EMBiz: Marketing Strategy: Getting Everyone on Board

Marketing Strategy: Getting Everyone on Board

Laurel Mintz

Ok today's conversation is a big one around your marketing strategy and more importantly how and why it's important to get everyone on board. So first of all if you don't have a marketing strategy, it’s time to get one ASAP. Make sure you go to our website and sign up for our 9 easy steps email. It gives you a drip marketing campaign where you can really kind of DIY this process if you’re not ready to work with an agency yet. But it's really important for you to get that down on paper or on your computer to make sure you have some path forward. So that’s first and foremost. 

Establish Clear Marketing Goals

If you do have a strategy make sure you do a quick exercise - ask random members of your team if they understand what your strategy is and what the tactics are you're taking to actually get there. I think a lot of brands are surprised by these conversations within their own team and if your own team doesn't understand what the strategy is, the likelihood that it's coming across in your marketing is probably slim to none. Then also everyone needs to know what your marketing goals are from a leadership down to the mailroom. If everyone understands the goals of the company, of the organization, of the brand, they’re so much more likely to be on board to help you achieve it. And of course marketing is tied to all of your other goals - your sales goals, your visibility goals, all of these other types of goals - meaning marketing is really responsible for helping you achieve all of them. We always say that marketing is the funnel to sales.

Why Is It Important To Get Everyone On Board?

Now if not everyone agrees with what your marketing goals are, then it's time to make sure that you're getting everyone in a room and getting everyone on board. Again there needs to be a cohesion in the team and a deeper understanding of what the goals are and how you're going to reach it. Now this especially applies to the c-suite and making sure that you have buy-ins from the higher-ups. There's nothing worse, and we’ve seen this unfortunately quite a bit, where there is lower level people who reach out and start interacting and executing on a marketing strategy, but without buy-in from the higher-ups it's never going to take off. So making sure you get everyone on board and here are some tips to do that. 

Steps To Get Your Team On Board With The Company’s Marketing Strategy

First, make sure you're sharing your strategy at least once a month; setting and sharing specific goals and benchmarks and measuring those month over month so you can see what happened last month, what happened this month - which helps you perform a more data-driven approach to developing new strategies moving forward. And then of course make your marketing strategy a part of everything you do. Have fun with it! It doesn't have to be that serious. Do a white board strategy session, you know whatever you need to do to get people creative and excited about the goals of the brand. It is very very easy to become siloed especially in midsize and larger organizations. So make sure that you have either a stand-up which is where everyone goes around and says what they’re working on within that team or an all hands - you know either one is fine - to make sure that everyone is on the same page. It will help you as a leader, it will help your team with a cohesiveness, and more importantly it’ll help you really clearly define your goals in a marketing capacity and then of course achieve them.