Marketing - Look Behind the Curtain
When you think of marketing, what comes to mind? Is it a memorable ad that you saw on TV? Sometimes for the wrong reason. Is it when you click on an online ad for a pair of shoes and for the next week all you see are shoes? In short, marketing is that squeaky wheel that continues to make itself heard until it gets taken care of. It is the image the company portrays and wants everyone in the market to see.
Think of a front door attendant standing outside of a business. They can pass out flyers and have conversations to get people inside to have a conversation to learn more. Maybe they play music to garner more attention to attract a larger crowd. Whatever the effort may be, the goal is to get people in the door. Once inside, it is up to other team members to point them in the right direction. At the end of the day, the goal of marketing is to promote the company, get new leads for the sales team, and help with customer retention.
Marketing is NOT Sales
Depending on who you talk to, marketing may like or dislike sales and vice versa. At the end of the day, it is a symbiotic relationship. While they have their similarities, they do have their differences. Marketers are like a mascot. They are known by everyone but nobody really knows who they are. It is just someone getting people excited about something and will go to great lengths to do so.
There was a great conversation I had with a furniture salesman a while back. The reason it was so memorable was because he HATED marketers. To him, all his marketing team did was get in the way of his sales process. He said they never gave him good leads and the collateral they created was ineffective, and for a lack of a better term, garbage. He just wanted to get straight into the conversation with prospects and sell.
To an extent, I saw his frustration. There can be times when a qualified lead who is ready to buy has to go through the marketing pipeline to make sure all of the boxes are checked. But, is that not the point of marketing? Salespeople want qualified leads so they are not wasting their time pitching to uninterested or unqualified prospects. To him, everyone he talked with was qualified and interested in something he sold. Impossible. There will never be a 100% qualification or interest rate.
After a few minutes of chatting, his mindset changed once I explained how marketing's job was not to turn a prospect into a customer by bypassing the sales team, it was simply to HELP the sales team improve their conversion rate. It is to provide the sales team with resources and collateral that helps them, not get in the way. It is to attract and drive new business to the store/online to help sales teams increase their sales, commission, and conversion rates.
More Than Meets the Eye
What does marketing actually do? In short, more than meets the eye. Behind every good campaign, ad, design, or piece of content, are hours of planning and research to turn that idea or concept into something tangible. For example, a blog post is more than just a piece of content to keep up with a weekly cadence. It should be action-driving and informative so that once someone finishes reading, they do something. Maybe you want them to learn more, to read another piece of content, or the content supports another piece. Regardless, it should do more than just be fodder to hit arbitrary numbers.
So often I come across other marketing teams or companies who want to be a powerhouse by constantly churning out new content. Which is great, but what does it actually do? Does that blog post on the latest TikTok trend do anything for the company? If someone in the company were to read it, str they better off reading it, or would they ask why their company wasted time writing that? More often than not, the latter takes the cake.
Content for content's sake is not a good strategy. It is just like your core competencies and past performance in federal contracting. The more nonsense you dabble with, the further from your core capabilities and reputation you get. A few off-topic pieces here and there are fine, but they should not be the core of your content strategy. Thought-provoking, well-thought-out pieces are what people want.
When your company is awarded a contract, on the surface, you were just awarded a large sum of money. But how much time, effort, and resources went into that bid? How many hours, weeks, and months were spent gathering intelligence, how many discussions with the contracting officer, how much influencing, and how about conversations with your BD team?
Every success in life always has more than meets the eye. That is why when award ceremonies take place, there are so many people to thank. Because without all of those supporting team members, the goal would not have been attainable.
Every company has its own marketing efforts, some just more than others. Whether it is a team of one or a team of double-digits, research, creativity, and execution are at the forefront of what they do. Researching to see what competitors are doing, what worked, what no longer works, and exploring options that are outside the box. Taking those findings and creating something that will resonate with their target audience. And finally, executing. Publishing new ads, running campaigns, publishing supporting content. Marketing always has a lot of moving pieces. It requires everyone to constantly think on their toes and be agile. One reason so many marketers have strong calf muscles...sorry.
The next time your website gets a facelift, you hit your sales numbers, or increase your recurring revenue, thank your marketing team. Typically, coffee is a great token of your gratitude!
