Marketing Strategy - Do You Have One?

Businesses everywhere are struggling. Companies are cutting help fair to try and cease solvent and yet many fail to site themselves in order to prosper. No matter how sizable or limited your organization, a determined marketing strategy must be employed in order to successfully grow. It's an ongoing process that you cannot let plunge by the wayside.

It is indispensable to remember that Marketing Strategy is not the same thing as Sales Strategy. You need both and they must work hand in hand. A positive marketing strategy equips sales with the tools they need to sell. It takes everyone and every department within an organization to work together to execute a product/service that people want to utilize. Everyone must work hand in hand and understand how together they get success. Often times I glance companies where departments don't rep along and don't understand how the others are valid grand less producing anything useful. The Sales department thinks they can write marketing materials and form plans and the marketing people typically contemplate sales does nothing but lunch with prospective clients resulting in a kill of money and bulky stomachs.

As leaders, it is our job to understand and manage to each group's strengths by empowering each to do what they do best and keeping them from focusing on the areas that are not their expertise. In a very ample sense I liken departments and their goals like the art of gift giving. Each departmental has a mission or a focus as it results to the "gift."

Marketing -Responsible for the overall presentation of the company "package" & message. What it looks like, how it is presented both to external and internal audiences. Marketing manages perception. Marketing is responsible for the card, the package and the bow.

Sales - Responsible for building relationships outside of the organization, responsible for the personal delivery of the package and getting the prospect to "initiate it".

Operations - Provides the overall value of what is inside the package.

Finance, Human Resources, & IT - All provide necessary resources to ensure that the value of the product via technology, people and processes work together to invent the best product/service possible. These groups are integral to both internal and external operations.

Often companies crop marketing when times are tough. Many CEO's have dropped the marketing function in order to slit costs. Not gleaming. We must protect our name above all else. This is what marketing does - they protect your name and the world's perception of it.

So where do we slice benefit when things rep tough? We study at every department. We ask our people to reach together and do more with less. People will rise to the occasion. They always do. And if someone doesn't want to be a share of the solution, the company is better off.

You really want to chop benefit? recognize your employees. They will lisp you where destroy is happening. They know where you can do money. Your employees have more answers than you realize. We often unbiased fail to ask them.

As my grandmother always said, "You have to untrue it until you form it." You have to continue making announcements about enhancements, case studies, current business (if you have it), and anything else that is newsworthy to your clients. Having a successful marketing view and strategy will continue to be display your message to the world in a world class plot. Remember "Dress for Success"? A superb marketing concept and strategy makes definite you always have the true scrutinize and the fair message every time you slide out the door. Perception is everything.

The tremendous news about the time we live in is that it is far easier and far less expensive to gain your name out there. But don't you dare finish doing it. If you do, it's like preparing for a bustle and then shooting yourself in the foot before it even begins. Don't do it.

Protect your name and your reputation first. Do the fair things for the accurate reasons. compose obvious your priorities are in order. By the very laws of nature, everything else will follow.

A fine name is more spruce than large riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold. Proverbs 22:1

Kelly Laughlin

President, The Highmont Group

Communications & Marketing