Life Lessons
Successful Marketing has to come from the top
Feeling completely gutted I found myself sitting down at my desk making the decision it was best to leave the company and began writing my two-week notice.
I was really excited during my interview for the position. Knowing the company’s sales had gone stagnant for the past few years, they were struggling to figure out why. My marketing background could have been an asset to discovering why. Still there I sat only 8 short months later. Fully aware that office politics and lack of direction and purpose killed everyone’s motivation to push the business forward. And finally realizing no matter what I did it would never be enough to improve our work environment or the business.
Looking back I feel fortunate that I ended up working for low productivity managers aka micromanagers. Those experiences taught me why marketing fails and how businesses end up with unmotivated teams. Why even the best systems with the brightest minds and greatest marketing strategies fall flat never gaining any momentum. But most importantly it taught me that no matter how good you are at your job, lasting success can only come from the top.
CEO/Owner’s Job
Never outsource your vision, communication or strategy for someone else to figure out.
As an owner, you and you alone are responsible for the vision and direction of your business. If you no longer find yourself excited about your industry than sell your company, bring in a partner, or make a deserving employee the CEO. Ownership gives the business life, but leadership provides the direction and purpose to sustain life.
It is the owner’s burden to effectively communicate the direction and purpose of their business. You can’t tell someone to build your dream house without details of what that means to you. If you lack clarity and communication you will end up with their version of your dream house. It’s the same with your business. No one can help you build your dream without you communicating clearly what your dream is.
Wasted Marketing
Drunk marketing rarely achieves the goal.
Marketing long-term without a strategy will cost you thousands of dollars, and you’ll never really understand what worked and what didn’t. We call marketing without a strategy “wasted marketing”. Not because you have wasted your time and money, but because your marketing is acting like a drunk person in public mumbling and stumbling around. You may get some attention, but no one really understands what you’re saying. They aren’t sure if they should get you an Uber or keep you around for entertainment.
I understand exactly how wasted marketing happens. I’ve been the person in the meeting saying we need a strategy and it falling on deaf ears. Asking what is our marketing goal and being told it’s a waste of time to define the goal. Just do what we’ve been doing, and we’ll figure out how it’s working at a later time. I’m sure many of you can relate. Your plate is so full with working in the business you have never scheduled the time to work on the business.
Marketing Tactics
Most tactics work when they are a part of a marketing strategy.
Marketing is a part of every touchpoint a client has with your business. However, your marketing will never connect with the right client if you don’t know how to communicate who you serve and why you are the right choice.
The web is full of talented experts that can teach you how to be successful with every marketing tactic that exists. I’m sure you have found yourself watching and taking notes through several marketing tactic webinars. For those of you who followed through with the webinar advice, did you get the results you expected?
The problem isn’t they didn’t teach you how to do the tactic well. The problem is you didn’t consider if the marketing tactic was in line with your goals, values, and strategy. If you don’t stop and strategize than every marketing tactic you try has a high probability to fail.
Marketing Strategy
A marketing strategy identifies your best customers, and it lays out each step of the customer‘s journey. Guiding you to the most effective marketing methods/tactics. Marketing tactics are what you use to achieve your marketing strategy. There are many marketing tactics you can choose from to get the word out and fill up your schedule with potential leads. But again without the direction and vision of the company you can’t figure out which ones to put massive effort behind.
Shortlist of Marketing Tactic Examples:
- TV
- Radio
- FB ads
- Streaming ads
- Content
- Webinar
- Podcasts
Setting Marketing Goals
How do you communicate your goals?
Your marketing goals will also help you in choosing the correct marketing tactics. Goals in a business with low productivity leadership are often sales only oriented. You’ve likely experienced the need to motivate your team daily. Obviously, businesses need to turn a profit and hitting a specific sales number is necessary. It’s how we talk about the goals that determine the motivation and excitement around achieving them.
Let’s say you want to create a $100,000 in growth this year.
Let’s dive deeper into the strategy that will get you there.
For example, you know you close 25% of the leads you generate and that on average you get X amount leads each month. Because you have the information you can calculate what you and your team need to do to achieve the sales goal.
Your goal options:
We need to increase our leads by X %.
You and the team brainstorm lead generating activities that will increase the number of leads you get each month.
We need to find ways to close 2% more of the leads we have.
You and the team brainstorm what offers or terms would help close more leads
We need to find ways to cut costs
You and your team brainstorm ideas that cut out middlemen or streamline a process that will save time or money or both.
Results
Teams get refocused and fired up to achieve these types of goals. I have seen teams triple their sales goal because they weren’t focused on a specific sales number.
With the team working together to create a better system for sales and marketing, they saw positive results in many areas of the business. They created a system to increase their qualified leads, and they were able to improve client retention rates and most importantly created a customer experience that clients were excited to recommend to others.
Take Away
Employees can only help you achieve what you communicate.
The most difficult part for me working with low productivity management is that I want to be successful in spite of it. I would try to find a way to accomplish what I needed to do even if that meant undermining the owner. It was difficult to know how things could be improved but remain silent and do nothing. But it was a valuable lesson that I needed to learn, long-term success must come from the top.
Leadership is the foundation of every successful business and it’s behind every successful team. While it’s challenging, lonely and sometimes scary it is necessary that you know how to communicate your vision and the direction you want for your business. And that you can clearly and confidently communicate that to your clients and your team. Once you get that figured out your marketing strategy comes together and you’ll get to reap the rewards of marketing successfully.
We would love to hear from you below. What tips would you have for fellow leaders to motivate their team or communicating their purpose to potential clients?
