Marketing Organizations Are Part of the Sales Team
I know tell you something you don’t know because that added to your good looks, hope and 5 bucks might get you a cup of coffee but not any business.
The old saying actually went something like “yeah well that and 50 cents will buy you a cup of coffee.” But with inflation and all the fancy pants designer coffee folks are toting around 5 bucks just seemed to fit better.
Now look at the 5 bucks you spend a day on coffee, does it really get you anything? Ok maybe you wake up, get that little caffeine buzz going for a while and basically you threw good money at your little fix for a short term return. I’m not picking on coffee drinkers I happen to be a huge junkie of that product myself.
What about your business strategy and more important your new business strategy and is your company’s marketing budget doing anything to help drives sales?
When was the last time you tried something new. Tried to change it, tried to improve your new business approach or for that matter measured the money you keep dumping into the same old thing and the same predictable lackluster sales results. Business cards are important, do the sales folks get nearly as jazzed up about the new 4 million color brochure with non offensive stocks photos as Marketing does? Yeah I didn’t think so.
And that my friend is where the disconnect is. Marketing is supposed to dream up cool new stuff but rarely if ever does it tie into what you really need in the field to drive business. Concept pieces are nice but they don’t close business and if you’re like most company’s your online strategy has followed suit and is noting more than a company website that is a digital version of a leave behind old school paper brochure.
Its like you look nice, your mother would be so proud that you’ve cleaned up so well but at the end of the day its simply not enough to look great in the world you have to have substance. You have to use your own experience and expertise. Tell them what your good and help them benefit from it. Create a need or fill an existing one. Give them the steak and the sizzle and scream it from the roof tops.
Still doubt me, how many business cards have you handed out on sales call, during trade shows, industry events, and even during social functions when introduced. Odds are hundreds of them if not thousands. Fancy business cards are nice but basic ones are OK too. Odds are most of those and I’ll take a guess here 85% end up in a some type of card file system, whether its and old school Rolodex and a staple holding them in place to a box filled with them, to the fancy new card scan systems. Where you put them doesn’t matter its what you do with them that does.
Now think about a typical brochure for a favorite program, product offer, or sales widget. You go to a trade show and 50 of them are in your bag from the other vendors who are there. Maybe you dump them out on the floor in your room and rifle through them, perhaps you read a couple but chances are most of the get looked at for a few seconds and then discarded.
Why because there is no connection to them, no person behind the information, its just a sterile piece of information that is about as emotionally or intellectually engaging as a encyclopedia. What does a box of business cards cost? 5 Bucks for 1000? 20 Bucks for 1000 if they’re really fancy and on king like quality paper. Now what do your brochures cost? My guess is between 50 cents and 3 bucks a piece. Odds are you get better value out of the business card.
Am I suggesting that you stop printing brochures, and go only to business cards. No but I’m suggesting that you take your marketing and online strategy for a little run. Make a few folks break a sweat. Invite the people who put that drivel together to a lot of actual customer meeting and tell them to keep their mouth shut and listen. Write in their job descriptions, bonus them on actually getting it right. Then do the tough thing in the postmortem meetings on what they’ve learned. Be a leader and kill all the glitzy feel good stuff that they like and go forward with things that will impact your business for the better.
What was the expense? What was the call to action and what was the return good or bad? Don’t take the easy answer that it created awareness that’s “Marketing speak for we have no Clue”
Once upon a time a large and I mean multi billion dollar organization hired a Chief Marketing officer to brand the company. So the CMO ran off and created great and wild creative campaigns targeted all over the place. The were so good in fact that they won tons of awards on a global scale but there is only one problem. The CMO had a budget that was less the 1/5 of the their biggest competitor but that wasn’t the problem they had a market dominating share of the business. The problem was is the marketing wasn’t focused on what mattered. It didn’t drive old customers to buy more or create new customers and said company lost market share year after year.
Look at what is in your premium information, including printed material and website. Think about who you do business with and why they do business with you and then treat it like an opportunity to introduce others to it. Is it helping to feed the sales organization and putting money back in the cash register or is marking a black hole that no one has any clue about other than the stuff looks pretty and arrives late?
When you spend money on marketing it is no different than anything else in business you’re investing your money. Would you keep a dud sales person around for ever because you didn’t want to deal with it? What about a customer service person who creates customer or morale problems with their work habits or attitude? Yeah I didn’t think so. So are you getting anything out of that constantly redesigned pretty digital money pit that is you on line presence or lack there of?
Next time we continue you the conversation and will help some of you out of the dark ages of business development with some on line marketing basics in “Why a Website isn’t online marketing and social media isn’t just for kids”
Now unless I’m mistaken you need to get some marketing folks in front of customers, have some budgets to review and may you need to refill your coffee. Changes after all is best done one step at a time.
