There are many out there who see marketing as an annoying expense, and so take that attitude into the recruitment process. They’ll generally hire young, extremely keen people who might be great on a couple of social channels but haven’t got a clue what long-term, disciplined, strategic marketing is. They’ll do their best, of course, however given limited scope and carrying limited experience, they’ll generally only tick a few boxes from a marketing perspective. 

Which is all their employer is expecting anyway, but it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, limits growth and is the path to hell! (Well, ok, frustration and wasted time). 

Hiring The Right People 

The other approach, however, is to see marketing as an investment in the senior leadership of your business, and hire accordingly. Recruit the best, most experienced person you can possibly afford, put them on the exec team, and then support them as they learn about the business, help grow the business, and then build their team. 

We promise you if you do that, you will not regret it. And realistically, most of the following steps will be taken care of by them – leaving you to manage the success! 

3. Cohesive Strategies

With the right marketing person or team on board, now you need to bring them into the inner workings of the entire business, and they need to know as much as you do warts and all. Where are we world-class? What are our failings? What’s the profit margin?  Product roadmap? What do the sales dept need and what holds them back? What are our conversion ratios, retention rates, satisfaction scores? Where does the competition beat us? 

There can’t be any areas of the business that are ‘closed’ to them, or they’ll be hampered from the start. 

Take the time to explain the overall business strategy, short, medium and long-term, so that they can develop a focused marketing strategy that aligns, support and works in conjunction with the business’ overall goals. 

It does seem pretty obvious when you state it like that. Why wouldn’t you..?! Yet many organisations simply don’t provide enough visibility, and the results are there for all to see. Or not, as the case may be. 

So, Are We Getting Closer To Better Marketing?

If you have the right perspective, hire the right people and work together on a business strategy then you’re off to a flying start. The next steps concern alignment, outsourcing, data and process, but we’ve run out of room for now, so you’ll have to come back in a couple of weeks for the next blog. 

Sorry! However, if you want to know how we make Better Marketing accessible to any SME right now, look around this website and schedule a chat now about your own business. I’ll share my views and experience, no obligation, of course. 

We’ll talk you through it, even help you get there, if you like…