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Building your credibility
How you’re positioned in your business is critical to your success. If your boss and colleagues don’t rate marketing in general, it’s an uphill struggle to prove yourself, whatever your experience and knowledge. So, what’s the answer?
Bridging the gap from business strategy to marketing operations
A key role of marketing is to make sure the strategy, plan and activity supports the business’s objectives. Without that, the risk is scattergun marketing and it’s hard to prove the value of marketing
Marketing’s role in employer marketing
How do you ensure you recruit the right candidates for your business, make your company attractive to work in and encourage people to stay? In our December roundtable we talked about three key bits of thinking to take into consideration and then discussed what makes for good (and bad) employer marketing and the role marketing can play to support the HR team.
Developing a ‘journey brain’
Marketers are familiar with the customer journey. It’s the starting point for our thinking, strategies and plans. But what are the other ‘journeys’ in the business – employees, other stakeholders, growth? How can marketing contribute to and enhance these?
Recruiting & resourcing a stellar marketing team
In resourcing and recruiting there are a host of different factors to consider. To focus the discussion we looked at three themes which served as thought-starters: skills, roles and fit.
Getting your FD onboard and loving marketing
A marketer’s relationship with the FD is key. They can test your plan, help develop a metrics dashboard and facilitate budget conversations. However, it’s not a given that your FD will be on-board with marketing. So how can you gain their buy-in and enthusiastic support
What does a business leader need to know about marketing?
Why is it that the same marketer can thrive in one organisation and shrivel in another? It has a lot to do with what the leaders and other key players think about marketing: their perception of it, the level of support and encouragement – and what experience they have of what good marketing does.
How marketing supports sales: volume, margin and lifetime value
Marketers are often asked to generate more leads in response to a business growth goal. This is volume growth, but it’s not always the kind of growth you need or want. In fact, marketing (working closely with customer service and sales) can support different kinds of growth – existing customers, warm prospects as well as engaging with the right prospects.
Creating seamless marketing, sales and service teams
10 years ago the CIM predicted that by 2022 there would be no such thing as separate marketing and sales departments. It turned out to be wishful thinking, but it is no less important today that customer services, sales and marketing work hand-in-hand.
There are all sorts of reasons why they are often separate, but the best reason for them not to be is that they are supporting the same customer journey.
What matters most to effective marketing, context or competence?
Competence of course is a key factor in determining how effective your marketing is. It’s a combination of experience, knowledge and skills. However, a marketer is unlikely to thrive and be truly effective, however good they are, if the business doesn’t provide the right context.
Shining a light on your vision, values and milestones
Agreeing vision, values, goals and milestones is a shared responsibility across the leadership team. Marketing’s role is to turn these into something that engages and inspires employees, suppliers, clients and prospects alike. To do that, you use both numbers and narrative. Each has an important part in motivating your audience.
Creating an organisational marketing capability
As any in-house marketer will tell you, there will come a time when you might need to use external specialists. There are all sorts of factors involved in deciding what to keep in-house and what might need outsourcing.